Disability features in our project heavily. Mostly frequently it’s cases where accidents have caused disability (see here for some cases we’ve featured in the past). But another of the great things about the project data is that it’s showing where already-disabled staff were employed or re-employed. So for today’s Disability History Month post, we’re going […]
Archive | Disability
A Sad and Unusual Discovery in Family Research
By Enid Rispin on December 31, 2018 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Disability, Family History, Guest contribution
We’re pleased to be able to feature another guest contribution, from family historian Enid Rispin looking back at the railway ancestors in her family – though with a tragic tale. It helps to illustrate the lasting damage of workplace accidents that stretched beyond the physical – something not generally revealed in the official accident reports, […]
Accident, mental health & possible learning disability in railway service
By Stephen Lamb on November 18, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Disability, Disability History Month, Guest contribution, Health
In this guest post, project volunteer Stephen Lamb looks at one of the cases he’s transcribed from the records of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, held at the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick. It highlights just one of the many sad cases, and appropriately enough deals with occupational disability – this […]
New data release: Great Eastern Railway Benevolent Fund book, 1913-23
By Mike Esbester on November 26, 2018 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Disability, Disability History Month, Updates
We’re thrilled to release a new data set for you: details of Great Eastern Railway (GER) staff who had been injured at work and applied for assistance to the Company’s Benevolent Fund between 1913 and 1923. The information comes from a ledger book kept by the Company and now found at the National Railway Museum […]
William Harwood’s missing leg
By Mike Esbester on December 3, 2018 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Disability, Disability History Month, Linking sources
Continuing our Disability History Month exploration of the new Great Eastern Railway (GER) data (see last week’s post, here), this week we’re focusing on a cross-over case between our two datasets. We’re fortunate we can trace the moment of the accident for William Harwood as well as a little about what happened to him afterwards, […]
Disability History Month: ‘very nervous and trembling a good deal’
Wednesday marks the start of 2020’s Disability History Month, something that our project speaks closely too, given the large numbers of railway staff who were made disabled in the course of their work. Over the years we’ve blogged about a number of cases involving disabled staff, detailed here, and over the coming month we’ll highlight […]
Life after an accident
By Pete Coveney on September 28, 2020 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Disability, Family History, Guest contribution
In this week’s post, we welcome a contribution from Pete Coveney. He was put on to us by long-time project friend and support, genealogist Jackie Depelle, as she thought we might be able to help him find out more about his father’s accident. Unfortunately everything we suggested didn’t lead to anything – so if you […]
Barking, 1878
By Philip James on September 16, 2020 in Accident reports, Blog, Disability, Guest contribution, Local History
In this guest post, National Railway Museum volunteer Philip James takes us back into an era outside project coverage, and to an accident not usually seen by the project – a member of the public, but not a passenger. He also puts the accident location in its local context, something important for the project. Originally […]
How Robert Henry Stanbury became Tylwch’s one-armed stationmaster
By Derek Savage on June 22, 2020 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Disability, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources, Local History
We were delighted to receive an email from this week’s guest author, Derek Savage, offering further information on one of the more intriguing cases from our database we’ve featured recently – an accident involving Robert Stanbury, though not one in which he himself was injured. Always happy to have such an offer, we gratefully accepted […]
Improvising to work with a disability
By Mike Esbester on December 9, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Blog, Disability, Disability History Month, Linking sources
In the course of looking for something else in our database of British and Irish railway worker accidents, I recently stumbled across a fascinating case that gives us a little glimpse of the ways in which disability was a common part of everyday life on the railways. We could read this as a positive: in […]
