From time to time we might leave an appliance running whilst we’re doing something elsewhere – leaving the oven or kettle on, for example, when we’re not in the same room. It’s a pragmatic action, saving waiting time and enabling us to get on with something else. On the railways the time pressure under which […]
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Transcription Tuesday themes
Following up on last week’s blog post which looked at some cases from our newest data release, we thought it would be worth looking at a few themes that appear in the data. This comes ahead of 2020’s Transcription Tuesday – hopefully it’ll turn out as well for all involved this year as it did […]
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 […]
Light Railway Accident 17 January 1918 – The Death of Sapper Hay
By Sandra Gittins on January 13, 2020 in Accident reports, Blog, Guest contribution, Linking sources, War
In her research, Sandra Gittins has already turned up a couple of cases of accidents to railway staff serving overseas during World War One – and we’re very grateful that she’s blogged about them for us, here and here. In this post, she has uncovered the circumstances surrounding one further – dramatic – case. We […]
2020 plans & possibilities …
… and a case from our new data release, for good measure! As we start 2020 it seems like a good time to look ahead to what’s to come this year – and the answer is: lots! Some of it is bespoke: unique events to which we’ve been invited to contribute. We’re always pleased […]
On the Scope and Methods of Transcription
By Mike Esbester on December 30, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Guest contribution, Transcription Tuesday
The majority of this post was contributed by one of our anonymous volunteers, who had been doing the fiddly but essential job of going over the data and trying to spot and correct issues, as well as add in the historic counties in which accidents took place. We’re extremely grateful to the volunteer, both for […]
A New Zealand Christmas Eve tragedy
Whilst as a project the records we’re making available are focused on Britain and Ireland, we’re interested in how railway safety has played out in the past across the world. We’ve featured international posts before, where they’ve involved British workers overseas. However, this guest post breaks new ground for us, focusing solely on an international […]
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 […]
New data – new disabilities, old ‘solutions’
By Mike Esbester on December 19, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Disability, Disability History Month
Earlier this week we launched our third set of data about accidents to railway staff (see here). It comes from a record of legal cases kept by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants trade union, between 1901 and 1905. As you’d expect, those records reveal all sorts of things about railway work – including where […]
