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 | Guest contribution
Hezekiah Brett – ‘Cut in Two by an Express’
Francis Howcutt has looked at where his family history and railways met previously, in this blog post, so we’re delighted to welcome him back. In this post, Francis explores the story of Hezekiah Brett, a cousin of his 2x great grandfather. Sadly, Hezekiah committed suicide in 1895, but the reasons mentioned at the inquest may […]
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 […]
Drowning on the railway
When we think of railway accidents in the past, we probably immediately conjure images of the (thankfully rare) big passenger train crashes. Our project has always been about going beyond that, to look at the far more numerous accidents – to staff. Even so, most of what appears in our database is concerned with train […]
Frederick James Webb
Following Monday’s blog post, previous blog contributor Rosie Rowley was inspired to do a bit more research into Frederick Webb, the man at the heart of the case. Here she shares with us her findings – our thanks to Rosie for this unprompted but very welcome research. We love it when someone is inspired by […]
Young Railway Porter’s Life Extinguished
With next week’s new data release, this post from guest author Susan Fabbro is timely. Susan was good enough to put it together for us some time ago, after a chance meeting at a conference – and after we were able to help uncover some more information about a railway staff accident in her family […]
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 […]
Our new data release: what do you want, and where?
Exciting news! We’re gearing up to make our next data release – around 16,000 new records. But we need your help … Provisionally we’re aiming for mid-July, as we’re cleaning up the dataset at the moment to make sure it’s as accurate and consistent as possible. This has been a long-term task, and we’re grateful […]
Death on the Railway in Victorian Peterborough
By Sophie Michell on May 30, 2022 in Blog, Events, Guest contribution, Local History, Suicide, Trespass, Urban History
This week’s guest post links nicely to last week’s, with its focus on Peterborough. Peterborough offers a great window onto death in the past, thanks to the survival of coroner’s inquest records – currently being used in her innovative and very exciting PhD study by this week’s author, Sophie Michell. This blog post comes from […]
