We’re delighted to welcome Sandra Gittens back to the project blog this week. Sandra is known for her research on – amongst others – the railways of the First World War. In the course of that work she’s uncovered a number of accidents to railway staff on military duty overseas, many of which she’s already […]
Tag Archives | fireman
John William Hawley, 1868-1909: A family tragedy remembered
By Megan Carswell on February 4, 2022 in Accident aftermath, Anniversary, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution
A year ago, we posted this blog about the 1909 Sharnbrook accident, which killed 2 railway workers. Shortly afterwards, we were contacted by this week’s guest author, Megan Carswell – the Great Niece of one of the men killed at Sharnbrook. A discussion followed, and we’re grateful that Megan was willing to do a bit […]
‘For God’s sake go and stop him’: The Sharnbrook crash, Feburary 1909
Something of a departure for our usual project focus, this week’s blog makes use of an accident report type we don’t usually have reason to include. Our project database so far draws largely from reports issued by the Railway Inspectors appointed solely to investigate accidents to workers (called Sub-Inspectors or Assistant Sub-Inspectors, producing the Appendix […]
Tracing a railway career pt. 1 – introducing James Stoneman
Many of our blog posts focus on the thing central to our project: railway staff accidents. Increasingly we’re trying to think more broadly about the life stories of the individuals involved – where we can find out more about them. Very often family historians have been leading the way here. Today’s guest post turns the […]
My railway
This guest post breaks new ground for the project – by focusing on the experiences of railway staff, written in their own words. As he describes, Dave Wilson started on the railways in BR days, and has been good enough to put a few recollections down ‘on paper’ for us, so far as his experiences […]
A Brynamman Accident
On 5 June 1914 Midland Railway fireman Iestyn Newman Nash, 27, was working his turn at Brynamman, Carmarthenshire. Moving some coaches to prepare his train, he appears to have leaned out of the engine in order to watch for any signals from the guard. Somewhat ominously, the state report, taken by JJ Hornby, noted that […]
Life after an accident
By Pete Coveney on September 28, 2020 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Disability, Family History, Guest contribution
In this week’s post, we welcome a contribution from Pete Coveney. He was put on to us by long-time project friend and support, genealogist Jackie Depelle, as she thought we might be able to help him find out more about his father’s accident. Unfortunately everything we suggested didn’t lead to anything – so if you […]
Percy Abbott of Salisbury, his father William and a 1930s accident
We’re delighted that this week’s post is from a guest author, Chris Abbott. We met at the Family Tree Live event last year and he’s been good enough to put this blog post together. In it, he draws upon his family’s experiences of railway work and railway accidents; particularly nice is that his father was […]
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 […]
Dying for a wee – 2
Two weeks’ ago we looked at accidents to carriage and wagon staff who were keeping the railway network’s on-train toilets stocked. Provision was clearly made for passenger comfort and convenience – but what about the staff? In this week’s post, we’re looking at those cases where operating staff had to improvise when they wanted to […]
