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.
Frank Purdy proved to be quite a hard man to track down. Early searching uncovered only a few details, but a more sustained effort brought a bit more to light. His wife’s life also had an interesting, if sad, element which took some unpicking to make sense. Between them they encompassed naval and railway connections – like several of the other people we’ve researched for the Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts project, demonstrating the Portsmouth and Hampshire link between sea and rail. The initial research process also threw up an error, only realised when there was time for more detailed research, so there’s a lesson here for us all about drawing hasty assumptions!
Early life – on shore and at sea
Frank was born in Keighley, Yorkshire, in 1889. He had at least eight siblings; in 1901, the five of working age were all employed in the textiles industry. In 1908 Frank took a different route, and joined the Navy. He signed on for 12 years, as a machine tool fitter. His service record shows he stood at five feet seven inches tall, had brown hair, blue eyes, a ‘fresh’ complexion, and a scar from a cut on the back of his left hand.
Naval service brought Frank to the south coast, where he was to remain for the rest of his life. He served on a range of ships and on shore during his time in the Navy. Needless to say, this mobility meant he wasn’t on land for either the 1911 or 1921 census. This meant finding Frank was a little more challenging than usual – but find him I did!
In 1911 he was on board HMS Jupiter. Jupiter’s home base was Portsmouth, but at the point of census Jupiter was anchored off Portland in Dorset. In 1921 Frank was on board HMS Truro, based at Queenstown (now known as Cobh) in Ireland. His character was consistently rated as ‘very good’, until he left the Navy in mid-1922.
As well as responsible for geographic movement, Frank’s naval service had personal implications. In 1918 he married Violet Goble in Portsmouth – though she too proved quite challenging to find out much about, thanks to her earlier life.
Violet or Mary? Goble or Jones? Frank’s wife before Frank
Violet Purdy, as she became, doesn’t appear on the 1921 Census. However, she was on the 1939 Register, along with Frank, and three named children. One of those children, Ernest, was born in 1919. He did appear on the 1921 Census, but as a visitor at a property on the Isle of Wight, alongside Mary Purdy and Mary Goble (mis-transcribed as ‘Mary Gobby’). Looking for the birth records of Violet and Frank’s three children, they gave the mother’s maiden name as Jones – not Goble. So what was going on?
Some of the confusion was easier to unpick than others. The 1939 Register gave Violet’s name as Violet Irene M – so the thought was the ‘M’ was for Mary. That might give us Mary Purdy on the 1921 Census – but was she the mother of the three children, Ernest, Thomas and Joan? Their mother’s maiden name was Jones, not Goble. Might I be confusing family lines?
With a bit more thought I wondered if Violet might have been married before Frank. A bit of research showed Mary Jones marrying Thomas Goble in 1916, on the Isle of Wight. He had a naval connection, too – he was a stoker petty officer. He was serving on HMS Ghurka on 8 February 1917, when it struck a German mine off Dungeness. Only five of the 79 crew survived – Thomas was not amongst them.
Listed on one of Thomas’s service records was the detail that his wife, Violet Irene, lived in Wootton on the Isle of Wight – a link to connect all of the people together, by name and location. Tragically Mary was a widow after less than a year’s marriage.
One part of the puzzle remains – Mary Goble. On the 1921 Census she was aged 8; she had been born in Newport, on the Isle of Wight. Might she have been a daughter of Thomas Goble, from a prior marriage? If so, by 1921 she had lost both her mother and father, and was living with her step-mother, Mary Purdy (nee Goble, nee Jones). As this was getting further away from the focus of my research, Frank Purdy, and I had hit brick walls, I couldn’t devote further time to Mary Goble. Needless to say, I am still curious!
Frank’s post-Navy life
Returning to Frank Purdy, the records remain elusive to show what happened after he left the Navy in 1922. Via the births of four children after 1921 we know geographically where he and the family were, at least for those specific moments in time.
And here there’s a confession to make, about the dangers of assumptions. I had records that put Frank’s family in Hampshire in 1921 (whilst he was serving afloat in Ireland) and then Frank in Hampshire in 1937, when he had his railway accident at Havant. I drew a straight line between the two, and presumed that he joined the Southern Railway in 1923 and remained in the area until at least 1939. More detailed research has shown this wasn’t the case …
In the final quarter of 1923, Violet and Frank had a son, Thomas. His birth was registered on the Isle of Wight. Their next child, Violet, was born in the second quarter of 1925, with the birth registered in Doncaster. At some point, therefore, it looks as though the family had moved up to Yorkshire. Two further children were registered in Doncaster: Joan T in 1926 and Eva M in 1927.
So: it’s evident that Frank and the family were in Yorkshire from c.1925 until at least 1927. The next clear appearance in the records isn’t until 1937, in Hampshire. What Frank and his family were doing in the intervening years isn’t known – and that includes when Frank joined the railway.
Frank’s railway accident
We see Frank next on 13 January 1937. By this time he was employed as a casual ganger on the Southern Railway. He was working at Havant station, and was in charge of 18 men. On the day in question, their role was to make level ashes at the side of the track at the Portsmouth end of the station. They started work at 6pm. Given the time of year, this would have been in darkness, so they were using acetylene and gas lamps for light.
They were working amongst moving trains, so on this occasion they had a designated man to keep watch for approaching trains – a ‘lookout man’, Arthur Lemm. He positioned himself where he should have been able to see any trains approaching – on the opposite side of the railway lines. This was to prove part of the problem.
At 6.10pm a train passed on the line furthest away from Frank Purdy and his team. That obscured Lemm’s view momentarily; when his view was clear he saw a train approaching on the line on which Frank was working. Frank was stood close to the track. Even though Lemm blew his warning whistle, and Frank moved immediately, one of his feet slipped and he was hit by the train.
In the subsequent investigation, Lemm was held to be responsible for the incident. He was criticised for positioning himself in such a way that he couldn’t see the approaching train, and for not noticing that Frank was standing too close to the track. Railway Inspector JLM Moore, part of the state-appointed accident investigators, noted that ‘it is evident that he [Lemm] was not paying proper attention to his important duties. He appears to be alert and fully conversant with his duties’.
Importantly, what wasn’t questioned was why this work was being done next to ‘open’ railway lines – i.e. lines still in active use by trains. It was just assumed that this was necessary – it was certainly how the railway industry operated for all but the most extensive of track replacement work. Needless to say, it would have been safer to close the line to traffic – but more costly to the Company.
The immediate aftermath
Following the accident, Frank was given first aid by colleagues P Starley and FC Burnett. Railway workers were well versed in first aid. The companies encouraged staff to learn, not least as accidents to employees were so frequent that they were almost certain to need to put first aid into use.
The Havant ambulance – remembering that this is the pre-NHS era – was summonsed, and it took Frank to the Havant hospital. A report in the Portsmouth Evening News the following day noted that Frank ‘was detained with serious injuries to his head and shoulder.’
A subsequent mention six weeks later noted that Frank ‘has regained consciousness and is making good progress towards recovery in the Havant War Memorial Hospital.’ He and the family were living in Horndean, so at what must have been a worrying time for Violet and the children they were some distance removed from the hospital.
Depending on his length of employment, Frank would have come under the remit of the Workmen’s Compensation Act, so would have been receiving at least half his regular pay after the first two weeks off work. Even with this income, it might well have been financially difficult for Violet at home.
Life afterwards
It’s unclear if Frank returned to work for the Southern Railway. The family remained in Hampshire. In October 1937, the daughters – Joan, Eva and Violet – were all reported as having taken part in various athletic events at a ‘grand fete’ in Horndean. Indeed, between them the three girls took all the prize places in the girls skipping race, and were placed in six of the seven races they were eligible to enter. The family was still living in Horndean at the time of the 1939 Register, and Violet married in Petersfield in 1945.
Frank appears on the 1939 Register as a naval Petty Officer. Interestingly this might be a quirk of timing. Frank’s military record shows that he attempted to re-enter naval service on a number of occasions in 1938 and 1939, including between late August and mid-October 1939. The Register was taken on 29 September 1939 – right in that window. But the outcome of Frank’s attempt to re-join was ‘Shore. Not required.’ He might have had more success in 1941 – the record is unclear (to me at least!) – but the final note on his file is ‘Invalided 2.9.43’. Frank died in 1961.
All told, the life story of Frank Purdy, and his family, is one of gaps between known points. His railway and naval service were clearly significant, albeit in different ways and for different lengths of time. The absences demonstrate how challenging it can be to research ordinary people in the past – and yet being able to fill some of the silences helps us to see the realities of everyday life for some people.
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.