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 […]
Tag Archives | family history
3 weeks, 3 audiences
October, it turns out, has been a busy month for us. Over the course of 3 weeks we’ve participated in events involving 3 of our key target audiences: the rail industry, family historians and academics. By way of a project update, this blog post summarises a few of the aspects of each of the events. […]
George Page (1845 – 1899)
By Sue Page on October 14, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources
In this guest blog post, Sue Page looks at the life & death of her Great Grandfather and the impact it had on his family over a longer period. Sue came along to the workshop session the project put on at Family Tree Life hoping to find out more – hopefully she did about the […]
The death of Joseph (Joe) Parkin & its impact on his family
By Gordon Dudman on September 30, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources
As part of Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine’s ‘Transcription Tuesday’, our project made available a set of records produced by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, one of the major railway trade unions. It listed over 2000 cases involving members, many of them accidents. In this blog post, one of the transcribers, Gordon […]
Thoughts on collaboration: the start of a manifesto?
Last Saturday, as I arrived home from the U3A Family History Conference, I spotted a discussion on Twitter that was sad to read. Else Churchill, genealogist at the Society of Genealogists, had been at a different conference. Whereas my experience was very positive – as an academic I’d been warmly welcomed and enjoyed engaging with […]
On Funding, Heroism and Family History
There’s never a dull moment for us, but the last couple of weeks have been particularly busy. On top of the usual things, we’ve submitted a funding application and spoken at 2 conferences. This blog post will round up some of the key points! The funding application first. It went to the British Academy, and […]
We want your accidents!
Well – hopefully not your own accidents, but we are interested in any cases of accidents to railway workers in the past about which you have information. Read on to find out more – including a request for your help! Followers on Twitter will have seen our call a few weeks’ ago for suggestions of […]
John Haughton: the life and death of a railwayman
By Neil Gordon on August 12, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources
We’re really pleased to be able to feature this guest blog post from Neil Gordon – it’s always heartening to receive contributions, but this is particularly interesting one, written by a descendent of the worker, John Haughton, at the centre of the piece. We met Neil at the Family Tree Live show, where he mentioned […]
Trap & Drag – 1914 style
By Peter Munro on July 8, 2019 in Accident reports, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Passenger
In this guest post, project supporter Peter Munro looks at a passenger accident from 1914 – what would today be known as a ‘trap and drag’ incident, something that the Rail Accident Investigation Branch flagged as a real concern on our recent visit to its Farnborough office. Peter has also helped the project in a […]
Reading 1914: passengers, workers, family
Our project has focused on accidents to railway workers, rather than passengers, as numerically far more workers were killed or injured on the railways and they remain understudied. When we started out, in 2016, we were using just one set of records – the Board of Trade reports into worker accidents. We took the decision […]
