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.
NB: Further details of William Maynard’s lifestory will be added shortly.
Many railway employees’ work was mobile: they passed through places on the trains. London & South Western Railway fireman William Maynard was one of these people.
On 13 April 1903 he was passing through Cosham, working on a passenger train from Salisbury to Portsmouth. Leaving the station, he went on the tender (carrying the engine’s coal) to get a tool. Doing this while the train was moving was against the rules. While on the tender, he either slipped or his head hit an overbridge.
His head was injured, and he would have received first aid at the time. Railway workers were well-trained in first aid, due to the number of accidents at work. William was off duty for three weeks. He would have received some compensation for that time.
In 1901 Maynard was living in Wiltshire. He married Geraldine Weeks in Salisbury in 1902. By 1911 he was a locomotive driver, and they were living in Twickenham, London. They remained in greater London from that time, and William stayed on the railways throughout his working life.
Mike Esbester