This page is one of a series introducing railway staff who worked on the Isle of Wight’s railways before 1939. It’s a collaboration between the Isle of Wight Steam Railway and the Railway Work, Life & Death project. We’ve tried to share more about the social history of the Island’s railways in the past, via the people who kept them moving. Where we can we’ve looked at the individual and their wider working and family lives.
The workers featured were selected from staff who appear in the Railway Work, Life & Death project database of accidents to pre-1939 British and Irish railway employees. This worker is one of those featured in the leaflet produced collaboratively between the Isle of Wight Steam Railway and the Railway Work, Life & Death project, available at the Railway or as a PDF here. You can find the other staff in this series here.
The thread running through Robert White’s life was Yarmouth. He was born there, raised there, worked there, raised his family there and died there. Robert saw great joy, ‘disgraceful behaviour’, sadness, minor criminality and no doubt much else besides over the course of his 70-year life.
Robert before the railway
Robert John White was born in Yarmouth in 1867. His father, Alfred, was a mariner; it looks like he was away from home reasonably regularly, as on the 1871 and 1881 censuses, Robert’s mother, Harriet, was listed as head of household. Between them they had five children between 1859 and 1870.
By 1881 Robert, age 14, was employed as a carpenter’s apprentice. In 1889 he married Louisa Emily Abbott. At some point before the 1891 Census Robert joined the Freshwater, Yarmouth and Newport Railway, as a porter. By the time of the Census he and Louisa had a son, and were living on Back Lane, Yarmouth.
‘Outrage on the Freshwater Railway’
Local newspapers are incredibly useful in filling in gaps in life stories – not least in Robert’s case as he appears in the tale of an attempt to wreck a train in 1890. On a practical level this tells us Robert was working at Yarmouth station by May 1890. But the story itself is rather more exciting!
David Allford had been employed as a contractor to help build the Freshwater, Yarmouth and Newport Railway. The Railway had opened in stages in the late 1880s. On 27 May 1890 he was alleged to have placed a number of stones – some as large as a coconut – on the rails in front of a train, with a view to derailing it. Fortunately the engine’s life-guards had pushed the stones out of the way.
When it came to Allford’s preliminary hearing, Robert gave evidence, as he’d seen Allford walking along the track before the train was due. Allford was seen by multiple other witnesses and later arrested. Initially he claimed that he didn’t place stones on the line, but after a night in the cells he admitted to putting one stone on the rails ‘but said he should not have done it if he had not been drunk.’ He went to trial – though unfortunately we don’t know what happened next!
Working at Yarmouth station
Yarmouth station wasn’t huge. The Railway was single track, with a passing loop at the stations to allow trains to pass each other. Yarmouth station opened to goods in 1888 and to passengers in July 1889. Although technically the Freshwater, Yarmouth and Newport Railway, the line was worked by the Isle of Wight Central Railway. In the 1890s the goods yard had just three sidings – rationalised to two by the mid-1900s. (By 1939 the station’s fortunes would fall still further: the passing loop and one of the two platforms were removed in the 1920s, and only one siding remained.)
Courtesy National Library of Scotland Maps.
Courtesy National Library of Scotland Maps.
Even in its ‘heyday’ of the 1890s, the station would have had a relatively limited staff: definitely two men – the station master and porter Robert White. If more staff were employed, they would have been very limited in number. It’s likely, though, that the full complement of staff in 1900 is seen in the photograph: two men, one of whom is Robert White. Whether the boy was one of Robert’s sons, or a paid employee, is unclear.
Yarmouth station in approximately 1900. Station master Robert White is seen on the platform, on the right.
Courtesy Isle of Wight Steam Railway Photographic Archive.
Given the size of the station, even the most senior official was needed to ‘muck in’ and do a variety of work. That included coupling and uncoupling wagons in the goods yard – a potentially dangerous activity the needed skill and experience. Robert would have been used to this, in his role as a porter. In smaller stations like Yarmouth, a porter wouldn’t just move luggage as we might expect. He would also act as a shunter, involved in working with wagons in the goods yard. Robert became station master in approximately 1898.
A problem passenger’s ‘disgraceful behaviour’
As station master, Robert would represent the railway company in the community – and in court. He appears a number of times in press reports of the era, including defending the Company’s interests against an apparently problematic passenger.
In July 1900 Alfred Wake, a dealer who lived in the nearby village of Wellow, was in trouble. His ‘disgraceful behaviour’ landed him in front of a magistrate. Exactly what the ‘indecent behaviour in a railway carriage at Yarmouth and afterwards on the railway station platform’ wasn’t specified in the Isle of Wight County Press. However, given Wake was ‘the worse for drink and therefore irresponsible’, it seems likely that he was urinating.
Robert and Harry Dore, the train’s driver, both testified to the accused’s ‘disgusting behaviour’. The defence offered – that Wake was suffering from a physical weakness and was drunk and so ‘did not, perhaps, conduct himself as he ought to have done’ – fell on deaf ears. Wake was sentenced to 14 days’ hard labour.
Alfred Wake appears again …
As Yarmouth was Wake’s local station, it was perhaps only a matter of time before he reappeared in the records. Sure enough, in December 1900 he was back before the Bench. This time, though he was accusing Robert – of assault. He claimed that Robert had knocked him down at Yarmouth station on 16 December.
This Robert denied, instead pointing out that Wake ‘stumbled and fell when under the influence of drink’. Robert further claimed that the case was vexatious – a result of his testimony in the case in July. The case went against Wake, who was ordered to pay Robert 10 shillings in costs.
… and again and again
This wasn’t the end of it, either. In July 1901, Wake reappeared again, summoned for a breach of the railway bye-laws. Guard William Burridge stated that on 20 June, Wake ‘was in a very drunken state and caused an unmitigated nuisance to other passengers. Robert also gave evidence to the safe effect. Noting that there were 20 previous convictions against Wake, the judge fined him £1 and 11 shillings in costs.
Wake clearly hadn’t learned his lesson. In June 1906 he was fined £1 and 18 shillings in costs for defrauding the London and South Western Railway on the mainland. Having caught the ferry from Yarmouth, he travelled on to Brockenhurst without a ticket. Given that ticket would have cost 4½ pence, it turned out to be an expensive journey!
Robert’s accident
On 5 February 1901, Robert was attaching a wagon to a train on the main line at Yarmouth. It was nearly half-past nine at night – we don’t know what provision was made for lighting. Robert had coupled the wagons and was passing below the buffers of one wagon. However, the other wagon was still moving as a result of the couplings slackening. It caught his right leg and severely injured it.
The accident was investigated by the Railway Inspectorate, the state body responsible for enquiring into some worker accidents. Inspector JPS Main held Robert responsible for the accident, but also noted that he hadn’t been given a coupling pole (a stout wooden pole with a hook at the end) to use. This would have removed the need to go between the wagons. Indeed, Main noted that nowhere on the Railway were coupling poles used.
The Railway responded that the couplings on their wagons meant that coupling poles wouldn’t work. Main recommended that the Railway company provide coupling poles and look at changes to the couplings to make sure poles would work. These measures, it was said, would mean men – and they would all have been men doing this work at this time – no longer had to go between the wagons to couple them.
As an incidental observation, Main noted that drivers and fireman were not getting sufficient rest between shifts. The crew of the train involved in Robert’s accident had only had five hours and 35 minutes between shifts. They were also sometimes working shifts of 16-18 hours – excessive in the view of Main.
The Company responsible for working Yarmouth station – the Isle of Wight Central Railway – decided at its next meeting of directors that they would purchase coupling poles for staff to use. They would also see about changing the coupling types as recommended ‘when practicable.’
Family life in Yarmouth: joy and sadness
Robert and Louisa had one son by the 1891 Census, Alfred. By 1901 the family was considerably expanded – they had two sons and three daughters. They were living at 56 Station Road – convenient for Robert’s work. By 1911 Louisa and Robert had a further three children. No doubt family life was a source of great joy for Robert and Louisa.
It could also be a source of great sadness. In October 1908, their 10-year old son Stanley died. The report of the funeral in the Isle of Wight County Press noted Stanley’s religious connections and ‘the little coffin […] covered with wreaths’.
Robert leaves the railway
As we started looking into Robert’s story, we could see that he had an accident in 1901 that was described as ‘severe.’ And then on the 1911 Census he is described as a domestic gardener. We wondered, therefore, if the accident might have forced Robert to give up railway work and find alternative employment.
It appears not. Once again, the local newspapers help us. In 1901, 1903 and 1905 Robert was in court again, giving evidence against passengers defrauding the Company. And in 1909 he was involved in defending a former colleague against a slander case. At that point Robert was noted as ‘stationmaster at Yarmouth until March 1908, when he resigned in consequence of being offered a second-class station’.
Given Robert was firmly based in Yarmouth, might he have been reluctant to leave, to work at another location? Instead, might leaving the relatively stable and respectable employment of the railway have been preferable?
Robert after the railway
Robert moved on from being a gardener in 1911. By 1921 he was still living in Station Road, but working for Yarmouth Town Trust as piermaster. He held the role for 20 years. When he died in 1937 a report in the Portsmouth Evening News noted that he was popular and ‘of a very jovial and kindly disposition. He loved to joke with passengers as they passed the turnstile and his cheery greetings to the regular summer visitors to the West Wight could always be heard’.
Robert’s widow Louisa and three of their children were living in the same property in Station Road in 1939. Reginald White, the youngest of the children still living at home, was by then 23 – and working as an omnibus driver: part of the coming decline of the railways on the Island. Yarmouth station and the whole of the line to Freshwater lasted until after World War Two – but not much longer: it closed in 1953.
A Yarmouth postscript: the next station master’s accident
Robert wasn’t the only station master at Yarmouth to meet with an accident at work. Yarmouth’s subsequent station master, Henry George Spinks, also suffered an accident – whilst shunting. Railway goods work was clearly dangerous.
Early on 14 January 1911, Spinks was trying to apply the brakes on a coal wagon, when he slipped on frosty ground and fell under the wheels. His right arm was badly crushed and the back of his head injured. He was treated initially by local doctors, but later moved to the County Hospital at Ryde, where his arm was amputated.
This didn’t stop him from returning to work, however. Even if railway companies were often relatively unconcerned about the dangers of the job, they developed strategies to support staff after an accident. That included finding new roles for injured staff. According to the 1911 Census, taken a few months after Spinks’ accident, he was still living in Yarmouth and listed as station master.
Courtesy National Library of Scotland Maps.
On the 1921 Census he and his family were living in Havenstreet, where he was station master – an interesting link to the Isle of Wight Steam Railway that we hadn’t expected. Was he moved as the work at Havenstreet would have been rather lighter, and not involved much shunting? Railway work might have caused disabilities, but as a result the railway industry was well-used to employing disabled staff.
If you know more about any of the railway workers featured we’d be keen to hear from you – do please let us know.