It’s done! Today we release another c.69,000 records of railway staff accidents into the Railway Work, Life & Death project database – available here, for free. Please download our database and use it for your research.
It’s appropriate that we bring this out during Volunteers Week. The vast majority of the work on the new dataset has been volunteered by a small team based at The National Archives of the UK. The records they have transcribed are cared for here. We’re supremely grateful to all of The National Archives volunteers: thank you!
It’s also excellent to be releasing this new dataset during Railway 200. It will help us better understand our railway pasts, and contribute to the ‘celebrating railway people’ theme. This new dataset allows us to name past railway workers and see their day-to-day work – about whom and which we otherwise have very little information.
The cases cover England and Wales, from 1855-1929, and come from records originally produced by the railway companies. They complement our existing records, and bring our total up to around 125,000 cases, up to 1939. This is a staggering number – but it still only represents a tiny proportion of all railway staff accidents. Sadly in the vast majority of cases of worker accident, the records either weren’t kept in the first place or don’t survive into 2025.
What’s in the new dataset?
Most of our recent blog posts have come from the new dataset, so they’ll give an impression of some of the people and things that you can now find in the database. In future blog posts we’ll look at more cases and pull out some themes. Today’s blog is really only a placeholder, as there’s so much in the records it’s hard to know where to start!
In addition to the employment of railwaywomen earlier than most people probably expect, we find people from across the world in railway spaces. Many of these were seafarers, working on or beside ships in railway docks – coming from Italy, Greece, Norway, Germany and Russia, as well the USA, China and the Indian sub-continent. We also see how workers with disabilities were an integral part of the railway family – like William Parry, who lost a leg in an accident on the Rhymney Railway in Wales in 1907, and was kept on as a signalman afterwards.
Most records detail railway employees, and show how extensive the industry once was, with interests in shipping, hotels, docks and more, alongside the rails and engines we might now expect. That brings us some of the weird and wonderful roles like dog caller, fish checker, scuffer and ship’s donkeyman!
However, the database features a significant number of other people, not employed by a railway company, who had reason to be on or about the railway. Some were passengers on board trains or waiting at stations – like music hall singer A Warmley, who ‘fell down dead through hurrying to catch a train’ on 11 February 1903. But others like farmers, post office workers and merchants delivering or collecting goods also feature.
Importantly all of this work is available for anyone and everyone to use, without cost – you’re very much invited to explore the Railway Work, Life & Death project and our new dataset, and to tell us what you find!