Disabilities in railway service

Disability features in our project heavily. Mostly frequently it’s cases where accidents have caused disability (see here for some cases we’ve featured in the past). But another of the great things about the project data is that it’s showing where already-disabled staff were employed or re-employed. So for today’s Disability History Month post, we’re going to look at pre-existing disability on the railways.

What we don’t know is how the original disabilities came about – the reports don’t relate. Some might have been caused by an earlier accident at work on the railways; some might have been caused elsewhere. Some might have been a result of old age. Not necessarily old age, but ‘physical infirmity’ is mentioned in the case of relief crossing keeper FC Keeping, for example. He was killed at Stoke level crossing in Wareham on 13 March 1929, on the Southern Railway. Unfortunately, his age wasn’t given in the accident report. The report did note that he could only walk slowly, and as a result ‘it is doubtful […] whether he was really in a fit condition to take duty at this crossing’ (1929 Quarter 1, Appendix B). We do know that the railway companies saw themselves as paternalistic and ‘looking after’ ‘their’ employees after injury at work might mean finding alternative work, as discussed here, including as level crossing keepers.

Of the project data coming from the state accident investigators’ reports between 1900 and 1939 (less a gap between June 1915 and July 1921), we have around 21,000 cases. Of those, a quick (and therefore partial!) search reveals around 30 cases which identify disability in some way. Deafness is the physical disability which so far appears most frequently in the project data, with 16 cases.

The deafness might have been long-term (as in this case), age-related, or cumulative from long-term exposure to loud noise as part of work. To take just one case, on 1 February 1923, Walter Adams, 61, was working at King’s Cross goods station on the newly-formed London and North Eastern Railway. He was a sheeter – that is, someone who put sheets to cover open railway wagons and keep their loads secure and dry in transit. Adams was also deaf. He had been standing between two wagons and just as he was getting out from between, they were moved closer together ‘and he was caught between the buffers.’ Fortunately he was only injured, fracturing 2 ribs; that kind of crush injury was often fatal. From where they stood, those responsible for moving the wagons had performed a visual check that no-one was in the way and gave a verbal ‘look out’ warning. What they didn’t do was walk alongside the wagons to check no-one was between them; and of course, with Adams’ being deaf, the verbal call was no use. Inspector Amos Ford did note, however, that ‘since the accident Adams has been given other work which will not necessitate his being between wagons’ (1923 Quarter 1, Appendix C).

Other cases – to which we’ll return in future posts – included blindness or sight problems (5 individuals), issues involving the legs (4 individuals), suspected learning disabilities (1 individual) and an unknown/ undiagnosed but suspected physical disability. An interesting comment is found in one further case, the death of sub-ganger H Longley at Strood on the Southern Railway. On 3 November 1937 he was knocked down by a train whilst cleaning and oiling points. He hadn’t been provided with a colleague to keep watch for approach trains whilst he worked, something which Inspector John Moore noted in his report, along with the observation that ‘about six years ago a partially disabled man was attached to this gang [of track workers, to which Longley belong] as a permanent look-out man’ (1937 Quarter 4, Appendix B). He was working elsewhere at the time – but it is indicative of the places and roles deemed appropriate for disabled staff in the railway industry.

This look at disabled workers isn’t a precise art, however. Clearly we can only reflect those worker accidents which were investigated – and then only those which made some sort of recognition of apparent disabilities. Most often they are mentioned where they were perceived to have some bearing on the accident. Some cases do note a disability but go on to state that in the Inspector’s opinion it didn’t contribute to the accident. And of course underlying all of this are contemporaneous understandings of what constituted disability. As a result, it isn’t necessarily straightforward to understand attitudes to disability in the railway industry before 1939. However, we do start to see the ways in which disabilities were found amongst railway staff at work, and may well have reflected the dangers of railway work at this time.