This blog is our final post in this series, ahead of the centenary tomorrow of the 1921 Stapleton Road accident. Yesterday we looked at the family connections between Arthur and Charles Hobbs. Today we focus on the final man who died, Stephen Francis. Stephen Albert Francis proved to be somewhat tricky to pin down – […]
Archive | Anniversary
Stapleton Road, 26 September 1921
Charles Edmonds. Herbert George North. Charles Oakhill. Joseph Barrett. Arthur Hobbs. Stephen Albert Francis. On 26 September 1921, these six track workers died in a single incident near Stapleton Road station in Bristol, on the Great Western Railway (GWR). Another man – Charles Hobbs, Arthur’s uncle – was injured. As we reach the […]
Stapleton Road: the men, pt 3
By Mike Esbester on September 24, 2021 in Accident aftermath, Anniversary, Blog, Family History, Linking sources
Following yesterday’s look at Charles Oakhill, and the railway connections in his family, today we turn to another railway family caught up in the Stapleton Road accident: the Hobbs. Arthur Hobbs (1897-1921) Arthur was the youngest of the men to die at Stapleton Road, at only 24. He was a labourer, and the only one […]
Stapleton Road: the men, pt 2
By Mike Esbester on September 23, 2021 in Accident aftermath, Anniversary, Blog, Explore your Archives, Family History, Linking sources
Yesterday we started introducing the men involved in the Stapleton Road accident. Today we focus on just one man, for whom we have more information: Charles Oakhill. Charles was born in 1870, to William and Mary Ann. He had 6 siblings, one of whom died in infancy. They were all born in and around the […]
Stapleton Road: the aftermath
By Mike Esbester on September 21, 2021 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Anniversary, Blog, Linking sources
Yesterday’s blog post looked at what happened in the 1921 Stapleton Road accident on the Great Western Railway (GWR). Today we turn to the institutional aftermath – before considering the individuals over the coming days. We made reference to a report, produced by Railway Inspector JPS Main, for the Ministry of Transport (more on who […]
The Fighting Wounded
Over the last 4 years a great deal of attention has been focused on the First World War and its devastating and wide-ranging impacts. We’ve thought – as nations, communities, families, and individuals – about what happened, and about how we remember and talk about the war and its aftermath. That has included people looking […]
A year in the life of the project
Today we reach a significant project milestone: it’s a year since we made the database of nearly 4,000 British & Irish railway worker accidents available to the public! That’s as good a time as any to take stock. It’s been a busy time. We’ve been promoting the project as widely as possible, to get people […]
A miscellany of Waterloos
In railway terms, Waterloo generally brings one thing to mind: the London mainline station, in our period the terminal point of the London & South Western Railway. It was of course named for the famous 1815 battle in which Napoleon was defeated, which took place 203 years ago today – and it wasn’t the only […]
Remembering the Dead, Fighting for the Living: Workers’ Memorial Day
28 April is Workers’ Memorial Day – an important occasion for us to stop and think about all those who have died, been injured or made unwell as a result of work over the years. For our project it is particularly pertinent, given we’re so closely focused on the ways in which work has had […]
Tonbridge, 1909 – snow, a crash, the king & a postcard
The recent snow has affected all of the UK’s transport modes to varying degrees, and the railways have been the subject of much discussion. We’ve already blogged about some of the ways in which wintery conditions were made manifest in accidents found in our database. Today it’s the turn of a single event that was […]
