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.
In the early 20th century, if you wanted to move goods or people any distance inside Britain, you would likely use the railway system. For freight in particular, that meant you needed staff at each station who could deal with loading or unloading whatever needed moving. Often this role was undertaken by a porter – like Charles Howard, at Petersfield.
Moving milk – but watch your hands!
On 21 May 1910, at 5.10pm, Charles had been on duty for nearly 11 hours of his 12 hour shift. He was preparing to unload milk churns, but needed to move the truck containing the churns into the milk stage – effectively a platform dedicated to the milk traffic. Stations might have dedicated spaces or facilities for unloading particular types of goods if there was enough traffic to warrant it.
Working with the locomotive crew, Charles ‘loose-shunted’ the truck – that is, the engine nudged the truck without being attached to it. That meant the truck moved off – with Charles riding on it, intending to apply the brakes to stop the wagon in the right place. As he approached the milk stage, he applied the brakes. However, the truck collided with a guard’s van at the milk stage. The impact caused the truck door to close onto Charles’ left hand (presumably where he had been holding on), causing an injury.
‘Daily practice to disregard these instructions at this station’
A state-appointed official, Railway Inspector John Hornby, undertook an accident investigation. It found that the loose shunting was ‘quite unnecessary’ – with Charles roundly being found responsible. (This rather obscured the fact that the engine crew were involved, too!) According to Hornby, Charles knew that he was ignoring the London and South Western Railway (LSWR)’s special instructions, forbidding loose shunting of vehicles into stages unless the brakes could be applied without the operator coming into contact with the stage.
Hornby’s investigation would have involved him coming to Petersfield to talk to those involved and see the locations. As well as the immediate accident to Charles, the investigation also uncovered evidence of a pattern of behaviour. He recorded in his official report that ‘I gather that it has been the daily practice to disregard these instructions at this station’. This suggests – though only implicitly! – that the senior officials at the station would likely have known about this short-cut the staff were taking and turned a blind eye to it.
This observation is also relatively unusual, it that it offers a critical look at railway operating practices. Railway Inspectorate criticism of what we might today understand as ‘safety culture’ did happen, but it was relatively infrequent. Inspector Hornby concluded his report ‘it is to be hoped that the Company will for safety take steps to stop this dangerous system of working.’ Whether or not the LSWR did so is unknown.
Charles Howard’s early life and railway service
Charles was 23 at the time of his accident – but how did he end up in Petersfield, working on the railway?
Charles B Howard was born on 4 March 1885, in Sussex. On the 1901 Census, his father, Welcome W Howard, was a carter on a farm. As is often the case, Charles’ mother, Charlotte M Howard, had no recorded occupation. She would almost certainly have been undertaking domestic duties and possibly also some form of paid work. The family also included Charles’ younger sister, Mabel, and his nephew, Arthur (though it is unclear who Arthur’s parents were or where they were when the Census was taken). They were living at Old Salts, in Lancing.
At this point Charles was working as an ‘ordinary agricultural labourer’ – no doubt following his father. On 2 July 1906 Charles joined the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway (LBSCR) at Bosham, paid 16 shillings per week as a porter. In May 1907 he became a porter-gateman at Langstone, south of Havant. And in October 1908 he moved station to Havant, as porter-shunter, paid 19 shillings per week.
Railway life – and railway family
On the 1911 Census Charles was living as a boarder with Stuart and Beatrice Outen, in New Lane, Havant. Stuart Outen was a shunter on the LBSCR. Also living in the property was another boarder, Frederick Pigrum – another railway worker, a porter. Clearly the Outen family helped to support their income by taking in boarders – and a good source was work colleagues. Charles was recorded as a shunter-porter.
In 1913 Stuart Outen and Charles, amongst others, joined the Portsmouth branch of the National Union of Railwaymen. This was the closest branch to Havant at the time. Charles was recorded as a shunter.
It looks likely that Charles met his wife-to-be whilst in the Havant area. James Dolly worked as a signalman; he was married to Caroline, and they had a daughter, Ellen Kate. The family lived at the signalman’s cottage in Denvilles, to the east of Havant. Ellen and Charles married in 1919, in Havant.
A Petersfield puzzle
So far, other than Charles’ 1910 accident, Petersfield hasn’t featured. He was living and working – and married – in the Havant area. More puzzling, Charles worked for the LBSCR – which didn’t run into Petersfield. Petersfield was owned and operated by the London & South Western Railway (LSWR) – so why was an employee of another railway company working at the station?
There’s another discrepancy. In the official Railway Inspectorate accident report, Charles’ middle name is given as ‘Barrell.’ In the other records we’ve been able to find, the middle name is ‘Bernard.’ Are these actually two different people? It’s possible – but more likely is that the Railway Inspectorate record was incorrect. We’ve seen this on other occasions, so it has happened before.
The Howard and Dolly families
In 1921, Charles appears on the Census as a shunter. He and Ellen were living in a railway cottage at Denvilles in Havant, along with their 1-year old daughter, Phyllis Marjorie. But it wasn’t their house – on the Census return, James Dolly – Ellen’s father – was recorded as head of household. By this time he was a retired signalman; but James (who made the Census return) noted he had worked for the LSWR. Perhaps he had changed companies before retiring? Or was he jointly employed by both companies? The joint company was a curious by-product of squeezing one railway route onto Portsea Island that was used by two companies. And living with them was Ellen’s brother, another James – and another signalman, with the LSWR.
On the 1939 Register, Charles and Ellen (mistranscribed as ‘Helen’) were living a 7 Jubilee Terrace, Park Way, Havant. Charles was still working on the railway, albeit as a rather cryptic ‘railway errand’. Looking at the original, it’s clear this is another mistranscription – for ‘railway guard’. So Charles had continued on a fairly standard career path – albeit by this time working for the Southern Railway, formed in 1923 when companies including the LSWR and LBSCR were merged. Charles and Ellen’s daughter Phyllis was living with them, working as a coal merchant’s clerk. And James Dolly senior was also still living with them. He would die in Gosport in 1941. Ellen died in 1967 in Havant; Charles died later that same year, leaving his estate to Phyllis.
As ever, from a single moment in time, Charles’ 1910 accident, we’ve been able to unpick a life story – indeed, life stories, as we can see family and occupational lives where they intersected with the immediate subject of the research. That context reveals so much about very ordinary patterns of life in the early/mid 20th century – as well as raising more questions than we’ve been able to answer!
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.