The railways were highly ordered and regulated spaces. They had to be, to ensure they ran and that (for passengers at least) they ran safely. But that doesn’t mean illicit travel wasn’t a problem. The railway companies employed their own police forces, to keep order, protect company assets and reassure the public. Of course, railway […]
Tag Archives | Scotland
Dying for a wee – 2
Two weeks’ ago we looked at accidents to carriage and wagon staff who were keeping the railway network’s on-train toilets stocked. Provision was clearly made for passenger comfort and convenience – but what about the staff? In this week’s post, we’re looking at those cases where operating staff had to improvise when they wanted to […]
Dying for a wee – 1
As travellers today (when we’re able to resume travelling) we may be less than enamoured of the toilets on trains – all too often cramped, unclean or even out-of-order. But at least they’ve been provided for us. That isn’t always the case for staff – and that’s a long-standing issue. Earlier this year I wrote […]
Distracted in the dark
All of the cases we’re cataloguing in our project database are sad, as at the very least they represent pain having been inflicted. Often they extend into the tragic, with deaths. In some of these cases we can only imagine the misery for the surviving family and friends must have been compounded by the young […]
A few ASRS cases from our new dataset
By Mike Esbester on January 29, 2020 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Family History, Linking sources, Transcription Tuesday
Just over a month ago, we released our third dataset – the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) legal book, covering 1901-1905. It contains over 2000 cases in which the ASRS had an interest, around half of which were accidents. The data came from the 2019 ‘Transcription Tuesday’ event which the project took part in, […]
Romance is Dead: Glasgow Railway Workers, Burns and Hospital Treatment at the Cusp of the Twentieth Century
By Rebecca Wynter on January 20, 2020 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Guest contribution, Linking sources, Medical humanities
We’re delighted to feature this guest post, from Rebecca Wynter, one of the team working on the excellent ‘Forged by Fire’ project, looking at burns prevention and treatment over a 200 year period. They’re doing important work to open up all sorts of avenues into a neglected topic, and so it’s great that where there […]
Filling in some more gaps
By Gordon Dudman on December 23, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources, Transcription Tuesday
As part of Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine’s ‘Transcription Tuesday’ earlier this year, our project made available a set of records produced by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, one of the major railway trade unions. It listed over 2000 cases involving members, many of them accidents. In this blog post, one […]
Trap & Drag – 1914 style
By Peter Munro on July 8, 2019 in Accident reports, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Passenger
In this guest post, project supporter Peter Munro looks at a passenger accident from 1914 – what would today be known as a ‘trap and drag’ incident, something that the Rail Accident Investigation Branch flagged as a real concern on our recent visit to its Farnborough office. Peter has also helped the project in a […]
Safety glass now – unsafety glass then
Recently in my household, we had an object lesson in how government regulations have helped improve our health and wellbeing – via one (big) pane of smashed safety glass. A glancing blow, with very little force behind it but obviously the right (or wrong, as you look at it!) angle, and the sheet shattered. Not […]
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 […]
