Memphis Daily Appeal

A Lady's Invention.

Cleveland Leader, March 20th: A Cleveland lady has given to the world a valuable and very useful invention of a mechanical order. The lady is Mrs. Eleanore McMann, daughter of the late Ex-Mayor Roderick Calkins, whom old Clevelanders will remember as a pioneer shipbuilder and owner of the firm of Calkins & Masters. Her husband was for many years a conductor on the Lake Shore railroad, and for a number of years she says "she felt the real necessity of a sleeping-car berth guard, to prevent persons from falling out of the upper berth, and also to prevent thieves from robbing people while asleep in the berths." She has invented so complete a device to remedy these evils that Senator Webster Wagner, president of the New York Central Sleeping-Car company, came here a few months ago and made arrangements to use it on the company's cars. The magnificent new car "India," which leaves the shops in this city to-morrow, has been fitted out with a set of these guards. The guard is adapted to all the different styles of sleeping-cars, and berths of ocean or river and lake steamships. It consists of a railing made of tubing, with woven wire cloth panels. This is fastened on the inside the front edge or the berth, by a double hinge so that it may be hinged to the bottom of the berth or fall over the outside, but not low enough to in any way interfere with getting into or out of the lower berth. In the front corners of the berth are posts, which, by an ingenious slot and groove slide, can be turned up from a horizontal position on the bottom of the berth and slid into a perpendicular position firm and rigid. In the top of each post is a hole partly filled with rubber cement to prevent rattling, and through the top roll of the guard run long bolts acting on a spring from the center. This latching or locking device is operated by drawing two small knobs together in the center of the guard. The knobs are on the inside of the rail and easily operated by the occupant, when the guard drops outside of the berth. The whole guard folds away with the bedding, and when the berth is wanted the party simply turns the guard down on the outside and raises the posts in position. When the occupant is in he can close himself up and is safe from any kind of intrusion or danger from falling out or from the berth's closing up in case of accident, as many berths did at the Ashtabula disaster. The guards are closely fitted to fill the entire length of the berth and the ends, and no space is left to insert a hand, or even a hook, by which many thieves operate. The guard is made of brass, handsomely nickleplated, and is very strong although light. The inventor has made three kinds, and secured patents, through Captain Tibbetts, on them all in this country and Europe. The kind described is for car berths already in use, but another for new cars stows away by passing, like a drawer, into the side of the berth, leaving only a silver edge visible, which is very ornamental. A number of the ocean steamship lines and one other sleeping-car company are negotiating for the use of the device in this country.