In this guest blog post, Steve Chown outlines the few details he has of his grandfather Jim’s accident on the railways around the time of the Second World War, including his convalescence. Unfortunately Jim’s accident appears not to have been investigated – possibly because of the war, or possibly because it was one of the […]
Archive | Accident aftermath
Railway accidents and deaths: archives at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
By Helen Ford on August 20, 2018 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Guest contribution, Linking sources, Updates
This week’s post comes from a guest contributor, Helen Ford, Manager of the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick – and a staunch supporter of our project. In the post Helen reflects upon the project, the topic of railway worker accidents and the sources at the Modern Records Centre, home to all sorts […]
James Walsh, 2 July 1882 – 8 May 1911
By Fiona Forde on July 10, 2018 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources
We’re delighted to receive this guest post, contributed by Fiona Forde, one of the people who’ve used our database. Fiona saw our tweet (@RWLDproject) about the case of James Walsh and decided to explore it in more detail, using our database as a starting point and exploring the various other records that might be pieced […]
Histories of medical humanities and attitudes: Examining class and shock via the accident reports
The accidents and reports from which our database draws reveal much about all sorts of aspects of British and Irish society around the time of the First World War. Plenty of this relates directly to the lives – and sometimes deaths – of railway workers. But underlying this we might find other aspects that speak […]
Disability History Month – a guest post on the NRM’s blog
Just a quick post today – to say that we’re thrilled that as part of our collaborative work between the University of Portsmouth and the National Railway Museum, we’ve contributed a guest post to the NRM’s blog, for Disability History Month. We’ve only scratched the surface of industrial disability and the railways, so there’s great […]
Disability History Month – rehabilitating injured workers? The case of the one-legged engine driver
In our previous post we mentioned some of the immediate post-accident care that injured railway workers might have received – first aid at the scene and then hospital treatment. This time we want to say a little more about longer-term provision for disabled workers. Where and how disabled workers might receive treatment and after-care might […]
Disability History Month – What happened to the workers after the accident?
So far our project has only focused on the accidents railway workers suffered: what happened after that, for them, their families and their communities has been largely left unspoken. That’s a product of the sources we’ve been using: the accident investigation reports cover the incident only and don’t go into the aftermath. But in other […]