Some months ago I was sent an intriguing image by Robert Kitching of the Bowes Railway (whose guest post will be appearing soon!). The image showed a railwayman, supported by crutches and lacking both legs below the knee. Robert knew we’d be interested, especially since images of the workers involved in accidents are often hard […]
Tag Archives | Disability History Month
Disabilities in railway service
By Mike Esbester on November 30, 2020 in Accident reports, Blog, Disability, Disability History Month
Disability features in our project heavily. Mostly frequently it’s cases where accidents have caused disability (see here for some cases we’ve featured in the past). But another of the great things about the project data is that it’s showing where already-disabled staff were employed or re-employed. So for today’s Disability History Month post, we’re going […]
Accident, mental health & possible learning disability in railway service
By Stephen Lamb on November 18, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Disability, Disability History Month, Guest contribution, Health
In this guest post, project volunteer Stephen Lamb looks at one of the cases he’s transcribed from the records of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, held at the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick. It highlights just one of the many sad cases, and appropriately enough deals with occupational disability – this […]
New data release: Great Eastern Railway Benevolent Fund book, 1913-23
By Mike Esbester on November 26, 2018 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Disability, Disability History Month, Updates
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 […]
William Harwood’s missing leg
By Mike Esbester on December 3, 2018 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Disability, Disability History Month, Linking sources
Continuing our Disability History Month exploration of the new Great Eastern Railway (GER) data (see last week’s post, here), this week we’re focusing on a cross-over case between our two datasets. We’re fortunate we can trace the moment of the accident for William Harwood as well as a little about what happened to him afterwards, […]
Disability History Month: ‘very nervous and trembling a good deal’
Wednesday marks the start of 2020’s Disability History Month, something that our project speaks closely too, given the large numbers of railway staff who were made disabled in the course of their work. Over the years we’ve blogged about a number of cases involving disabled staff, detailed here, and over the coming month we’ll highlight […]
Improvising to work with a disability
By Mike Esbester on December 9, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Blog, Disability, Disability History Month, Linking sources
In the course of looking for something else in our database of British and Irish railway worker accidents, I recently stumbled across a fascinating case that gives us a little glimpse of the ways in which disability was a common part of everyday life on the railways. We could read this as a positive: in […]
New data – new disabilities, old ‘solutions’
By Mike Esbester on December 19, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Disability, Disability History Month
Earlier this week we launched our third set of data about accidents to railway staff (see here). It comes from a record of legal cases kept by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants trade union, between 1901 and 1905. As you’d expect, those records reveal all sorts of things about railway work – including where […]
George Joseph Stuttaford (1855 – 1893)
By Martin O'Donnell on December 2, 2019 in Blog, Disability, Disability History Month, Family History, Guest contribution
In this guest post, former railway worker and now family historian Martin O’Donnell looks at one surprising accident he found in his family past. It dovetails neatly with Disability History Month, which runs from 22 November-22 December, and demonstrates once again that disability did not mean railway employment was out of the question. Sadly in […]
Working after the accident
So far in our posts for Disability History Month and focusing on the Great Eastern Railway’s benevolent fund book (see here and here) we’ve looked at the accidents and some of the aids and ‘remedies’ that were put in place afterwards. But the book also gives us some clues about the staff who had an […]
