In this guest post, Francis Howcutt recounts the accidental death of Arthur Bott, a brother of his great grandfather. Arthur’s history is an example of how the railways helped provide the children of agricultural labourers with opportunities beyond their ancestral villages, as well as the associated dangers. One of the particularly nice things about this […]
Archive | Accident aftermath
Seeing disability in our database
By Mike Esbester on December 12, 2022 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Blog, Disability, Disability History Month
In last week’s Disability History Month blog post, we looked at a case which showed staff with hearing loss were employed by the railway companies. Sometimes this was in roles we wouldn’t expect to find them – in which hearing might have had important implications for safety. In our final Disability History Month post for […]
Work-caused disability – and death
By Mike Esbester on November 28, 2022 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Blog, Disability History Month
Last week’s blog looked at shunter Frederick Potter, and the way his railway work continued, in a different role, after his 1913 accident which led to the loss of a leg. This week for Disability History Month we look at another accident leading to disability – two accidents, in fact, as James Waring is one […]
Work-caused disability: Frederick Potter, Portsmouth
By Mike Esbester on November 21, 2022 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Blog, Disability, Disability History Month, Linking sources
In last week’s blog, starting our contributions to Disability History Month, we considered where we might see learning disabilities in our project work. This week we return to physical disabilities, by looking at a case of a disability resulting from the work that railway staff were asked to do. It’s also a case local to […]
How did Charles die?
By Linda Rollitt on November 7, 2022 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources
Every so often someone gets in touch with us to say they’ve found an ancestor in the project database. Despite the sad nature of the contact – generally it means something bad has happened to their ancestor – we welcome these messages. They’re really valuable to us, as we can find out more about the […]
Holywell Junction – the men, pt 2
In yesterday’s blog we outlined what we knew of two of the men involved in the Holywell Junction accident, Richard Jones and Alfred Jones. Today we look at the other two men. Josiah Jones Josiah Jones was born in Whitford, Flintshire, in 1881, to Owen, a carpenter, and Elizabeth. He had an elder brother, […]
Holywell Junction – the men, pt 1
By Mike Esbester on August 31, 2022 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Anniversary, Blog, Family History
Yesterday’s blog looked at the accident at Holywell Junction on 1 September 1922. The next blog posts will look at the men involved. To be honest, the heart sank a bit when we saw we had a case which involved 3 ‘Jones’ – but we’ve found at least a little information about each of the […]
Instructive First Aid
Continuing our look at the cases found in our new data release, this week we have the 1922 accident to Frederick James Webb. In many respects this was a typical accident, as we shall see. However, in one aspect it was atypical – in a way which says interesting things about how the railway companies […]
Rosebay Willowherb: The Alternative Archive of a Railway Accident
This week’s blog post comes from project friend and champion, Catherine Clarke. Catherine’s support has been tremendously helpful – so we were really pleased when she contacted us to offer this story. We didn’t know how moving it would be, but it is tremendously affective. Catherine demonstrates the lasting impact of a railway accident, and […]
Godfrey Elliott Linegar and Alfred Linegar
By Jenny Leng on June 27, 2022 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Local History
This blog post was produced by University of Portsmouth History student Jenny Leng, as part of her work on the ‘Working with the Past’ module. The module asks students to work in groups on projects and to determine how they will present their findings; it gives them experience outside traditional degree work that will help […]
