In many of the cases found in our database the Railway Inspectorate report provides an attribution of responsibility for the accident. Around a quarter of these mention things like a ‘lack of care’, and individuals’ ‘own want of reasonable care’ (even in one case their ‘stupid want of care’). What is less common is finding […]
Archive | Accident reports
Where has 1915 gone?
Have you been delving deep into the project database, following us on Twitter (@RWLDproject) or keeping a close eye on the ‘On this day’ Twitter feed on the homepage of the website? If so, and you were paying close attention, you might have noticed over the last 2 months or so you’ve not seen any […]
Navigating accidents in the pre-digital era
Sandwiched in the pages of the blue-bound volume are tattered and faded place-markers, paper browned with age, sometimes torn or crumbled to the point of no return. Way-finders in the several hundred page volume, at the top of each they have a brief pointer to the pertinent thing being marked, some written by different hands: […]
Forgotten pasts at Glasgow Queen St
At the moment, Glasgow Queen St station is undergoing a major redevelopment, which has included exposing the Victorian glass frontage, concealed for the last 40 years by a concrete carbuncle now demolished. However, what isn’t so easy to see is another hidden past: the human cost of working on the railway, in employee accidents. This […]
Demolishing Wolverton Works
It was reported last week that the proposed demolition of most of the remaining original parts of the London and North Western Railway’s Wolverton Works had been given the go-ahead. This is a good moment, then, to think a little about an intangible part of the Works’ heritage: the experiences of the staff, without whom […]
The final July multiples
This month we’ve already highlighted a a number of cases in which workers had 2 accidents (see here and here). Before the month is out, we have 2 more individuals from our database to add to this tally. The first person involved was Frederick Charles Cuff. A pilot guard for the Barry Railway company, he […]
Further July multiples
We started our posts this month with another 2 cases of workers having 2 accidents each, with the promise (threat?) of more multiple accidents to come. It’s to this we return now, with another 2 cases of 2 accidents. We start on the south coast of England, at Brighton station appropriately on the London, Brighton […]
Dying to save her life
Our database is for the most part representative of the accidents incurred by British and Irish railway workers around the time of the First World War. However, there are some gaps. Some reflect the particular administrative structures of the time: staff in the workshops weren’t covered in the Railway Inspectorate reports, something discussed in an […]
July: the month of many multiples
We’ve already blogged about a couple of cases of multiple accidents: when our database has shown a worker had more than one accident. We’ve considered shunter Tom Oliver, who injured his ankles whilst working around York; and labourer Joseph Brown, unlucky enough to be hit by trains twice in 3 weeks (though he survived both […]
3 pages of permanent way casualties
We’ve blogged about the dangers of the permanent way before now, including one post about a particularly bad day in 1911. Sadly we have to return to the same topic and the same year for this post. It’s unusual to find, but one of the Railway Inspectors’ quarterly reports (the source of the details in […]