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.
The death of Joseph Pannell raised questions about the nature and organisation of railway work in Portsmouth. A picture of Joseph emerges as a well-regarded employee and colleague.
Starting with the railway
Joseph James Pannell was born in Titchfield, in 1825, to Thomas and Mary Pannell. He was one of at least five children. In 1851 Joseph was still living with his parents, working as a mariner. He joined the London, Brighton & South Coast and London & South Western Joint Railway in October 1854, probably at Portsmouth goods station (since demolished, but next to what is now Portsmouth and Southsea station).
He married Anne (variously spelt with and without the ‘e’) Moores in 1857, in Alverstoke, Gosport. By 1861 he and Anne had a daughter, Mary Jane, and were living at 30 Regent Street, Portsea. Joseph is given as a railway porter. By 1871 the family had been joined by two more daughters, Amelia (born 1862) and Elizabeth (born 1866). Joseph was a goods checker by this time – at the inquest into his death, the work was described: ‘His duty was to take the notes from the guard, check the goods from the trucks, and when not so employed to mark the trucks in the yard.’ He was paid £1.2.0 per week – around £136 now.
At the time of the 1881 Census, Joseph and Anne’s youngest daughter, Elizabeth, then 15, was already living away from home. She was being schooled, but living with her aunt (Joseph’s sister) and uncle in Titchfield. Joseph appears on the 1881 Census, though this is the last to feature him. He was living with Anne and their two eldest daughters, still at 30 Regent Street in Portsea. A census of railway company staff taken that year noted that Joseph was then paid £1.4.4 per week (c.£166 today). We can see that railway employment could offer a sufficient degree of security to make it possible to live for a long time in one place.
Joseph’s accident
On 13 December 1881, Joseph was marking wagons in the goods yard. He was working along a siding into which wagons were being moved. A warning was given – but at some distance, so it’s unclear if Joseph would have been able to hear, given the noise in the environment. No-one witness the accident, but it appeared that Joseph was run over by wagons.
A cab was sent for, to try to take Joseph to hospital. While they waited, a stretcher was found – telling that incidents were sufficient that first aid equipment of this nature was to hand. Unfortunately Joseph died at the scene.
The inquest
The Coroner opened the inquest by noting that Joseph ‘had been held in the highest respect by his fellow employees and also by those who employed him.’ The jury asked some searching questions about working practices at Portsmouth – including implications that the level of staffing was insufficient, and there wasn’t enough space between the railway lines to do the work safely. This was brought home when it was asked ‘Is it not a fact that within the past fifteen months four men have lost their lives in shunting at the Town station?’
The jury were told that they could make recommendations to the railway company about procedures if they so chose, but the Coroner could not direct them as to what. The did not choose to do that, however – although one of jurors, Mr J Dick, wanted a rider added to the verdict of accidental death: ‘That there should be some plan adopted to warn those in the neighbourhood of the goods station when the trucks were to be shunted down the roads [lines]’. The jury did not adopt the rider, but the Coroner suggested that the Press might take notice – which they did, as the report was detailed in the Portsmouth Times.
Remembering Joseph
Joseph was buried on 18 December 1881 at Kingston Cemetery. A brief report in the Portsmouth Evening News said that around 120 fellow railway workers attended the committal.
In February 1882 the ASRS Portsmouth branch held its eighth annual dinner, reported in the Hampshire Post . As well as stressing the connections between railway and Navy, the gathering drank a toast to the memory of Joseph, who had been Secretary of the branch. Proposing the toast, the chair noted ‘he was always ready to go anywhere and do anything for the Society; and when he (the speaker) heard of his death it touched him a great many ways.’
Joseph’s family after the accident
As Joseph was a member of the ASRS union, it made Anne a one-off ‘death benefit’ payment of £10 (around £1350 now) to cover immediate costs. However, that was likely all they would have received by way of financial support. The railway companies and other employers were under no legal obligation to pay compensation or provide ongoing support after an accident at work.
By 1891, his widow, Anne, and eldest daughter, Mary, were still living together – at 30 Regent Street. Whether they owned the property or had been able to continue paying rent on it is unclear.
Anne was described on the 1891 Census as an ‘attendant at ladies waiting room’. Sadly we don’t know if this was work provided by the railway company, by way of helping Joseph’s family after his death. This kind of paternalistic approach was seen amongst the railway companies, so it is possible. Mary was working as a shop assistant.
By 1901 it looks as though Anne had died. Mary features on the Census of that year as the head of household, still living at 30 Regent Street. She was working as a lady’s waitress.
Clearly Joseph’s family found ways to continue after his death – as they had to. The stories that we’ve been able to uncover through the Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts project give us an impression of working life on the railways in the area, as well as of the people, families and communities they affected.
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.