SPOTLIGHT ON THE Railway Work, Life & Death project
The Railway Work, Life & Death project is trying to make it easier for you to find out about work and accidents on Britain and Ireland’s railways before 1939. Project co-leader Dr Mike Esbester tells us more…
SPOTLIGHT ON
Accidents might not seem like the most promising of family history topics – but as we’ve been finding on the Railway Work, Life & Death (RWLD) project, they can tell us a lot about the people involved and their working lives.
That’s important, as many of us have ancestors who worked on Britain and Ireland’s railways. Around the time of World War I, these railways employed nearly 640,000 people. Tragically, it was also a dangerous workplace: in 1913 alone, nearly 30,000 people were injured or killed. Those accidents produced a huge quantity of records, which the RWLD project is transcribing and making freely available, via our website: www. railwayaccidents.port.ac.uk.
What’s in it for me?
We’ve produced a database of nearly 50,000 cases of railway worker accident, ill-health or old age, between the late 1880s and 1939. You can download it from our website, as a spreadsheet.
The records come from official accident investigations produced by state inspectors, and from records kept by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS)/ National Union of Railwaymen trade union about support provided to members.
Working with family historians, we’ve designed the database to be as useful as possible. You can search by name, location, county, country, date, job role, employer and a range of other options. Some records tell you exactly what happened in an accident, helping us understand both the incident and more generally what work involved for people doing that job.
Even if your railway ancestor didn’t have an accident at work, if you know their job title (‘grade’), then you can find out lots about the types of work they would have been doing – and the dangers they faced. Our weekly blog also looks in depth at some of the cases, helping you to find out more about what it was like to work on the railways at this time.
Project records show, for example, that William Taysome was a mineral guard (a goods guard in charge of a mineral train) for the Barry Railway Company in south Wales. On 25 January 1912 he went between an engine and wagon at Barry to uncouple them, but was crushed to death. His widow received £245 compensation from the company, and a weekly payment of five shillings from the ASRS Union to support their three children
