In this guest blog post, one anonymous project volunteer looks at a very specific aspect noticed in the entries in the volume of one railway company’s casualty records: suicide. This is a challenging topic, in many ways, which might account for its neglect so far as railway history goes. We’ve previously featured a blog post […]
Tag Archives | Midland Railway
Hezekiah Brett – ‘Cut in Two by an Express’
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 […]
William Charles Lilley
By Archie McDermott-Paintin on June 21, 2021 in Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Local History
This week our blog features a guest post from Archie McDermott-Paintin, a 2nd year History student at the University of Portsmouth. Archie worked with fellow student Marc Treloar (whose post was featured a couple of weeks’ ago) and project co-lead Mike Esbester on project data, including early access to our data release planned for later […]
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 […]
‘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 […]
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 […]
George Page (1845 – 1899)
By Sue Page on October 14, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources
In this guest blog post, Sue Page looks at the life & death of her Great Grandfather and the impact it had on his family over a longer period. Sue came along to the workshop session the project put on at Family Tree Live hoping to find out more – hopefully she did about the […]
Arthur Bott’s final walk
By Francis Howcutt on February 24, 2020 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources
In this guest post, Francis Howcutt recounts the accidental death of Arthur Bott, a brother of his great grandfather. Arthur’s history is an example of how the railways helped provide the children of agricultural labourers with opportunities beyond their ancestral villages, as well as the associated dangers. One of the particularly nice things about this […]
Transcription Tuesday: a miscellany of cases
UPDATED 17/12/2019 – The Transcription Tuesday data is now available! Find out more here. For Transcription Tuesday, taking place on 5 February, we’re going to be transcribing an entire volume – over 2,000 cases – of trades union records. For the coming week, in the lead up to the event, we’re going to […]
Filling in the Gaps
By Gordon Dudman on February 11, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Guest contribution, Linking sources, Transcription Tuesday
Following up on the success of last week’s Transcription Tuesday event – for more on that, see here – this week we’re delighted to offer a guest contribution from one of our transcribers. In it, Gordon Dudman thinks about the process of transcription and goes into a bit more detail on just a few of […]
