Today we are fortunate in that the idea of work-life balance exists – if only as an ideal, in many cases. People interested in understanding how and why accidents happen are increasingly recognising that boundaries drawn between work and home life are false. But this isn’t new. A notable rail example is the 1892 Thirsk […]
Tag Archives | 1914
Dying for a wee – 1
As travellers today (when we’re able to resume travelling) we may be less than enamoured of the toilets on trains – all too often cramped, unclean or even out-of-order. But at least they’ve been provided for us. That isn’t always the case for staff – and that’s a long-standing issue. Earlier this year I wrote […]
14, learning the craft – the hard way
From time to time we’ve commented on the young age of some of the people encountered in our database – for example, the case of 16-year old James Beck. Given the school leaving age was 13 at this time, it’s unsurprising – if sad – that Beck’s case wasn’t the youngest we have encountered. There […]
Illicit travel
The railways were highly ordered and regulated spaces. They had to be, to ensure they ran and that (for passengers at least) they ran safely. But that doesn’t mean illicit travel wasn’t a problem. The railway companies employed their own police forces, to keep order, protect company assets and reassure the public. Of course, railway […]
Policing the line
As we’ve noted in the past, the railway companies didn’t just run trains – their interests extended much further. As a result, they employed all sorts of staff that might not seem obvious, extending into road haulage and shipping, for example, as well as they myriad roles that were needed to keep the engines and […]
A flyaway telegraph message
There are many cases in our database in which we see similar circumstances – and often similar outcomes: track workers hit by trains, shunters crushed between wagons, slips, trips and falls, porters injured whilst moving goods, and so on. There are, of course, a great many cases which are truly unique – one of which […]
Death in the dark: Nottingham’s hidden history
Building a railway line was always a challenge – but at least in the early railway era, when Britain was relatively less urbanised, it was often possible to gain access to lucrative city spaces, traffic and revenue. As the 19th century went on, that became more and more problematic as city centre land was built […]
Distracted in the dark
All of the cases we’re cataloguing in our project database are sad, as at the very least they represent pain having been inflicted. Often they extend into the tragic, with deaths. In some of these cases we can only imagine the misery for the surviving family and friends must have been compounded by the young […]
New data release: Great Eastern Railway Benevolent Fund book, 1913-23
We’re thrilled to release a new data set for you: details of Great Eastern Railway (GER) staff who had been injured at work and applied for assistance to the Company’s Benevolent Fund between 1913 and 1923. The information comes from a ledger book kept by the Company and now found at the National Railway Museum […]
Monorail, monorail, monorail …
Most of the cases in our database are fairly standard – certainly in terms of being above ground and referring to ‘standard gauge’ track (the well-known 4 foot 8 and a half inches between rails, albeit the reasons for which are debated). However, there are some outliers – including accidents on underground railways (London and […]
