This week, the Railway Work, Life & Death project is off to Aberystwyth, for the Transport for Wales Railway 200 launch! It’s a privilege to have been invited to the launch, and we’re looking forward to working more with Transport for Wales and other Welsh organisations over the coming months and hopefully years. We’ve some ambitious plans in place, which will really help the project contribute to Welsh railway history and the current industry in Wales.
We thought that looking at where Aberystwyth railway workers feature in the Railway Work, Life & Death project database of railway employee accidents was an excellent means of showing what the project can offer. We’ve taken this approach before, including for another Welsh town, Senghenydd, and it’s been very worthwhile. The database is a rich resource, full of detail about life on the railway – and beyond – in the past. Taking a particular location as a focus really demonstrates the power of the database and what the Railway Work, Life & Death project is doing. It can give us a window into the breadth of railway work, as well as the realities of working life for different grades of staff. It goes beyond the railway, too, to show how the workers were a part of their local area.
Focus on Aberystwyth & Railway 200
For Aberystwyth, we’re going to do two things. Firstly, this blog post. We hope it’ll give a snapshot of the town and its railway staff, drawing on only a few of the people and cases found in the database. There will be plenty of others we don’t feature – and you’re warmly invited to explore what the database holds.
Secondly, on Thursday 23 January, as we travel by train to Aberystwyth, via the Cambrian Line, we’re going to live post the journey on the Railway Work, Life & Death social media accounts. We’ve done this in the past, using ‘#AccidentalJourney’, and found them to be an eye-opening way to explore the database – as well as of great public interest. So, from around 6.30am on 23 January, on Bluesky and Twitter, we’ll post a case from our database about the stations we stop at on the way to Aberystwyth. (If time, we’ll do the return journey, too, with different people & cases – sadly, there’s easily enough to do this (as every) journey multiple times over.)
For both this blog post and the #AccidentalJourney, we’re drawing from those cases already available to you via the project database. We’re also sneaking in some people and cases currently ‘behind the scenes.’ We’re working on two major data releases, which we’re aiming to make public in 2025. The first will focus on records produced by the railway companies – including a significant number (perhaps as many as 25,000) produced by Welsh railway companies. The second data release will complete our trade union dataset, which we partially released in 2023.
It seems fitting to release so many cases – in the tens of thousands – during the Railway 200 year. They’ll help us appreciate what it was like to work on the railways in the past, as well as identify some of the hundreds of thousands of women, men and children who kept our railways moving. We hope that it’ll also help and encourage more people to look into the people, places and events in our database. We’ve written more about how this might work in this blog post, and we always welcome guest contributions to our blog.
Aberystwyth – railway and town
On the west coast of Wales, Aberystwyth has long been a significant town. With a population of 8,442 in 1851, by 1901 it had grown to 10,889. The railway arrived in the town in 1864, with what would become the Cambrian Railways approaching from Machynlleth. The Great Western Railway (GWR) entered the town from the direction of Carmarthen. A third railway, the Vale of Rheidol Light Railway, was a narrow gauge route which reached the town in 1902. It was absorbed into the Cambrian in 1913, before that was itself absorbed into the GWR in 1923.
Courtesy National Library of Scotland Maps.
There’s an interesting Welsh initiative – which we’d love to contribute to (watch this space!) – called HistoryPoints. They’re adding QR codes to Welsh locations that enable people to find out more about those sites – of course including railway spaces. They’ve already done some of this in Aberystwyth, but might there be scope for contributions from the Railway Work, Life & Death project about some of the railway people and events associated with Welsh railway places?
Frank Mills, goods porter
Cambrian Railways goods porter Frank Mills appears twice in railway company records that we’ll add to the project database later this year. From the late 1890s the railway companies were forced to keep reliable and detailed records of accidents to railway staff. Before this point, their record keeping was patchy at best. In essence, they recorded as much as might be useful to them – these were operational records, after all. Those that survive for England and Wales are held at The National Archives of the UK, with whom we’ve been working, and contain helpful information about what happened, to whom and the aftermath.
So, in the case of Frank Mills we know that on 14 March 1904 he was lifting a box of eggs in the railway warehouse at Aberystwyth. He fell and injured his wrist. As was frequently the case with staff accidents, the internal investigation determined that it was down to his ‘own want of caution’. He was off work for 24 days; under the terms of the Workmen’s Compensation Act, Mills received 16 shillings pay during that period (around £106 today). At this point his normal weekly was 16 shillings
Just over a year later, Mills reappears in the records. On 26 April 1905 he was helping to lift a large stone slab onto a carter’s lorry, when the slab slipped and landed on Mills’ foot. One of his toes was crushed, though he didn’t leave work until 4 May. Why not? Was he carrying on in the hopes it ‘wasn’t too bad’? Did he need the money and thought he couldn’t stop working? We won’t know for sure, but when he did stop, he was off work for 12 days. By now he was earning 17 shillings per week, but he didn’t claim any compensation whilst he was off. This accident too was determined to be due to want of caution.
Frank Mills & the pigs
Usually for blog posts we try to find out more about the worker and their wider life. Very often the relatively minor accidents that Mills experienced wouldn’t lead to significant change. In those cases, we often see the worker appearing in later census returns as having continued in the employment of the railway company. However, by 1911 Frank was a farm labourer in Lampeter. So what happened?
His injuries didn’t seem sufficiently severe to have led to a change of occupation. Instead, it was something else. Not long after his second accident, in August 1905, he took charge of 18 pigs, being sent to Birmingham – some of the 5000 pigs that the farmer sent by train annually. Mills was found guilty of animal cruelty, as the wagon in which the pigs were sent hadn’t been sufficiently cleaned of lime (used to sterilise cattle and livestock wagons), and the pigs were burned. He was sentenced to three months’ hard labour.
This wasn’t the end of the story, however. By the time of his conviction in September, the Cambrian Railways had already dismissed Mills’ from its service. He had been making ends meet by working for masons. According to the Welsh Gazette ‘being anxious to keep his place in order to provide for his family he did not feel justified in spending his small pittance on the railway fare’ to his hearing in Birmingham.
‘A man of blameless life’
The case seems to have aroused considerable sympathy in Aberystwyth, not least as there was a suggestion that the railway company might have contributed to the problem. It was suggested that ‘Mills had not been long used to the work of cleaning cattle trucks’ and that he ‘did his best to clear [the lime] out at the short time at his disposal’. The role of the consignee was also questioned. The Welsh Gazette was clearly taking Mills’ case against ‘a monstrous sentence.’ It printed a number of letters in support of Mills, ‘a man of blameless life, and the sole support of a young mother and baby’.
The local MP and other dignitaries rallied, and a petition was drawn up. In October 1905 Mills’ sentence was reduced to 28 days’ hard labour, by that point mostly served. Mills may well have been put in an impossible position, with inadequate training or supervision and under pressure to get the wagon ready to take the pigs on the departing train – but the Cambrian Railways don’t seem to have re-employed him. Instead he was to look – ironically – to farm labour to support his growing family. By the time of the 1921 Census, he and his wife, Harriet, had had 6 children.
Taking Frank Mills appearance in the railway accident records as a starting point, and researching around the records, it’s been possible to see far beyond his immediate work as a goods porter. There’s clearly value in understanding that, and the dangers that saw him have two accidents in just over a year. But we can also see wider questions about the railway companies and how they operated; normal practices of moving goods and cattle in the area; civic life; attitudes towards animals and towards the practice of the law, and how one moment could change to course of the lives of many people.
Meredith’s foot
Frank Mills was the first of the Aberystwyth workers we looked at – and by chance it turned out there was an unusual amount to say about his life. As a result, for our other cases, we’ve focused on how the people appear in the accident records, in order to give a sense of the range of railway staff, work and accidents in Aberystwyth in the past. We haven’t done such a detailed work-up on their lives. No doubt if we did it would be possible to uncover the trials and tribulations as well as successes that each person experienced.
D Meredith – we think Daniel – was injured on 2 April 1904. He was a porter for the Cambrian Railways, paid 15 shillings per week. Whilst uncoupling some coaches in the yard, the heel of his boot got caught between parts of the track where two lines crossed. He was knocked down by the coach – fortunately for him, the coach wheels ‘only’ crushed his foot against the rail. ‘Want of caution’ makes its reappearance in this case, meaning Meredith was held responsible. This was a rather more serious accident, and he was off work for 133 days. He was paid £7.11.3 in compensation – around £1000 now.
This type of accident could easily have been fatal, or left Meredith with a life-changing injury. Whilst we can’t be certain, it appears that he remained with the Company, as a porter. He appears on the 1911 Census, boarding (with another railway worker) at 1 Greenfield Street. The property belonged to the Tregonings – the husband, William, being a Cambrian Railways carter. Needless to say, with a distinctive surname, we had a quick look in the accidents data – and yes, one W Tregoning, carter, appears…but that’s another story!
More than accidents
Whilst the Railway Work, Life & Death project focuses closely on accidents and safety, we also have significant evidence about railway worker health and the aging process. This comes through the trade union dataset, drawn from the records of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) trade union – from 1913, the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR; now the RMT Union). These records are held at project partner the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick.
Amongst the records are details of who received support from the Union. This includes the death benefit that was paid automatically when a member died, of whatever cause. Dependents would receive a standard £5 lump sum. This included the family of Great Western Railway (GWR) guard D Jones, member of the NUR Aberystwyth branch since 1906. When he died of cardiac failure, on 21 July 1915, aged 34, his dependents received the death benefit payment. We don’t know whether the cardiac failure was related to his employment; however, using the Union records we can start to gain insight into the health of a large group of workers.
Of course, there are plenty of accidents in the Union records too. GWR passenger guard D Thomas, also of the Aberystwyth branch of the NUR, had an accident on 23 December 1914. Whilst we don’t know what happened, it led to a payment of £20 – a fairly typical amount – from the Disablement Fund. It’s unclear, but presumed this meant he was likely to have been invalided out of railway service.
We have a little more detail on the accident that met 49-year old Cambrian Railways goods guard CR Williams on 24 April 1918. His left hand was crushed, keeping him off work until 8 June. During that time he received 25 shillings per week in compensation. As a result, he appears in the Union’s non-fatal compensation records.
More than railway workers
It wasn’t just railway workers who were hurt on and around the railways. Plenty of people had good reason to be on railway property, including in spaces where railway wagons were being moved. For Michael Evans, 63, this proved to be problematic on 5 December 1911.
He had come to the station to unload bricks. To do so, he climbed on to one of the wagons. The wagons were then moved, to get them into the right place for unloading – Evans remained on the wagon. When it was stopped, he fell to the ground, breaking a rib and injuring his right shoulder. This accident was inquired into by the state accident investigators, the Railway Inspectorate. Inspector JJ Hornby found that Evans was aware of the routine for unloading, and shouldn’t have placed himself in danger. Equally, though, shunter W Vaughan was held culpable for not having asked Evans to get down.
Moving goods
Many railway dangers were associated with the movement of stock – and particularly freight wagons. In the (largely) pre-motor era, moving goods over any significant distance beyond the local area would likely involve the railways. This meant wagons had to be coupled and uncoupled station-by-station – and that task involved railway workers (all male in the period the project is covering) called ‘shunters.’
On 3 January 1919, Cambrian Railways shunter Richard Jones was trying to couple a van (a covered wagon) to a steam engine at Aberystwyth. Rather than waiting until the engine had stopped, he tried to do it whilst it was still moving. He was using a shunting pole (a wooden pole with a metal hook on the end), but it slipped. His right hand was caught between the buffers and bruised.
Interestingly, the Company decided this was down to ‘misadventure’, rather than finding Jones culpable. Jones was off work for 22 days, receiving one quarter of his usual weekly wage of £2.11.0 – a total of £3.19.2 (approximately £225 at today’s prices).
A boy and an explosion
Shunting accidents like the one Richard Jones experienced were very common. However, some cases stand out as they contain something unusual – very much the case for Cambrian Railways message boy Barry Williams. On 29 August 1919 his left arm was burned, when a GWR long-burning signal lamp exploded. Frustratingly this is all we have been able to find out about Williams and the explosion so far. It’s the kind of case we’d expect would have been reported in local newspapers, but it appears not. Williams was only off work for 5 days, and as a result, didn’t claim compensation on his regular weekly wage of £1.6.6.
Beyond the standard
It wouldn’t be right to look at Aberystwyth without including the Vale of Rheidol line. Finding a narrow gauge line operating alongside and with a mainline company is relatively uncommon, but it was still a railway – and therefore still had dangers for staff operating it.
Fireman JE Davies was coaling an engine on the Vale of Rheidol line. He was loading coal from a wagon when a piece of coal fell and caught him on the leg. It wounded his left shin, and kept him off work for 23 days. His weekly wage was £4.4.5 – considerably higher than Jones and Williams. Those roles recognised and understand as involving a great level of skill were relatively well paid, and having access to relative wage levels via our database and the original sources is important in understanding railway work. Whilst he was off work, Davies received £5.16.8 – around £330 now.
A snapshot of Aberystwyth and its railway risks
Putting even these few cases together helps us to find new ways into understanding more about Aberystwyth and its people. As the project expands, there will be more and more Aberystwyth people included – and that is mirrored across Wales and beyond. Not only can we see railway worker, but we get a sense of where railway staff were at work beyond the immediate boundaries of the railway sites. With some further research, we can start to appreciate the wider lives of railway workers, too – their families and their communities. All of this stretches far beyond ‘just’ railway employee accidents, and touches on much bigger social, political, economic and many other issues.
We warmly invite you, therefore, whatever your interest, to have a look at the Railway Work, Life & Death database and see what it offers you. Do please let us know who and what you find, and how it’s benefitting you/ what you’re using it for. We’ll pass this on to the volunteers who are the core of our project – it gives us all a real boost to hear that.