Between 1-5 May 2025, the arrival of the railway at Guildford, Surrey, in 1845 is being marked with a temporary exhibition and a plaque on the station. During 2025 and the ‘Railway 200’ year, it’s one of many ‘coming of the railway’ anniversaries that are being marked, often through and with Community Rail Partnerships. It seems apt that Guildford’s 180th anniversary and the work done commemorate it fall in Local and Community History month.
Courtesy National Library of Scotland Maps.
Celebrating these local station or railway anniversaries is a relatively neat way of attracting public attention. It provides a specific date around which to rally, and helps reach out beyond the few locations which in 2025 can actually mark 200 years of railway connection. The same will be done at Micheldever station in Hampshire, for example, for its 185th anniversary on 10-11 May 2025.
It’s important and helpful to think about changes brought by coming of railways – though we need to take care not to fall into uncritical repetitions of the radical changes which might not actually have been seen or felt at that location. Equally, we need to remember where the people fit into this equation, and how we can remember them. This is something the Railway Work, Life & Death project has been doing for some time, of course – like this blog post about King’s Cross station’s 170th anniversary in 2022.
Accidents – an unsavoury topic?
Are railway worker accidents an ‘appropriate’ topic for something like Railway 200 or these station anniversaries? Or are there some things which can’t be examined – perhaps because they might be seen as off-putting to the public? Why would someone want to highlight or remember staff accidents?
They’re not easy topics to treat, certainly, whether for Railway 200 or beyond. However, it’s vital that we try. We shouldn’t gloss the past, writing out the bits we don’t like or that were in some way challenging to a positive narrative of perpetual improvement. The challenging bits help us see what and who was valued – and the people and things that weren’t. They tell us about a society’s priorities at a given moment in time. This is something we’ve discussed in the past, here, including how representative it might be to cover spectacular but very rare large-scale disaster as opposed to the more mundane but minor staff incidents (more here).
Of course, on the railways, staff accidents left records. This makes for a huge body of material which tells us plenty about the people upon whom the system depended. These were people who very often left relatively little other documentary trace. The staff accident records tell us what people were doing, how, why – and the impacts of their work, including via familial or community connections. In some cases they detail how employers supported – or didn’t! – their staff after an accident, and how the Union played a role.
It all helps us see and understand past railway work, railway workers & much wider social, cultural & political histories. The people matter. It’s great that one of the Railway 200 themes is ‘celebrating railway people.’ Accidents & the Railway Work, Life & Death project provide one route into this, for past railway staff. So, for Guildford, we’ve had a look at the database of accidents to railway staff, and offer some brief portraits of a number of workers featured.
Guildford’s railway staff – porter William Apark’s orphaned children
Ironically, the first Guildford railway staff member we’re highlighting wasn’t hurt at work (that we know of). London and South Western Railway (LSWR) porter William Apark died on 23 July 1897. We know this because he appeared in the records kept by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) trade union, to which he belonged. An initial run of their data of around 25,000 records (with more to come) is in the Railway Work, Life & Death database.
Apark appears in the Orphan Fund records. This was a fund to which members could chose to may a weekly payment, and in the event of their death it would make a weekly contribution to the maintenance of any surviving children. As we shall see, there were a number of conditions attached to this.
The records didn’t detail how Apark had died, but showed a payment of five shillings per week (around £34 in 2025), starting on 20 August 1897. This was to support the upkeep of three children. One of the conditions of the fund was that it supported children under the age of 14. After this point there were expected to be able to find work.
But how did Apark die? A bit of research held the answers. Tragically he was boating on the river Wey with his eldest son, William, when the boat overturned. Both drowned. So – not a railway accident, but because of his Union membership and the Orphan Fund, William appeared in the records.
And what of the surviving family? Apark, a Guildford native, had married Lucy in the late 1880s. By 1891 they had two children; at his death, they had had two more – including Percy, born in 1897. The surviving three children therefore appeared on the Fund as noted. Lucy and the children appeared on the 1901 Census. She had remarried, to Alfred Nash, a brewer’s drayman, in 1898. This would have meant the end of the Orphan Fund benefits, as it was deemed the children were being support by the step-father.
Through this single case, then, we can see far more than simply a sad work accident. The Railway Work, Life & Death project encompasses a broad range of social history – here taking in a father’s relationship with his family and their leisure practices, the social expectations around provision for your family (including blended families), and the nature of union provision for its members.
A platelayer and a goods porter
Next we turn to a series of individuals, focusing on where they appear in the Railway Work, Life & Death project database. Throughout all of this, we’ve tried to select a range of roles and people, to give a sense of the variety of jobs necessary to run the railway. There are already many more Guildford railway staff in the database than we feature in this post – and there will be more to come, as we add further cases.
We start with LSWR platelayer E Turner. At an unspecified date in November 1899 a fog signal ‘flew off and hit him’. This might have been a detonator, a small explosive charge, used in foggy weather to give trains an audible warning of signals. However it happened, his eye was injured. As Turner was a member of the ASRS he appeared in their records, in relation to compensation for non-fatal accidents. This would have been secured from the LSWR, under the Workmen’s Compensation Act, which had only come into effect the year before. Turner received a one-off payment of £25 (around £3300 now).
Nineteen year-old LSWR goods porter Alfred Messelbrook was working in Guildford goods yard on 17 September 1900. With two colleagues he was loading a goods wagon, when other wagons were shunted against it. A seven hundredweight steel roller moved onto Messelbrook’s left foot; he was off work for seven weeks. The shunter who moved the wagons was held at fault in the official state investigation into the incident. Interestingly, however, ‘those in authority were more to blame for allowing shunters at the north end of the yard ignore the need to warn porters at south end of moves affecting them’. The rules already said that these warnings should be given, so the LSWR was told it should take steps to ensure strict compliance with the rules.
An assistant shunter and a coalman
Under a year later, also in Guildford goods yard, LSWR assistant shunter John Loosemore injured his hand and wrist. On 23 May 1901, he was using his coupling pole to ride on a railway wagon, to save himself a walk. He wasn’t supposed to do this, of course. Given he was likely to be on his feet for most of a 10 or 12 hour shift, it becomes understandable why he might want to save energy. He jumped off the coupling pole at the next set of points, ready for action. As he did so, he fell and slipped on a rail. He could easily have gone under the wagon and died, so he was relatively fortunate.
According to the accident investigation, Loosemore had previously been seen riding on a coupling pole. He had been warned off it at that point. LSWR officials still came in for censure, as not having taken sufficient measures to enforce the rules. Since Loosemore’s accident they had instructed Guildford’s railway workforce, strictly forbidding riding on coupling poles. Whether or not that was enforced is another matter, of course. This report, then, gives us a glimpse into working practices on the ground, including what railway company officials were, or weren’t, doing.
On 5 May 1908, exactly 63 years to the day of the station’s opening, LSWR coalman Charles Walker was killed. He worked in and around the extensive engine sheds at Guildford – and was a victim in part of the station’s geography. The station was squeezed into a tight space, particularly at the Portsmouth end (where the sheds were located). As a result of those design and layout decisions, railway staff were exposed to dangers, perhaps more so than in other locations.
Courtesy National Library of Scotland Maps.
One part of Walker’s job was to move ash from a short siding near the Portsmouth end of the station. He was to take it to the main engine shed ash pit – but that involved crossing the main line from Portsmouth to London and another line. Whilst he was crossing the main lines, carrying ashes on a shovel, he was hit by a train. Even more gruesomely, it happened in full view of those on the platform.
The accident was attributed to Walker’s ‘want of caution.’ This was a rather simplistic take, but entirely in keeping with the dominant ethos of the time about workplace accidents – that most were due to worker ‘carelessness.’ It was also a curious conclusion, given the investigation noted the method of working ‘was unnecessarily dangerous, as it involved frequent crossing of the main line’. Despite this, the recommendation was not to prevent ash being deposited in that location. Instead, it was to consolidate the ash into a ‘convenient receptacle’, to reduce the number of movements across the railway lines. This still rather left the onus on the workers to ‘be safe’, rather than on the company to remove the risk.
An engine cleaner and an engine driver
We’ve selected two final cases, from the footplate grades. The first, Alfred Vigars, was from a man learning his craft, on the bottom rung of the career ladder: an engine cleaner for the LSWR. It also happened on 5 May – though this time, in 1910, so 65 years after the station opened.
Courtesy National Railway Museum.
Vigars, just 19 at the time of the accident, was cleaning the buffer plank of a steam engine. Another engine was pushed up against it and he was caught between the buffers. This could easily have been fatal, though Vigars ‘only’ had his back and chest injured. The driver moving the other engine failed to give a warning about the intended movement, as he didn’t think he was going to touch the engine Vigars was working on. Working practices in 1910 were rather more freeform than now – with a consequent degree of risk imposed upon employees.
By the time of our final case, 1928, the LSWR had been merged into the Southern Railway, then responsible for Guildford station. On 7 January 1928, driver AE Powell was oiling his engine. To get access to all the moving parts which required oil, he had to go underneath the engine, and up into some of the motion. Whilst doing so, he asked the fireman to change the gearing on the engine. Unfortunately, and unexpectedly, as he did so, the engine moved, crushing Powell and killing him.
There were a number of issues that came out in the investigation, including that there was enough steam in the engine for it to move if the regulator (the steam engine’s ‘accelerator’) were ‘on’. Tragically, it had been left slightly on; at the same time, the engine’s brake had not been applied. On the latter point, the accident investigation noted that on this class of steam engine the handbrake was wound in the opposite direction to all others – with a potential for confusing when the brake was applied with it being unapplied. It was recommended that the Southern Railway address the issue to avoid future confusion.
From Guildford to railway staff across the whole network
Needless to say, these were only a few of the railway staff who featured, either for Guildford directly, or who were members of the ASRS Union’s Guildford branch. There were plenty more staff accidents, some of which were recorded and have made into in our project. Many other accidents might have been recorded at the time, but the records no longer survive.
Regardless, even picking a few cases gives a sense of the variety of people and jobs undertaken at the station. It also gives a sense of the potential for the Railway Work, Life & Death project to help us understand railway history in a way that better integrates the people. After all, without these accident records and our project’s work, would anyone today have heard of these Guildford railway workers or their stories?
These weren’t exceptional people. They were the sort of people who get forgotten, and incidents that are left out of official histories. Yet the railway system wouldn’t function without these workers, and their colleagues. These are the past railway people we can celebrate during Railway 200. As we said, these aren’t easy incidents to remember – but it’s vital that we do so, during Railway 200 and beyond!