The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.49 No.2 | September 2022

Local Group Programmes

the more general three balls of pawnbrokers. What we think of as public houses had their own, a general sign might be a bunch of grapes or a barrel. Others had signs pertaining to the trade of the owner who might have had another occupation of were used a meeting places for trades people; Baker’s Arms or Bakers’ Arms. Some used the heraldry of the royal and other noble families hence Crown, Kings Head, Kings Arms, George, Victoria. (May) Railway worker accidents in the Portsmouth area before 1939 – Mike Esbester Report by Sue Shuttleworth Mike Esbester of Portsmouth University gave an interesting insight into the dangerous work railway workers were subjected to, factors that may have caused their injury, their environment, pressure to get the job done, and boldness leading to taking risks, and also the lack of details on most of their accidents. Looking at the period 1880s-1939, railway workers were involved in far more accidents at work than passengers using the railway network. Passenger accidents made the newspapers as they were rare occurrences, and usually on a big scale e.g. 30 June 1906 Salisbury disaster. For the railway worker, who made up a third of the UK’s workforce in 1900s, their accidents were considered “carelessness” by the Railway Companies. When the companies talked about safety on the railway it was the passengers they were thinking about, adult male workers were expected to look after themselves. Many of the railway workers jobs were fraught with danger. Gangs of plate layers worked amongst moving trains, couplings attached and unattached manually, emptying hot ash and clinker from the steam engine at the end of the day, riveters with no personal protection, shunting using rope between wagons and tender then manually retrieving it while wagons in motion, all posed potential injury. There were over 14,000 workers injuries in 1903 alone. One happened locally, on 3 April 1903, to William Maynard, hit his head on a footbridge near Cosham, while trying to get a tool from the tender. He was found responsible for the accident as he could have recovered the tool while in Cosham station. While Railway Companies refused to recognise Trade Unions and their concerns for the workers safety, they did try and put in prevention measures: use of supervisors, investigating to prevent future accidents, circulars and rules, signage e.g. “Do not walk between wall and ash siding.” Company Magazines began showing how to do things, and how not to, using photographs eg Great Western Railway Magazine Nov 1913. 356, and posters were displayed e.g. Keep Death off the Track remember Rule 234a Stand Clear. If Worker’s Accident Reports survive, they provide some details, name, job, place of event, account of accident, injuries, and sometimes witness names, but these records were not indexed and of patchy survival. Mike Esbester and volunteers in the Railway Work, Life and Death Project, have transcribed accident reports and using newspapers, maps, census, birth and marriage certificates and other related information have endeavoured to find out more about the individuals. So far they have 6,500 railway workers on their data base with over 70,000 more to add over the coming years, covering Great Britain and Ireland. They are eager for mutual collaboration in research and hope people searching for relatives in their database will contact them, to expand their

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