The UK is currently undergoing a very warm spell, with today, 25 July, looking like it’s going to be the hottest day of the year so far. Searching our database to see if there were any hot weather cases, we found two in which the heat was mentioned as a possible factor. Both were in […]
Tag Archives | fatality
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 […]
Volunteers’ Week 4: One NRM volunteer’s experiences
In our fourth Volunteers’ Week blog post, National Railway Museum volunteer Philip James outlines some of what working on the project involves, and one case from our ongoing interwar extension which caught his eye. We’re indebted to Philip, who has been with us since the start and is now working on the third set of […]
Volunteers’ Week 5: The fatal dangers of shunting
By Cheryl Hunnisett on June 5, 2019 in Accident reports, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources, Volunteers’ Week
In the latest of our Volunteers’ Week posts, project volunteer Cheryl Hunnisett, working with us at the Modern Records Centre, takes a look at one case she encountered in the records of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants trade union. This is another great example of the ways in which our volunteers are actively taking […]
‘a question whether a man who suffers under this disability should occupy such a position’
Perhaps surprisingly, the question of literacy doesn’t seem to come up in the worker accident reports too frequently. It appears as though in most cases railway staff had at least a functional level of reading. Presumably their level was more than just functional, too, given the key document employees were reading, so far as the […]
Benjamin Emery – a family mystery solved!
We’re really pleased to be able to feature this guest post from Yvonne Kerry. In the course of researching her family history she came across our project – with a useful conclusion for her search! What makes this doubly-pleasing is that Yvonne works in the railway industry today – a family line, perhaps. We’re always […]
From injury to fatality
In past blog posts we’ve discussed some of the cases of workers known to have had more than one accident – a theme to which we return today. Albert Robert Cox forms part of the group of 14 individuals who each had 2 accidents. His first documented accident took place on 25 November 1911, at […]
Fog, steam and speed: fireman Edward Booth’s gravestone
We’re going beyond the edges of the project in this post, to look at a passenger crash and its aftermath. This week it’s the anniversary of the Ulleskelf accident, which took place on 24 November 1906. It killed two railwaymen, the driver and fireman of the express train that ploughed into the back of a […]
Halloween: A mystery man, an eerie rabbit & a railway death
As we’re heading towards Halloween, it seems only fitting that we’ve a supernatural case, involving an accident to a railway worker, to bring to your attention. It’s a great demonstration of the promise of our project work, combined with digitisation and transcription of seemingly unrelated documents: the combination and linking of sources is very pleasing. […]
Burns Awareness – past & present
17 October is National Burns Awareness Day, organised by the British Burn Association, a charity set up in 1968 to educate and encourage research into all aspects of burn injury, its treatment and prevention. Some railway staff could have used the Association over 50 years previously, however, as they experienced burns as a part of […]
