This page is one of a series introducing railway staff who worked on the Llangollen and Corwen Railway before 1939 – you can find more here. We’ve tried to share more about the social history of the Railway in the past, via the people who kept it moving before preservation. 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 Llangollen and Corwen Railway and the Railway Work, Life & Death project, available at the Railway or as a PDF here.
On the route of what is now the Llangollen and Corwen Railway, Llangollen was the one of the largest stations – in terms of physical size and staff. The passenger station we see today is only part of the story. As well as moving people, railways in the past were essential for moving goods – and that needed dedicated facilities. These could be extensive, depending on the level of traffic. The former goods yard at Llangollen today remains in railway use, though not publicly accessible, and not for handling goods but for servicing stock. In Great Western Railway (GWR) days, these were the spaces in which lad porter Jones worked – and was injured on at least three occasions.
Courtesy Peter Dickinson.
Who was lad porter Jones?
Put simply: we don’t really know! It might sound incredible to say that we can’t work out who Jones was: surely by the early twentieth century, everyone was documented and known? Perhaps at the time, but with relatively little detail to go on 100+ years later, he’s proven elusive.
Because of the nature of the records we’re dealing with, we don’t have a first name to pair with the surname ‘Jones’ – a rather frequent surname! He might have been lad porter JR Jones, who joined the GWR at Acrefair in July 1911. He was transferred to Llangollen in September 1913.
Courtesy National Library of Scotland Maps.
In larger stations, the work of porters might be broken down into specific areas – parcel porter, goods porter and so on. In smaller stations – and, in these terms, Llangollen would probably have counted as a smaller station – a porter might undertake a range of duties. This might include working with passengers and moving luggage, but it might also include moving goods.
Three accidents within a year?
It looks as though lad porter Jones might have had three accidents in under a year. It’s hard to be definitive that we have the same man, given all of the uncertainties, but it is a strong possibility.
On 13 October 1913, a porter named Jones was injured at Llangollen when his finger was pinched in machinery. On 4 December 1913, porter Jones was injured at Llangollen, when he slipped off a deck and sprained his angle. Finally, on 2 July 1914, at 3.15pm, lad porter Jones injured his foot when jumping down from a platform. This kept him off work for 11 days – just short of the 14-day period which would have triggered compensation payments.
On one level, these were three relatively minor incidents. However, they help to remind us of the range of dangers that some grades of railway staff faced at work. It might be that Jones was young and at that point relatively inexperienced, so still learning of the dangers of the job – the hard way. He might not have had any further accidents across his railway career. Equally, these incidents might have continued happening, to him and others, throughout their working lives. Sadly, without knowing more about Jones we can’t find out how his working or family life progressed.
If you know more about any of the railway workers featured we’d be keen to hear from you – do please let us know.