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.
Unusually for the Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts project, Arthur Hobbs wasn’t a railway worker. However, he’s a reminder that the railways were part of their community, and many people had reason to be about the railways, generally at the stations.
Arthur’s accident
Arthur was employed by Gammon and Son coal merchants, to look after customers at the coal sidings in Petersfield. On 14 February 1901, Arthur was doing exactly this. At about 10.30, porter-shunter F Phillips accompanied an engine bringing five empty timber wagons and three loaded coal wagons into the yard. The intention was – with a bit of manoeuvring – to leave the coal wagons in the coal sidings, and take the timber wagons away.
They left the coal wagons and took the engine and other wagons around via another line. The coal wagons were left ready for unloading, as was convention at the station. Arthur started to unload them. However, as the loco crew and shunter brought the remaining wagons close to the coal wagons, they nudged. A piece of coal fell from one of the wagons, onto Arthur Hobbs’ leg. His injuries kept him off work until 11 March.
Between 1900 and 1939, only about 3% of all non-passenger accidents were investigated by the state authorities, the Railway Inspectorate. Arthur’s was one of those selected. The investigation, by Railway Inspector Amos Ford, found that Phillips had not told Arthur he was going to make a manoeuvre near the coal wagons. As he didn’t intend to move the coal wagons he didn’t see the need. Unfortunately the wagons still touched, leading to Arthur’s injury. As a result, Inspector Ford held Phillips responsible for the incident.
Arthur Hobbs’ life
Arthur was born in Petersfield in 1873. Arthur was one of eight children born to George and Ann Hobbs. His father was an agricultural labourer; he was absent on the 1881 Census, and seems to have died before the 1891 Census was taken. At that point, Ann was listed as a charwoman. The four boys still living with her in Petersfield were employed as labourers (including Arthur), a gardener and a butcher.
In 1894 Arthur married Edith Clara Bone, in Midhurst. At that point Midhurst was a train journey away from Petersfield, via the now-closed branch line from Petersfield. They had a son, William Arthur, born in 1896.
In 1901 they were living in Petersfield; Arthur was by this time working as a labourer in a coal yard – hence his accident. At least on the night of the Census being taken their six-year old son, William, was not sleeping under their roof. He was with his grandparents on Edith’s side, on a farm near Petersfield.
The railway accident and work in the coal yard were only a brief interlude in Arthur’s life. By 1911 he was living in Liss, to the north of Petersfield, along with Edith and William. Arthur was working as a domestic gardener, and William was a market gardener. William volunteered for the army in the opening months of the First World War, and saw active service.
The Hobbs family after Arthur
It looks as though Arthur died in 1916. Certainly by 1921 Edith was a widow. She and William were still living in Liss. William had returned from the war and became a general labourer on a fruit farm. They had taken in a boarder, Charles Welch, a self-employed boot maker and boot and shoe dealer.
This relationship was to prove significant for Edith. She remarried in 1922 – to Charles Welch. That Edith was 15 years older, and had a pre-existing adult son, evidently didn’t matter to them. At the 1939 Register they were still living in Liss, by that point accompanied by Edith’s mother, Sarah.
William also married in 1922, to Amy Howard. On the 1939 Register, William was a fruit farm worker in Liss. Living with him were Amy and a daughter, Phyllis and another child.
Clearly the railway featured only as an incidental, fleeting moment in one of the lives seen in this account. For many people that is how they would have encountered the railway – as a functional thing, but without any necessarily greater significance to them. Being able to see into those lives is important, as it can help us understand the place of the railway in the lives of people outside the industry, and in the wider community.
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.