This page is one of a series introducing railway staff who worked in and around Stoke-on-Trent before 1939. They’ve been researched as part of the ‘Tracks through Time’ initiative – which you can read more about here.
The workers featured were largely selected from staff who appear in the Railway Work, Life & Death project database of accidents to pre-1939 British and Irish railway workers.
Please note that a fuller life story is under preparation – coming soon!
Alfred Rigby was just 15 when he died in Stoke-on-Trent’s railway goods yard in 1907. He had been expected to work in amongst moving trains – something that his employer, the North Staffordshire Railway Company, ‘did not consider […] was a dangerous [job] for a lad of 15’.
The Coroner at the inquest disagreed: ‘First of all a boy of 15 should not be allowed on the line.’
Alfred had likely only been working on the railway for a maximum of a year. He was a ‘slip and checker lad’ – his role was to check labels attached to goods wagons which gave shipment details.
On 22 October 1907 he needed to get to the other side of a wagon to attach a label. He tried to squeeze between two wagons, but they were pushed together at the wrong moment and he was crushed.