This page is one of a series introducing railway staff who worked on the south coast of England before 1939. They’ve been researched as part of the ‘Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts’ project – which you can read more about here, including accessing details of the other railway workers featured.
Research was undertaken from November 2024-July 2025, by a small group of volunteers from the Havant Local History Group, working with the University of Portsmouth’s History team. The work was funded by the University of Portsmouth’s Centre of Excellence for Heritage Innovation.
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 workers.
Alfred Edward Howse lived most of his life in Portsmouth – but he had travelled a little in his earlier life to get to that point. He was born on 9 October 1889 in Tintern, Wales, to Henry and Rhoda Howse. He was their third child; at some point in the following year and a half, the family moved to Swindon, where they appeared on the 1891 Census. Henry was at that point employed as a hydraulic machineman – might that have been at the Swindon railway works? It looks like later in 1891 the family moved to Chippenham, as Alfred’s two younger siblings were born there in 1891 and 1894.
By 1901 the family – Henry and Rhoda, and Alfred and his four siblings – had made it to Portsmouth. They were slightly awkward to locate, as on all bar the 1901 Census their surname was spelled ‘Howse’ – but in 1901 it appeared as ‘House’. This makes sense in terms of phonetic spelling, the two sounding very similar. The family was living at 180 Arundel Street, and Henry was working as a hot water fitter. This was something of a change to his previous employment, but there were likely transferable skills between the two. The picture is one of a father going where the work took him – and his family. However, Portsmouth was to be the stopping point for the Howse family.
Alfred joins the railway
Alfred joined the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway (LBSCR) at Fratton station in Portsmouth on 10 August 1908. He started as a locomotive cleaner, and was paid 2/2 per week (around £15 in 2026). Interestingly, he appeared on the 1911 Census (taken on 2 April 1911) as a fireman. However, in the report into his accident on 24 September 1911 he was still given as a cleaner: why the difference? He might have been a ‘passed cleaner’ at the time of the Census, and so regarded himself as having moved on to the next grade. Presumably he wasn’t seen as such by the LBSCR or the Railway Inspectorate (which investigated his accident). We’ll return to these gradations of railway work later.
Courtesy National Library of Scotland Maps.
According to the accident report, Alfred was working inside Fratton locomotive shed. At that time, the shed had a central turntable, from which radiated various sidings for stabling engines. At around 7pm, 15 minutes into his shift, Alfred was leaning up against the end of an engine placed on one of these sidings for cleaning. A colleague decided to turn two small engines to place one of them on the line nearly opposite the one that Alfred’s engine was occupying. At the turntable moved, it went slightly too far and swung past the line that Alfred and his engine were on. As it did so, it caught Alfred and ‘slightly crushed’ him between the buffers (the shock absorbers) of the two engines.
The report, by Railway Inspector John Main, noted that Alfred did know the engines on the turntable were being moved. However, he hadn’t realised that he might be in danger. Whilst Inspector Main held Alfred responsible, as we’ve seen in other cases, the accident investigation showed that there were systemic issues involved as well. In this case there was nothing to show when an engine on the stabling sidings might have been left in a position which made possible a potential clash with an engine on the turntable as it moved.
The solution proposed was to mark on the ground on each line leading to the turntable the point beyond which engines should not ordinarily be left. This was not a hard prohibition on leaving engines overhanging, however. They could be left in a potentially dangerous position, so long as a warning was displayed on the turntable that there was a clash. Again, this was something we’ve seen elsewhere – dangerous practices might be allowed to continue either with some form of mitigation in place or simply as they were because it was accepted practice and the level of risk was deemed small.
What impact Alfred?
Fortunately, the accident seems to have had no long-term impact on Alfred. In 1921 he was still working for the LBSCR – according to the Census as a fireman. It would seem probable that by this point he could fairly be regarded as substantively in that role. On the 1939 Register, Alfred appeared as an ‘E train motor man’ – presumably ‘electric train motor man’, as the line into Portsmouth was electrified in the late 1930s. This would suggest that he’d progressed through the ranks to driving – probably steam engines, but transferring to electric traction when the need arose. In this final documentary record of Alfred’s career he is given as employed by the Southern Railway. This was the LBSCR’s successor company, formed when the LBSCR, London and South Western Railway (LSWR) and a number of other railway companies were merged in 1923.
We don’t know when Alfred retired from railway service, and we don’t know if he had any other accidents at work. It’s entirely possible that he did – working around moving engines, carriages and wagons was a dangerous activity. If he did have other accidents, these incidents should have been recorded by his employer – but those records haven’t made it into preservation.
Alfred’s wider life
And what of Alfred’s domestic and family life at this time? In 1921 he remained living with his parents and a younger sister, still at 180 Arundel Street, the same address as in 1911. By now his father was shown as a ‘beer retailer’ – a change of role again from his earlier occupations. It looks likely that Alfred’s younger sister, Ellen, was working with or even for her father. Her occupation was shown on the Census as ‘assistant bar & house duties’.
At some point he’d met his future wife, Minnie Dix – as they married sometime between April and July 1921 – not long after the 1921 Census was taken. They had a son, Ronald, about a year later, in the second quarter of 1922. By 1939 Ronald, then 17, had moved out, leaving Alfred and Minnie alone at 24 Seafield Road in Portsmouth. Alfred died in 1974.
Alfred’s mother, Rhoda, died between 1921 and 1939. By 1939 Alfred’s father, Henry, ended up living with his widowed daughter, Ellen and his grandson. Interestingly, Henry was recorded on the 1939 Register as a ‘plumber, lead work, old age pensioner’ – another different trade, though aligned with his 1901 role as a hot water fitter.
Career progression on the footplate
There’s one final aspect of Alfred’s story to return to – what it tells us about employment on the railways in the early 20th century. We’ve seen something of Alfred’s career progression – from cleaner to fireman to driver. That path might be relatively well-known – but within in, there were further, more subtle, divisions.
For example, you wouldn’t simply go straight from fireman to driving the top-link express passenger services. Effectively you had to learn more of your craft. So, moving from cleaner to fireman might involve taking a turn with the shovel around the shed or the yard, under the eye of an experienced fireman. Eventually when a vacancy arose and you were deemed to have enough hours of this kind of experience – and you were seen in practice – you might become a ‘passed cleaner’. You wouldn’t receive a regular turn as a fireman, but if for some reason you needed to step in to fill an unexpected vacancy, you would do so.
Again, with enough time and experience, and having been deemed technically proficient, you would be promoted to fireman. At that point you started at the bottom rung again – doing ‘low value’ work (like shunting, or local goods services). Gradually you accumulated experience and worked up to the express goods services, then on to passenger services. There you started once again at the ‘bottom’, on local services, before moving on to longer distance and faster services, until you might be firing on the express passenger services.
At some point in this process you would be given time driving, under the watchful eye of the driver. Eventually, after more tests and experience, you would make ‘passed fireman’ status – again, if needed able to fill in as a driver. Eventually when you became a driver in your own right you would be back to the bottom of the heap: shunting turns and local goods services. You’d then need to work your way back to the top, through all of the layers of work you’d already worked through as a fireman. Clearly this could be a long process!
Alfred appears at points in that journey. Via his early employment records with the LBSCR, his accident and on the census, we see him move from cleaner, to fireman, to driver. Those records flatten the distinctions that existed within each grade, and how much Alfred would have to do to become a driver.
What about the ‘shed turner’?
It might seem counter-intuitive to end the look at Alfred’s life and story by turning to someone else, but there’s a still bit more to be gleaned from Alfred’s story. There were two men involved in the incident which hurt Alfred in 1911 – Alfred and the man who moved the turntable. We’ve already seen how Alfred moved through the ranks from engine cleaner to fireman to driver – and noted that this was something of a simplification. We can see one of the more subtle gradations via the second man involved in the accident – ‘shed turner’ Cave.
A shed turner would be a man – and they would all have been men at this time – responsible for moving engines around a shed and the surrounding yard space. This could have been at two points in a footplate career. It might have been at the bottom rung of the driver’s progression – the ‘low value’ work noted earlier, that brought with it experience. It might also have been towards the end of a footplate career, if (for example) eyesight concerns meant that driving on the main line was no longer possible. That begs the question: where was shed turner Cave in his career?
Who was shed turner Cave?
To answer these questions, we need to know more about Cave. Though his first name wasn’t given in the accident report, it looks likely he was Tom Cave, born in 1879 in Lymington, elsewhere in Hampshire. His father, also called Tom, worked for the LSWR as a gatekeeper – opening and closing level crossing gates, where road and railway crossed each other. Given how railway employment often ran in families, it was perhaps unsurprising that Tom Cave (junior) also joined the railway.
In 1901 he was living in Portsmouth with his widowed mother and siblings. Tom and one of his brothers were working as firemen. Though the company wasn’t specified on the 1901 Census, Tom was shown in 1911 as working for the LSWR. Given this, and his father’s connection with the same company, it seems probable that Tom spent his working life on the LSWR and latterly its successor company the Southern Railway. In 1911 Tom was worked as a driver – this remained the case on the 1921 Census and 1939 Register. It therefore seems likely that at the time of the accident he was still progressing through his career.
Why were rival companies working together?
We know that the accident happened inside Fratton engine shed, and that Alfred worked for the LBSCR – yet Tom Cave worked for the LSWR. Given railway companies were notoriously competitive – often seeing rivals as ‘enemies’ and being extremely territorial – how was it possible that two different companies had staff working in the same space?
Portsmouth was a bit of an oddity in this case. Sometimes railway companies did cooperate – where they felt it was in their interests. Getting a railway line into Portsmouth – particularly Portsea Island – was challenging, due to the space constraints and it being an island. The two rival companies, the LBSCR and LSWR agreed to work together and share the route. They formed a joint company just for access to Portsmouth, the London, Brighton and South Coast and London and South Western Joint Railway (trying saying that quickly!). This meant Fratton shed was home to engines and staff from both of the parent companies – hence Tom Cave and Alfred Howse working in the same space.
Mike Esbester
I’m Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth, and one of the wider Railway Work, Life & Death project co-leads. I’ve greatly enjoyed the Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts project and have valued the chance to learn with and learn from Neil, Ann, Geoff and Alan – and to share what we’ve uncovered here.