On 14 October 2022, King’s Cross station in London will be 170 years old. To mark this anniversary, this week’s blog post looks at accidents at King’s Cross and in the associated area. It gives an impression of how our project database can be used, to build a picture of the operation of a single […]
Tag Archives | 1921
An Irish works accident
This weekend the 175th anniversary of the Inchicore Works in Dublin will be marked by an open day at the Works. The actual 175 was reached last year, but … well, you can imagine why things were postponed. Opened in 1846, the Works remains operational to this day; as we might expect of such an […]
Stapleton Road: the men, pt 4
By Mike Esbester on September 25, 2021 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Anniversary, Blog, Family History, Linking sources
This blog is our final post in this series, ahead of the centenary tomorrow of the 1921 Stapleton Road accident. Yesterday we looked at the family connections between Arthur and Charles Hobbs. Today we focus on the final man who died, Stephen Francis. Stephen Albert Francis proved to be somewhat tricky to pin down – […]
Stapleton Road, 26 September 1921
Charles Edmonds. Herbert George North. Charles Oakhill. Joseph Barrett. Arthur Hobbs. Stephen Albert Francis. On 26 September 1921, these six track workers died in a single incident near Stapleton Road station in Bristol, on the Great Western Railway (GWR). Another man – Charles Hobbs, Arthur’s uncle – was injured. As we reach the […]
Stapleton Road: the men, pt 3
By Mike Esbester on September 24, 2021 in Accident aftermath, Anniversary, Blog, Family History, Linking sources
Following yesterday’s look at Charles Oakhill, and the railway connections in his family, today we turn to another railway family caught up in the Stapleton Road accident: the Hobbs. Arthur Hobbs (1897-1921) Arthur was the youngest of the men to die at Stapleton Road, at only 24. He was a labourer, and the only one […]
Stapleton Road: the men, pt 1
By Mike Esbester on September 22, 2021 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Blog, Family History, Linking sources
Yesterday we discussed the institutional responses to the Stapleton Road accident; from this point onwards, we look more at the personal impacts, on the men involved and their the families. Sadly for most of the men and families involved, we don’t have too much information. We’d dearly like to know more – about the individual’s […]
Stapleton Road: the men, pt 2
By Mike Esbester on September 23, 2021 in Accident aftermath, Anniversary, Blog, Explore your Archives, Family History, Linking sources
Yesterday we started introducing the men involved in the Stapleton Road accident. Today we focus on just one man, for whom we have more information: Charles Oakhill. Charles was born in 1870, to William and Mary Ann. He had 6 siblings, one of whom died in infancy. They were all born in and around the […]
Stapleton Road: the aftermath
By Mike Esbester on September 21, 2021 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Anniversary, Blog, Linking sources
Yesterday’s blog post looked at what happened in the 1921 Stapleton Road accident on the Great Western Railway (GWR). Today we turn to the institutional aftermath – before considering the individuals over the coming days. We made reference to a report, produced by Railway Inspector JPS Main, for the Ministry of Transport (more on who […]
William Charles Lilley
By Archie McDermott-Paintin on June 21, 2021 in Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Local History
This week our blog features a guest post from Archie McDermott-Paintin, a 2nd year History student at the University of Portsmouth. Archie worked with fellow student Marc Treloar (whose post was featured a couple of weeks’ ago) and project co-lead Mike Esbester on project data, including early access to our data release planned for later […]
Gunshot wounds
Today’s post, from the project’s Helen Ford at the Modern Records Centre, looks at a particularly difficult part of Ireland’s past: the lead up to partition 100 years ago. Railways have long been political, but in this case, they were an active site of contest, involving attacks on infrastructure and people – with tragic results. […]
