Very often the Railway Work, Life & Death project has focused on ‘front-line’, operational staff, who kept the trains moving. They’ve been clustered in roles responsible for maintaining the tracks, driving the engines, signalling, and shunting goods wagons. Whilst only relatively few of these workers, and their accidents, might have been noticed by travellers and the public on a day-to-day basis, they were the sorts of roles seen at the time and since as epitomising railway work. They were also the roles that were exposed to the greatest dangers. As a result, they’ve made up a large portion of the accident records which survive and upon which our project is based.
However, this might overshadow those people and roles who were less prominent, in terms of visibility and the accident record. This doesn’t make them any the less significant, or worthy of our attention. It does mean it’s often harder to find out much about these workers, their day-to-day activities and their accidents. However, the good news is that the more accidents we bring into the project, the greater diversity of people, roles and cases we see coming up. This gives us new ways into understanding railway work and workers in the past. With a huge new dataset coming into the project database of accidents to railway workers in June 2025, we wondered what possibilities it might hold for finding previously unrecognised railway staff and accidents.
Railwaywomen’s accidents
Railwaywomen’s work and accidents have appeared periodically in our existing dataset and blog posts, not least for women’s history month every March. In these we’ve followed the records. As a result, compared to men, relatively few women have featured. In part, this reflects the structure of the industry for the pre-Second World War era, when relatively few women were employed. Around the time of the First World War, this still amounted to around 14,000 women – though in a total workforce of around 640,000.
These women were also employed in roles deemed appropriate for women – for example as cleaners and crossing keepers (two women crossing keepers featured in last week’s blog post). Whilst some of these roles involved working amongst moving trains, and hence exposure to particularly risky environments, many railwaywomen’s roles were ones of relative safety. Of course, war extended women’s railway employment – and hence their exposure to danger and appearance in the accident record (discussed in this recent blog on Cardiff’s railwaywomen dock work). But where might we find previously unseen railwaywomen?
GWR Railwaywomen in 1914
One of the new runs of data coming into the Railway Work, Life & Death project in June covers the Great Western Railway (GWR) in 1914. It’s a single year’s look at accidents, so has some limitations – not least that the amount of detail given is relatively sparse. However, one of its values is that it gives a look at a single year in one go. From it we can start to think about what ‘representative’ or ‘typical’ accidents might have looked like. Given it contains around 10,000 records – approximately 8,000 of which relate to staff accidents – we can find a great many people and roles. This includes railwaywomen.
Only 10 railwaywomen appear in the volume. No doubt the small number reflects a combination of the limited women employed by the GWR and the small scale of exposure to major risks. It’s therefore interesting to see how these women were employed. One was a charwoman; one was a horse keeper. One was a still room maid; and the other seven were kitchen maids. These final eight, as well as representing the majority of cases, give us a new area to explore. What were the risks of work in kitchen and kitchen spaces?
Kitchen risks
The records show us the particular risks to which those working in kitchen spaces were exposed. This isn’t something we’ve found in any other record set (so far!), so is particularly helpful. Given the gendered distribution of work at the time, it’s unsurprising that we see women being hurt in kitchen spaces more than men.
Of the eight women injured at work in a GWR railway kitchen or kitchen space, four suffered cut hands – three of them when cutting bread. This might have been cutting by hand or by using a bread-cutting machine. The other four injuries were unique – one each burnt by gas, slipping down stairs, a scald and cut by bottles breaking.
Where were the kitchens?
Knowing that the railway companies before 1939 were concerned with far more than ‘just’ moving trains on tracks is a helpful starting point for where we might look to find these railwaywomen in the kitchen. Amongst other activities, the GWR, as other railway companies, owned and ran hotels. Two of the cases in 1914 involved railwaywomen hurt whilst working at the Great Western Hotel in Paddington. This we might expect – but what about the others?
The locations provided don’t immediately associate themselves with other GWR hotels – Landore, Banbury, Birmingham, Neath and Reading. So why do we have railwaywomen working in and around kitchens in these places? They might have been keeping station restaurant spaces supplied with food. Alternatively, they might have been working in railwaymen’s hostels – spaces that provided food and accommodation for railwaymen (typically drivers and firemen) whose work took them away from home overnight. These spaces included kitchens – which might have meant injuries to staff working in them.
Needless to say, these spaces were rarely seen by the public – and largely seem to have evaded the photographic record. An enquiry with Railway Work, Life & Death project partner the National Railway Museum showed that they had no photographs of kitchen spaces (outside travelling kitchens on board trains) in their archive. No doubt they were seen as mundane and not worthy of record. This view was possibly reinforced by the domestic nature of the work in those spaces.
A few incidental photographs were captured, shown in this blog, coming from the Great Western Railway Magazine, the GWR’s in-house journal. They capture the types of spaces and facilities which might have been those experienced by the maids in question.
Hotel still room maid Olive Wood
One of the challenging things about this 1914 run of data is the limited information it provides. In many cases – men and women – this includes the lack of a first name or initial. Sometimes it’s possible to work out more about the individual, by triangulating details – but sometimes there just isn’t enough information to piece together more. We’ve taken three of the eight railwaywomen found in the records and tried to research their lives.
Still room maid Wood had her accident at 10.30 on 25 March 1914, at the Great Western Hotel. She had her hand cut by the bread slicing machine. That’s the total of the information on Wood in the accident register. To this a bit of research can add some useful context. In a commercial context, a still room maid might have worked front of house or behind the scenes, serving customers or preparing food and drink and cleaning dishes.
It’s been possible to locate still room maid Wood on the 1911 Census, as she was ‘living in’ with a large number of other employees at the GWR Hotel in Paddington. On the page of the Census return in which Wood features, seven other still room maids are listed, plus other types of maids, waiters, porters, pages, dish washers, lift operators and cooks. Interestingly, they came from across Europe – mainly Britain, but also Switzerland, France, Germany, Austria and Ireland. Olive Wood was born in Westminster in 1886, so would have been around 28 at the time of her 1914 accident. Beyond this, it’s not yet been possible to trace more information.
Banbury kitchen maid (Mary?) Bedlow
There’s more uncertainty over Banbury kitchen maid Bedlow. Looking at the GWR accident record, it tells us she had her face ‘burnt by gas’ at 18.40 on 3 April 1914. She was off work for four days – too little time to qualify for compensation, so none was paid.
Looking at the Bedlows in the Banbury area, it’s probable that this was Mary Bedlow, born in 1889, making her 26 at the time of the accident. She appears on the 1911 Census as married to Arthur Bedlow, and living in the rather wonderfully named ‘Old Grimsbury’, Banbury, with her just-born niece (who they later went on to adopt). Arthur was listed as a railway company goods porter.
Courtesy Wikipedia
It looks likely that Mary is ‘our’ kitchen maid in 1914. The ages fit best in terms of other possible candidates in the area at the time, plus there was a railway connection through her husband. It looks like Arthur was actually employed by the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) – but the two companies would have been closely connected at Banbury, where they intersected. At some point, possibly by 1917, Arthur was ‘loaned’ by the LNWR to the GWR. He was ‘returned’ by the GWR to the London Midland and Scottish Railway (the successor to the LNWR) in 1935. Given the strong railway connections, it’s probable that Mary Bedlow was the GWR kitchen maid injured in 1914.
Presumably this work fitted with family life, at least in 1914. Mary and Arthur had their own children born in 1911 and 1915, with two more children in 1918 and 1921. Mary simply has the note ‘at home’ recorded against her name on the 1921 Census. This doesn’t mean she wasn’t undertaking paid employment, as we saw in last week’s blog about railwaywomen. It might be that she was still employed – though it seems with a number of children to care for (given the prevailing social roles of the time) this would be challenging. With that in mind, it might be that the GWR accident record is the only surviving record of Mary’s paid employment as a railwaywoman.
Banbury kitchen maid Ada Goode
We have a bit more certainty about another Banbury kitchen maid who appears in the GWR’s accident register – kitchen maid Goode. She had her accident on 27 July 1914, at 09.30. She was recorded as having her arm and back scalded, leading to 35 days off work. This should have qualified for compensation payment under the Workmen’s Compensation Act, though any details of compensation aren’t recorded.
Courtesy National Library of Scotland Maps.
Census records show that Ada Goode was born in 1892, to Charles and Mary Goode. They were a railway family. Charles was a platelayer (responsible for maintaining the railway lines) and Mary was a crossing gate keeper. In 1901 they lived at the GWR railway crossing at Great Bourton, near Banbury (appearing on the 1911 Census as ‘Little Mill crossing’). Along with Ada, they had an elder son and daughter and two younger sons and a younger daughter.
It seems unlikely that Mary moved from her crossing keeper role to become a kitchen made between 1911 and 1914. This gives us three possible Goode women – Ada, or her sisters Hettie or Hannah. Tragically Hettie died in March 1914, aged 18, so it can’t have been her in the kitchen in Banbury. Ada’s elder sister, Hannah, had married in 1909, and taken a new surname – thus leaving Ada as the most likely kitchen maid. Again, we don’t have much further information about Ada’s railway service or indeed wider life. It looks like she married in 1919, but we’ve been unable to trace her in the 1921 Census.
Whilst these ephemeral records give us relatively little detail about the accidents, the nature of work, or the staff involved, they do give us something. They can help us find people – particularly railwaywomen – who wouldn’t otherwise appear as railway workers. And they can give us a little bit of new insight about work in less well-considered railway occupations and roles. That is important, and shouldn’t be downplayed.