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.
William Sandell, who is referred to as William Sandall in some official railway documents and newspaper reports, died in Portsmouth on 2 May 1910, when he fell from his engine and was run over by the train he had been driving. He was forty-five.
Willliam John Clark Sandell was born in Droxford in 1865. There is no father’s name on the baptismal record and the mother, Elizabeth Sandell was a pauper. It may be that his father was the John Clark born in Droxford in 1841. The 1871 census has William, aged 6, in the Droxford Union Workhouse but without his mother.
In 1881 William is a 16-year-old shop boy boarding at 19 Queen Street, Portsea, with his widowed aunt May Ann Miles, who was working at a beer house. In 1887 William married Susanna Mary Lemmon.
On 23 January 1891 William Sandell joined the Portsmouth branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants trade union, where he is described as a fireman. In the 1891 census for 19 Netley Road, Portsea, William is a railway fireman and married with two children.
Ancestry has a list of workers based at Fratton on 31 December 1891 and employed by the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway company. William ‘Sandall’ is now an engine driver, aged 26 and earning 3s 9d a day. In 1901 the family was still at Netley Road with seven children at home.
In 1910 William Sandell was fatally injured while at work in Portsmouth. The first press report of his death stated that he had been living at The Gables, Carisbrooke Road, Milton, and had been working on the railways for 25 years. Three days after he died an inquest took place at Portsmouth Town Hall. It was fully reported in the local papers.
On the fateful day, William Sandell had left the Milton yard with fireman Coward, to meet up with the 3.30 train to Brighton at Portsmouth Harbour station. Between Fratton railway shed and Jacob’s Ladder William left the cab, in order to oil the engine. Whilst climbing round the engine, which was travelling at about four miles an hour, he was seen by driver Frederick Murray to lose his grip and fall to the ground, where he was run over by his own engine. Murray jumped from his engine and called out to fireman Coward. Several men tried to help but William’s leg had almost been severed from his body. Edward Elston, a boiler-smith, bandaged the leg and stopped the bleeding but William died about 90 minutes after arriving at the Royal Portsmouth Hospital.
Fireman Coward told the jury that it was against orders to leave the engine cab to oil it while a train was moving. This engine, however, was fitted with a lubricator, so it was necessary to leave the cab whilst in motion, in order to oil it properly.
Mr Howard Henbery, the District Locomotive and Carriage Superintendent, produced a document stating that the cab could only be left in an emergency. He denied that having a lubricator made a difference. It was the driver’s duty to oil the engine before he started off. The witness thought that the jerk caused when the train crossed the points at that place could have caused the driver to lose his grip or he may have taken the wrong oil and turned to take it back. Had he waited half a minute the train would have stopped at the signal and he could have oiled it then.
In returning a verdict of “Accidental Death” the Jury expressed sympathy with the relatives and commended Mr Elston for his prompt first aid at the scene of the accident.
In the 1911 the widowed Susanna Sandell was living at 71 Meon Road Milton and still had seven children at home, aged from 23 down to 11. Two of the girls were working in the corset factory and the youngest two children were still at school.
Ann Griffiths
Ann has lived in Havant for over 50 years. She is a volunteer genealogist at The Spring Arts and Heritage Centre.