We’re delighted to say that the accident data is now available for you to use! You can find it on ‘The Accidents’ page, as a spreadsheet for you to download and search at your leisure.
This represents the culmination of the work so far, including several months of hard effort from our superb team of volunteers. In the data you’ll find all sorts of cases and detail – from the number of individuals who feature in the accident reports between 1911 and 1915 (3,911 – though actually greater than this, as there were a couple of cases in which those involved weren’t named, as there were too many people: 8, in both cases) down to the individual details about any one person’s accident.
You can search the data across any of the categories about which we’ve included detail, so whether you’re interested in a particular person or family name, a location, a company, a grade of employee, a date, a type of injury or accident, or whatever, there’s plenty for you to explore.
We think it’s a really fantastic resource and can’t wait for you all to start using it.
However, making the spreadsheet available isn’t the end of the project by any means. A key part of our aim was to get you using the information found in the spreadsheet, to feed into your research. So, we’re keen for you to dig into the data – and to tell us what you’re doing with it, via our feedback page. This will help inform us about our next steps, as well as bolster the case for doing more.
We’re also working on a means for you to upload any accident documents or material you may have access to – that’ll bring many more cases into the fold, and might make for interesting supporting material for those cases which feature in the spreadsheet. All of this will help increase our knowledge and understanding of railway worker accidents – more on this as soon as we have it.
In the meantime, we invite you to explore the spreadsheet, make use of it, and let us know what you think of it!