2025 is an interesting year for understanding our railway pasts. ‘Railway 200’ is a nation-wide programme of events which marks 200 years since the Stockton and Darlington Railway’s first passenger journey. One of the core ‘Railway 200’ themes is ‘celebrating railway people.’ However, it’s often difficult to find out much about past railway workers. Although there were hundreds of thousands of them, from 1825 to the present, very often there’s little trace of them. So how can we make them more visible and recognise them?
Finding railway workers – in their community
One excellent approach has been adopted by the Southeast Communities Rail Partnership. Across the routes it covers, 200 ‘blue plaques’ will be put up, recognising railway people past and present. The scheme is great, as it allows people with connections to the railway to be recognised, in their communities. It’s one of a number of creative responses to the railways, and to railway history, that are emerging during Railway 200. Another is the Platform Panel project, also within the Southeast CRP.
What’s particularly positive about the blue plaques scheme has been the ways in which it has involved working with different communities of interest. Local groups have worked with the CRP to identify and research individuals – including many railway employees. There’s been a conscious look for diversity in the people and their stories, to help us refocus on who was on the railway in the past.
At the Railway Work, Life & Death project, we’re delighted to have contributed some suggestions for people to focus on. One of these was chosen and is now being made up into a blue plaque: William Betterton, London, Brighton and South Coast Railway carman in Littlehampton.
Courtesy Southeast CRP and Danny Coope/ Street of Blue Plaques.
William Job Betterton
William was born in Reigate, Surrey, in 1880, to Jesse and Mary Betterton. He was the second of their six children. By 1881 the family was living in Tonbridge, where they remained at least until 1901. By this point William was employed as a groom; Jesse was a coachman. Familiarity with horses seems to have put William in good standing for his next role.
William married Mary Ann Hall in 1906, in Sussex. He started work for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR) on 30 May that same year. It looks like he took his horsemanship into that role – he was employed as a carman, at Littlehampton. He would have collected or delivered goods to and from the station, using a horse-drawn vehicle.
Courtesy National Library of Scotland Maps.
By 1911 William, Mary Ann and their first two children, Reginald and Gwendoline, were living at 12 Gloucester Place in Littlehampton. This was close to the railway station; convenient for work. By 1920 there were living at 44 Maxwell Road, again close to the station.
In 1913 William joined the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR), via its Littlehampton branch. This was fortuitous, as his membership was to provide us with the only indication of his accident, and allowed us to identify his story.
William’s accident
We don’t know much about his accident. He appeared in the details of the Union’s death grants for 1920, noting that the Union paid Mary Ann the standard £5 death benefit (equivalent to around £240 now). We believe this would have been to cover immediate expenses during the loss of a wage earner.
William also paid into the NUR’s Orphan Fund, which meant the Union provided a small weekly sum to contribute to the upkeep of any children. The Union records show William left seven children on the fund – though only six children have left a formal record. They received 13/6 per week – around £33 per week. As each child reached the age of 14 they would have been taken off the Fund and the amount paid to Mary reduced.
The Union records show the cause of death was haemorrhage – but not what caused this. No further records of the accident survive from within the rail industry. This might be surprising – that a death at work could occur and it leave so little trace. Some records might have existed which have since been lost. However, 1920 was also rather different to the present. Incidents at work happened, and were expected to happen. They weren’t seen as preventable.
What little more we know comes from a local newspaper, the South of England Advertiser. A brief comment noted that William ‘died suddenly while at work in his stables on Monday morning’ – 14 June 1920. Had he perhaps been hurt by one of the horses in the course of his duty?
What next for William’s family?
It must have been incredibly difficult for Mary Ann and the children after William died. The youngest child, Edward, was only one at the time of his father’s death. How did they all cope emotionally? And after the death of a wage-earner, there was the potential for any family to be placed in a difficult situation, financially. How did they get by?
It’s likely that Mary Ann would have received some form of compensation from the LBSCR for William’s death – so far as money would compensate. The maximum this would amount to would be £300 (around £15,000 now). This might have provided some security, at least for a while. They might also have been in a relatively strong position financially, as it looks like they might well have owned at least two properties (listed on the electoral register).
Sadly there’s a big gap in our knowledge at this point. We know that in the 1930s Reginald (the eldest of William’s children) was a bus conductor. In 1939, three of William’s children were employed as shop assistants, one worked in a bakery – and the youngest, Edward, had become a railway porter. Mary Ann was living with her children Gwendoline, Arthur and Albert, still in Littlehampton. Arthur was killed in north Africa in 1943; Reginald was a prisoner of war in Germany, and the other two sons were serving in various capacities. Mary Ann lived until 1977.
Courtesy Chris Crosswell, Mary Ann and William’s grandson.
Remembering William Betterton
Sadly as William slipped out of living memory, and with a relative lack of easily accessible records, William faded from view. If he was known about or discussed, it was likely only within surviving descendants.
What’s brilliant about Railway 200 and the Southeast CRP blue plaques initiative is that it allows us remember William Betterton, and people like him. Not necessarily extraordinary or doing life-changing things – but ordinary people, doing everyday things. That makes them all the more important, as they are far more typical of most people’s lives.
We’ve discussed in the past how it’s possible to share difficult pasts – and to do it sensitively, whilst not obscuring the issues. Indeed, it’s important that we do so, not least as, in the case of accidents and unexpected deaths at work, we mustn’t gloss the challenging aspects of the past.
It’s therefore great to see William included in the Railway 200 blue plaque scheme. This includes as part of the trail in Littlehampton that will take in the Littlehampton Museum Railway 200 display. That the Railway Work, Life & Death project has been able to contribute to remembering William Betterton in the community where he lived and worked is wonderful.
Our thanks to Chris Crosswell (William Betterton’ s grandson), Lynda Spain (Southeast CRP) and Danny Coope (Street of Blue Plaques), and all involved, for making this possible.