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 & Tyne Rail-Road Company, released last week. Here he recounts a bizarre case from 1839, demonstrating some animosities between different grades of staff!

As ever, we’re always keen to feature guest blog posts, so if you’ve an idea, please let us know. We welcome a variety of approaches & methodologies from all types of historical researchers, and putting the worker and their accident in wider context (e.g. family history, local community) is excellent.

Whilst researching the history of the Stanhope & Tyne Rail-Road, which operated from 1834 to 1841 when it nearly bankrupted Robert Stephenson, amongst other shareholders, unsurprisingly for an early railway its timeline soon became marked with numerous grisly deaths and injuries. The most well known accident is that of the opening of the first half of the line on 15 May 1834 when a wagon carrying around forty to fifty people ran away down a steep incline which resulted in two deaths and others injured. Numerous others occurred, which came to light from searching through old newspaper articles. A particularly curious one was a report of an engineman put on trial at the Durham Summer Assizes in 1839 for the death of a platelayer occurring on the morning of Tuesday 4 June 1839, on the line between Boldon and Fatfield. Ardent searching found a later report which told the rest of the story, creating as many new questions as it answered.

A locomotive had come to a stop on the line between Fatfield and Boldon to take on water at the Don station house, and whilst stationary, twenty-year old engineman Thomas Smith was raking the ashes from the firebox. Whilst doing so, platelayer John Alderson came up to the locomotive and apparently without warning struck Smith on the head with his hand. Smith said he would strike Alderson if he did it again, and Alderson did, knocking Smiths cap off. Smith then hit Alderson on the head with the iron coal rake Smith was using and had in hand but was not sure whether it was the teeth of the rake that hit Alderson. Alderson shouted, ‘oh dear’ and went into the station house.

Four men – Smith and the other engineman named Dixon, William Winter who was witness at the trial, and Alderson’s brother, went after Alderson, and Smith offered him some cotton waste to wipe his head with. Alderson refused at first but upon Smith offering again, Alderson accepted. Alderson then raised his fist and threatened Smith but did not strike him. Smith and Dixon then went away on the engine, and Winter put Alderson on his way to a surgeon to see to the wound. The wound was bleeding heavily but when Winter last saw Alderson he still appeared strong and not tipsy at all. Alderson’s body was later found in a ditch that ran by the side of the road, several hundred yards from the station, by a girl on her way to school who saw Alderson’s cap lying in the road and then his body in the ditch. The body was face downwards in the water, which was only a few inches deep and so did not cover the head, and his arms crossed over his chest. A surgeon at West Boldon who examined the body decided that the wound on the head was ‘sufficient to cause death’.

The judge however was of the decision that the wound was insufficient to cause death if ‘proper means had been taken to staunch the blood’. The judge stopped the case as death was likely caused by suffocation rather than by the wound itself. Whilst the wounding by Smith of Alderson had been severe – perhaps unintentionally – it was in response to the unprovoked repeated assault by Alderson and it may be that the Judge was lenient owing to this, as the suggestion that the wound and the drowning were not linked seems strange, at least looking at with nearly two hundred years of hindsight. If the Judge had not shown leniency, it is possible that the engineman could have been hanged for murder.

Text from The Stanhope & Tyne Rail-Road Company by Rob Langham (Amberley Publishing, 2020).

Sources :

Newcastle Courant 7 June 1839

Newcastle Courant 2 August 1839

Rob Langham

An ardent enthusiast and researcher of both Great War and transport history topics, Rob Langham strives to bring the often lesser-known subjects that interest him to a wider audience, and to do so in an interesting manner. By mixing his research skills and enthusiasm for new knowledge by spending time in archives together with his love of outdoors in tracing historical locations on foot, Rob tries where possible to put his feet on the ground of the topics he is researching to get a better feel for them. This can range in extremes from the slopes of Kiretch Tepe Sirt at Gallipoli looking for artillery emplacements to walking old railway routes near his home in County Durham, England. Following the recent completion of a Masters degree in a History of Britain and the First World War at the University of Wolverhampton, Rob is looking forward to continuing his writing with numerous books planned over the coming years.