In January 2021 we received a comment on one of our blog posts. Sid Harbour had contacted us, saying ‘I have just discovered your website. Could you please tell me if the info is searchable. My Grandfather lost his leg while working on the railway possibly 1900. We know the Family story how it happened […]
Tag Archives | Great Eastern Railway
A Sad and Unusual Discovery in Family Research
By Enid Rispin on December 31, 2018 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Disability, Family History, Guest contribution
We’re pleased to be able to feature another guest contribution, from family historian Enid Rispin looking back at the railway ancestors in her family – though with a tragic tale. It helps to illustrate the lasting damage of workplace accidents that stretched beyond the physical – something not generally revealed in the official accident reports, […]
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, […]
An accident at Epping
This week we have a guest post from Philip James, looking at another accident he transcribed as part of his role as an NRM project volunteer. Here he puts the case in its local railway context, with a touching personal connection noted in the final image. Philip has written several posts for us already, found […]
The Great Eastern Railway and accidents to staff
By Ian Strugnell on April 13, 2020 in Accident reports, Blog, Guest contribution, Linking sources, Local History
We’re grateful to Ian Strugnell for this guest blog post. Ian is a member of the Great Eastern Railway Society, and got in touch after we contributed a piece about the project to the Society’s Newsletter. Of particular relevance was the work we’d done on the GER’s Benevolent Fund book (see here). Ian has been […]
Thomas Henry Stearn: injured at work, died at war
Last year we blogged about some of the railway staff who were injured at work and then went on to fight and die in the First World War. They appear in both our database and the NRM’s Fallen Railwaymen database, also put together by volunteers. We identified 11 men who cross over like this, including […]
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 […]
Coalman cum crossing keeper
It’s been a while since we blogged a case from our Great Eastern Railway benevolent fund dataset, so we thought we’d return to it to give it a bit more prominence in the project. In amongst the 500 or so individuals who applied to the fund for support we can find all sort of injuries, […]
Spidery scrawl and good eyesight
Back in November we released our second set of project data – details of around 500 Great Eastern Railway (GER) staff and former staff, between them making about 600 applications to the GER Benevolent Fund for support following an accident at work. The applications were made between 1913 and 1923, but as the data showed, […]
