Whilst blog posts have largely reflected our project sources and focus, and looked at mainline railways in the UK and Ireland, this doesn’t capture all of the railway activity – and dangers – in our nations. Plenty of railway systems were privately-owned and operated – like the coal railways which came to be part of […]
Archive | Gender
Women and the Barry Railway
This week we’re taking a sneak preview at some of the data that will be coming into the project, hopefully later this year. It comes from transcribers working on railway company records at The National Archives (TNA). We thought it might be interesting to explore one run of data (currently incomplete) as it allows us […]
More women – same accidents
Happy International Women’s Day 2021! This seems like a good moment to look forward to some of the data we’re working on behind the scenes, to see whether it’ll bring more women into the project records. We’ve written in the past about the seeming absence of women in accident records, as well as about some […]
The Tragedy of Lilian Daisy Gale
In this post, guest author Mark Rothwell looks at the service of GWR railway policewoman Lilian Gale – including her fatal accident at work in Plymouth docks during World War 2. As well as giving us an insight into Lilian’s time as a railway policewoman, Mark puts her role in context of women’s police service […]
Dying to save her life
Our database is for the most part representative of the accidents incurred by British and Irish railway workers around the time of the First World War. However, there are some gaps. Some reflect the particular administrative structures of the time: staff in the workshops weren’t covered in the Railway Inspectorate reports, something discussed in an […]
‘she was thrown violently down’
We’ve posted about accidents to women railway workers before (see here and here). Each time we’ve noted that there are relatively women in our data so far (here) – only 3 in our original data release of 3,928 cases, with a further 3 in our most recent release covering the Great Eastern Railway (GER) and […]
New surroundings and new dangers: wartime railwaywomen
In this guest post marking the start of Women’s History Month, Dr Susan Major – another of us with a connection to York – explores some of the ways in which women railway staff encountered and experienced dangers in their working environments during the Second World War. Women weren’t new to the railways by any […]
Female gatekeepers killed by trains 1846-1906.
In this guest post, Helena Wojtczak explores fatal accidents to women working on and living around the railway, particularly those women either paid and employed as gatekeepers or those women engaged in an ‘informal economy’ and carrying out work on behalf of their husbands who were otherwise indisposed when required. In doing so, Helena gives […]
Accidents and the ordinary (railway)women of the past
March is Women’s History Month – and so an ideal opportunity for us to return to the women who have so far appeared in our project. This is something we’ve blogged about before, most recently here, including noting a relative absence of women in the cases formally investigated by the state – only 3 cases […]
Extending the vote to workers, female & male
If you’re based in the United Kingdom, you’ll no doubt be aware that 6 February 2018 marks a significant anniversary: the centenary of the Representation of the People Act, 1918. This landmark piece of legislation gave the vote to some women if they met particular conditions, and to the majority of men over 21. This […]
