Earlier this year we were contacted by the author of this blog post, Sarah Maczugowska, seeking information about her Great Grandfather John Pratt’s role on the railway – in particular, the ‘special guard duty’ during the First World War that was to result in his death. Whilst we couldn’t help directly, when knew someone who […]
Tag Archives | platelayer
An accident at Highbury & Is
This week we have another guest post from Philip James, part of the NRM team and our most prolific blog contributor – read his other posts here. Philip starts by giving us a bit of insight into both the project work and a potential direction for the future, before exploring one of the accident cases […]
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 […]
Did illiteracy kill James Coughlin?
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 […]
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 […]
The Life & Death of Thomas Hall
Last year the author of this guest post, Tom Hall, got in touch with us. Having found out about the project, he wanted to let us know about an accident that wouldn’t feature in our database as it was too early – the death of his Great Great Great Grandfather, Thomas Hall, in 1860. After […]
Death of a platelayer
In this week’s post, guest author Rob Langham takes us back almost to birth of the railway age in England – a time when railways were rather more dangerous for passengers and, of course, staff than at the end of the century. The post arose from the research into his new book, The Stanhope & […]
Family, anxiety & accident
Today we are fortunate in that the idea of work-life balance exists – if only as an ideal, in many cases. People interested in understanding how and why accidents happen are increasingly recognising that boundaries drawn between work and home life are false. But this isn’t new. A notable rail example is the 1892 Thirsk […]
Thrown from their wagon
For some staff, getting to or from work was a matter of walking. For permanent way staff, who might be working on track many miles from where they were based, getting to the site of work might involve riding on or in wagons. That wasn’t without risk – as William Layton and William Day found […]
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 […]
