Walter Bridger

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 starting point.

The Railway Work, Life & Death data for the Union Disablement Fund gives us the entry for W. Bridger of the Chichester Branch, Union number 1703. He was a signalman on the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway (LBSCR). He joined the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) union on 6 June 1876 and was a member for 47 years. His “accident” is listed as old age on the 23 November 1919 when he was 67, and he was granted £30 disablement on 5 January 1920. Today that would be worth about £1,750. (There’s more on the Union’s Disablement Fund here.)

The ASRS was formed in 1871. By 1872 it had 17,247 members but this fell to 6,321 by 1882. Walter joined in its early years in 1876 when its initial popularity was starting to fall.

 

Pension and retirement

The Chichester Observer described a presentation on his retirement of an easy chair from the now National Union of Railwaymen (NUR – the ASRS’ successor union; now the RMT) Chichester Branch to their treasurer of 27 years.

 

The Portsmouth Evening News (14 May 1920) reported some more details of the early years of the Union, and recorded Walter’s pension as eleven shillings and tuppence a week after 51 ½ years of service, worth about £32 today.

 

Walter and his wife moved to Jarvis Brook in Sussex to live with his family, until his wife died in 1929. Her death was reported in the Sevenoaks Chronicle. It stated she had been a member of the Primitive Methodist Church in Fishbourne, and they had adopted a daughter.

 

Walter died on 19 July 1930. At that point, the NUR General Register of Members records a further payment of £5, to his dependents. The Chichester Observer reported Walter’s packed funeral in Fishbourne, where he had been a member of the Parish Council, and a Sunday School Teacher and stalwart of the Primitive Methodist Church.

 

He was a man who had dedicated his life to the people around him. Two thoughts come to mind. Why had he been an early member of the Union and stuck with it during difficult times? And why had he spent so much of his life as a signalman at Fishbourne Junction when he had the potential for promotion, and the financial pressures of a growing family?

 

Early life

Walter was born in the second quarter of 1852 in Chichester, Sussex. He was baptised at St Peter the Great in Chichester on 3 May 1852. His father was Charles Bridger, a labourer, and his mother Mary Ann Bridger, both of Tower Street in Chichester. They had married in the autumn of 1844 at the same church. Both Charles and Mary Ann, nee Boyles, were born in Chichester in 1815.

By 1862 the family is living in Chapel Street, Chichester, and Walter is the seventh of nine children. Charles is now working as a Bricklayer. By the next census in 1871 Walter had left home.

 

Joining the railway

The UK Railway Records Employment Records 1833-1956 available on Ancestry record show Walter joining the LBSCR in May 1868, having been recommended by a Mr Pennithorne. These two facts allow us to identify him accurately. There seem to be other Bridgers, who are recommended by other people, and the timeline isn’t always straightforward from the records.

Positive identifications show Walter to be working at Gate number 53 in Chichester. His age is given as 13, which considering he was 16 when he officially joined the company in 1868 seems an error. Working alongside him was John Bridger who may be a relation.

 

On 31 December 1871 Walter was at Steyning. He appears there in the 1871 Census as aged 19 and worked as a railway porter, lodging in Jarvis Lane. The head and other member of the household was Mary Slater, a 59-year-old recorded as a “Herbalist (Quack Doctor)”!

 

Walter moved to Angmering as a porter on 9 March 1872. From there he moved to Ford on 16 July 1872 and then changed from a porter to a shunter when he was moved to Three Bridges on 3 June 1873.

 

An accident – what happened?

Two notes then appear to outline an accident. The Three Bridges record first entry is “left off sheet W/E 16:1:1874”. The second entry is “Significant Injury 27^th Dec Shunter”.

There are no railway records of the accident, and nothing is reported in the currently digitized press records either. It would seem the record-keeping so soon after Christmas was minimal. The Hastings and St. Leonard’s Observer describes an accident at Three Bridges a few weeks prior to Walter’s. The injured fireman was conveyed as an emergency by special train to the Royal Sussex County Hospital at Brighton. It is likely this procedure would have been followed with Walter.

 

Walter next appears at Chichester as a signalman when he is reappointed from the Incapacity List at Three Bridges in September 1875. He clearly suffered a major injury. Subsequent records have a short note recording the supply of a wooden leg on 7 June 1879, and a cork leg in 1878 at a cost of £12, worth about £600 today. This was not a leg made from soft cork, but an articulated artificial leg sophisticated for its time, and taking its name from Cork Street where they were originally manufactured.

Walter has probably sustained a severe injury to his leg whilst working as a shunter on 27 March 1873. His leg was amputated, a dangerous operation with risky anesthetics and no blood transfusions or antibiotics. This may well have been an above-knee amputation. Having survived the threats of surgical shock, infection and gangrene, he had to learn how to be mobile again on crutches before learning to walk again on an artificial leg.

And then two years after his accident he married his wife Charlotte at Steyning on 1 January 1876.

 

Fishbourne Junction

The subsequent railway records and Census returns show Walter as a signalman at Fishbourne Junction until he retires on his pension on 28 November 1919.

The village of Fishbourne lies just to the west of Chichester, and the first set of crossing gates was where the railway crossed the road. Fishbourne was also the site where the track along the coast from Chichester to Havant joined the track running north to Midhurst.

The proximity of workplace and home would have meant that Walter could keep working. The railway company must have had this in mind when looking how to place Walter back into work. This explains why he settled in Fishbourne for the rest of his career.

He joined the Union in 1876, shortly after his accident. His experience must have reinforced the need for a Union to advocate for its members and been a spur to his involvement for many years.

Life in Fishbourne

The photograph below shows Walter in the middle of the back row, with a wooden leg. To the left is his son Walter James and to the right his other son William Charles. In the front row sit his daughters with his wife Charlotte in the centre. The distinctive woodwork of the porch help to identify the house, which is still standing.

 

The role of gate keeper and signalman was not without challenges, however. The Sussex Observer (18 July 1877) reported a case of road rage shortly after Walter had started at Fishbourne. Despite his artificial leg he was very capable of standing his ground.

 

A family tragedy

A much more serious and tragic event was reported in the Wandsworth Borough News. Walter’s son, Walter James, had also joined the LBSCR. He had worked his way up to become a signalman at Clapham junction but in 1909 was hit and killed by a train walking to his signal box. He was due to be married in a few weeks. His brother William Charles is referred to as Charles Bridger and was working for the railway too, as a clerk.

 

 

A pioneering daughter

A happier event was reported in the Chichester Observer and West Sussex Recorder in 1919. Walter’s daughter Charlotte had become a ticket collector at Chichester Station in 1915, to fill the staff shortages of men joining the armed services.

 

She was clearly held in high esteem by her colleagues and the travelling public. A few weeks later she married her husband who wore his army uniform.

 

Given Walter retires at the age of 67 he may have deferred retirement during the war years given the need to backfill the railway men who joined the armed forces.

In conclusion

Walter Bridger first appears in the union records as receiving a sum of £30 on retirement. Looking in more detail shows a man who survived a major accident and the loss of his son, became a stalwart of the first railway union and his local community, built a life and a family by working with his disability, and who was held in high esteem by his colleagues.

It is quite a story.

 

by Geoff Robinson