Francis Howcutt has looked at where his family history and railways met previously, in this blog post, so we’re delighted to welcome him back. In this post, Francis explores the story of Hezekiah Brett, a cousin of his 2x great grandfather. Sadly, Hezekiah committed suicide in 1895, but the reasons mentioned at the inquest may […]
Tag Archives | London and North Western Railway
Holywell Junction – the men, pt 2
In yesterday’s blog we outlined what we knew of two of the men involved in the Holywell Junction accident, Richard Jones and Alfred Jones. Today we look at the other two men. Josiah Jones Josiah Jones was born in Whitford, Flintshire, in 1881, to Owen, a carpenter, and Elizabeth. He had an elder brother, […]
Holywell Junction – the men, pt 1
By Mike Esbester on August 31, 2022 in Accident aftermath, Accident reports, Anniversary, Blog, Family History
Yesterday’s blog looked at the accident at Holywell Junction on 1 September 1922. The next blog posts will look at the men involved. To be honest, the heart sank a bit when we saw we had a case which involved 3 ‘Jones’ – but we’ve found at least a little information about each of the […]
Listed accidents
Recently it was announced that the site of the Edge Hill engine station in Liverpool has been given listed status. This is to mark the important heritage status of the site, which is one of the places and moments in the development of main line railways. It was the original terminus of the Liverpool and […]
Holywell Junction, 1 September 1922
Alfred Henry Jones. Josiah Jones. Richard Jones. Daniel Roberts. Once again we start a blog post with the names of multiple men killed at work on the railways. Once again, it’s a case of track workers, hit by a train whilst they were maintaining the lines. It comes nearly 6 months after we […]
John Rigby of Long Buckby Wharf
By Julie G on April 26, 2021 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Disability, Guest contribution, Local History
In today’s guest blog post, Julie G takes us back to a place-based approach. She’s interested in Long Buckby Wharf, in Northants – a transport hub, of sorts, with road, rail and canal links. Needless to say, that involved accidents, and she’s blogged about several – rail and canal – on her One Place Study […]
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 […]
Jonathan Rogers: only a year on the railways
In this guest post, Linda Whitaker has kindly written up the death of one of her ancestors, Jonathan Rogers. His accident was one of the many that took place before records of staff accidents were kept, so it’s great to be able to get some information about his case which otherwise wouldn’t feature in the […]
Dowler’s double – with under 3 months between them
We return to one of the great things about our database for today’s blog post: the way it makes it possible to search the accident records more easily and identify links that might otherwise be missed. One way we’ve shown this in the past has been via the ‘double accidents’: those where a single person […]
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread?
We’ve noted in the past how a great many accidents happened in mundane circumstances, to a single railway worker – and how this obscured the accidents, as they weren’t spectacular or newsworthy (by the standards of the day). Sometimes accidents affected more than one worker – as in this case, which injured two men at […]
