In the past we’ve blogged about individuals appearing in our records but who weren’t employees of railway companies – detailed here, with an overview here. Some of these accidents happened to people who had reason to be around the railway (like coal merchants or Post Office staff) and some who were working on the railways […]
Tag Archives | JJ Hornby
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 […]
Dying for a wee – 1
As travellers today (when we’re able to resume travelling) we may be less than enamoured of the toilets on trains – all too often cramped, unclean or even out-of-order. But at least they’ve been provided for us. That isn’t always the case for staff – and that’s a long-standing issue. Earlier this year I wrote […]
Dorset’s railway accidents
28 March was originally planned to host Dorset History Day – though obviously that’s now been postponed due to Coronavirus. However, as we’d written this blog post already, we thought we’d still put it up! What would have been Dorset History Day offers us a cue to consider local and regional history and how […]
Leaving the kettle on
From time to time we might leave an appliance running whilst we’re doing something elsewhere – leaving the oven or kettle on, for example, when we’re not in the same room. It’s a pragmatic action, saving waiting time and enabling us to get on with something else. On the railways the time pressure under which […]
Not learning from past experience – with fatal consequences
We’ve blogged in the past about those cases in our database where staff had two accidents (see here for the most recent of those posts). This week we return to another such case: Great Northern Railway porter George Lewis of Leicester. The first time he appears in our database was for an accident on 27 […]
Transcription Tuesday: John James’ story
By Mike Esbester on February 4, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Disability, Linking sources, Transcription Tuesday
UPDATED 17/12/2019 – The Transcription Tuesday data is now available! Find out more here. Ahead of tomorrow’s Transcription Tuesday, which we hope you’ll join in with, we’re posting one more case from the opening pages of the volume that is being transcribed. It’s another helpful example, as we’re able to combine sources to get a […]
Transcription Tuesday: William Travis’ story
By Mike Esbester on January 28, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Blog, Linking sources, Transcription Tuesday
UPDATED 17/12/2019 – The Transcription Tuesday data is now available! Find out more here. Continuing the build up to next week’s Transcription Tuesday, we’ve selected another case from the volume we’ll be working on. This time it reveals what happened to W Travis, a member of the Oldham branch of the Amalgamated Society of […]
Transcription Tuesday: William Mercer’s story
By Mike Esbester on January 21, 2019 in Accident reports, Blog, Linking sources, Transcription Tuesday
UPDATED 17/12/2019 – The Transcription Tuesday data is now available! Find out more here. Although Transcription Tuesday is still a little way off, we’ve had a look at the first pages of the volume we’ll be working on, to test the transcription process and to get a sense of the stories it contains. […]
‘she was thrown violently down’
We’ve posted about accidents to women railway workers before (see here and here). Each time we’ve noted that there are relatively women in our data so far (here) – only 3 in our original data release of 3,928 cases, with a further 3 in our most recent release covering the Great Eastern Railway (GER) and […]
