On 1 January 1923 a new era of British railway history began. Following state direction of the industry during and after the First World War, a rationalised structure was imposed upon the railways of England, Scotland and Wales. Around 120 railway companies were merged into four major concerns – the ‘Big Four’ of the […]
Tag Archives | fatality
Too deaf to work on the railway lines?
By Mike Esbester on December 5, 2022 in Accident reports, Blog, Disability, Disability History Month, Health
As part of Disability History Month, our recent blog posts (here and here) have focused on physical disabilities caused by railway work. But what about railway workers who might have had a life-long disability, or a condition which grew progressively worse over time? This might include hearing loss, a topic that’s been relevant in a […]
Seeing disability in our database
By Mike Esbester on December 12, 2022 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Blog, Disability, Disability History Month
In last week’s Disability History Month blog post, we looked at a case which showed staff with hearing loss were employed by the railway companies. Sometimes this was in roles we wouldn’t expect to find them – in which hearing might have had important implications for safety. In our final Disability History Month post for […]
Work-caused disability – and death
By Mike Esbester on November 28, 2022 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Blog, Disability History Month
Last week’s blog looked at shunter Frederick Potter, and the way his railway work continued, in a different role, after his 1913 accident which led to the loss of a leg. This week for Disability History Month we look at another accident leading to disability – two accidents, in fact, as James Waring is one […]
How did Charles die?
By Linda Rollitt on November 7, 2022 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources
Every so often someone gets in touch with us to say they’ve found an ancestor in the project database. Despite the sad nature of the contact – generally it means something bad has happened to their ancestor – we welcome these messages. They’re really valuable to us, as we can find out more about the […]
King’s Cross accidents
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 […]
Scottish redcaps
Our project is made by everyone who has been involved – particularly the volunteer teams at the institutions involved doing the hard work of transcribing the reports underlying the database. Whilst they’ve been asked to transcribe or summarise as faithfully as possible what’s found in the reports, we knew from the outset that we needed […]
Holywell Junction – the men, pt 2
In yesterday’s blog we outlined what we knew of two of the men involved in the Holywell Junction accident, Richard Jones and Alfred Jones. Today we look at the other two men. Josiah Jones Josiah Jones was born in Whitford, Flintshire, in 1881, to Owen, a carpenter, and Elizabeth. He had an elder brother, […]
Holywell Junction – the men, pt 1
By Mike Esbester on August 31, 2022 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Anniversary, Blog, Family History
Yesterday’s blog looked at the accident at Holywell Junction on 1 September 1922. The next blog posts will look at the men involved. To be honest, the heart sank a bit when we saw we had a case which involved 3 ‘Jones’ – but we’ve found at least a little information about each of the […]
Holywell Junction, 1 September 1922
Alfred Henry Jones. Josiah Jones. Richard Jones. Daniel Roberts. Once again we start a blog post with the names of multiple men killed at work on the railways. Once again, it’s a case of track workers, hit by a train whilst they were maintaining the lines. It comes nearly 6 months after we […]
