We might tend to question the extent to which many of the working classes – for it is the working classes who are largely the subject of these accident reports – could read or write. For the railway industry the indications are actually that the workforce was highly literate, but the ability to read certainly […]
Tag Archives | JPS Main
19 January 1911 – a bad day on the permanent way
Some days on the railways were worse than others – in total, and for particular grades of workers. The 19th of January was one which fell into the ‘worse’ camp. Across the database as a whole, fifteen individuals were involved in accidents between 1911 and 1915. Nine of these were in 1911 alone, including seven […]
Allocating accident investigations
In this post, project volunteer Brian Grainger, with the NRM team, raises some questions about the practicalities of the Board of Trade accident inspectors’ work. His previous post, here, delved into who the inspectors were. It’s therefore nice to welcome Brian back to the blog. When Brian put this together he was working on the […]
Working 9-5? Not in 1915 – Long hours 1
In the early 1890s a public scandal arose over the hours some railway employees worked. We might conclude that the press and MPs who took up the case were very public spirited and willing to campaign on behalf of others, particularly as it resulted in the 1893 Railway Regulation Act which (theoretically) restricted employees’ hours […]
A one-way problem
Railway working produced all sorts of odd terms, specific to the industry. Some of these are less obvious than others – but one which might more easily be understood from the title is ‘tow-roping.’ Not dissimilar from towing a vehicle on the roads, tow-roping involved using a rope to pull a wagon or wagons. It […]
Speeding up death
Around the turn of the twentieth century, the main railway trades unions started complaining about ‘speeding up’: the intensity of work being increased, whether by more work being demanded in the same time or by the requirement operate bigger and more powerful machinery (particularly the locomotives). The unions concerned were the (brilliantly and entirely Victorian-named) […]
‘Further accidents may be anticipated’
When looking at safety, risk and accidents, on the railways and more widely, many interesting questions occur. Some of them are relatively small scale – about day-to-day activities, for instance, or on a slightly bigger scale, about working, living and playing conditions. Some of them are much bigger – what role should the state play […]
Inspecting the Inspectors
In this guest post, NRM volunteer Brian Grainger reflects on some questions that have occurred to him in the course of transcribing the state accident reports – first in our first dataset, then for the interwar period (currently being prepared for release) and now in the final run of data covering 1900-1910. The project is […]
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 […]
Monorail, monorail, monorail …
Most of the cases in our database are fairly standard – certainly in terms of being above ground and referring to ‘standard gauge’ track (the well-known 4 foot 8 and a half inches between rails, albeit the reasons for which are debated). However, there are some outliers – including accidents on underground railways (London and […]
