Mike Esbester: „The railway history is improving safety in the industry today”

What motivated the apparition of the ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project?

It’s been a long time coming! Around 25 years ago I got interested in the history of safety education and accident prevention on the railways in Britain, something no-one had looked at. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to study it for my PhD, funding by the UK’s Arts & Humanities Research Council. It seemed to have so much to offer and it did. In the course of that research, though, I found a vast number of reports into railway staff accidents before World War Two. They were full of details about what was actually happening, who was involved, where, when – the sorts of details of ordinary life on the railways in the past that is usually impossible to find. There were thousands of those records, but virtually no-one seemed to know they existed. I didn’t have time or space to use them at that time, and my wider research and career took me away from those records for a while. However, they were always at the back of my mind…

The trouble was, there were far too many records for a single researcher to make use of. It would take years to work through. By this time ‘Zooniverse’ had started, so the idea of crowd-sourcing – involving teams of volunteers to transcribe records and make them more easily useable – was in mind. In 2016, an opportunity arose to undertake a trial of this approach, thanks to colleagues and volunteers at Britain’s National Railway Museum. The Railway Work, Life & Death project was started! The volunteers have done brilliant work; and, importantly, were eager to continue after the initial trial – which they have done, right down to the present, nearly 10 years on.

Over time, they’ve been joined by a small team at the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick (which has trades unions records) and another at The National Archives of the UK (which has records produced by railway companies). We’ve also been working with the RMT Union. So at the moment, our free database, available from the project website, has over 115,000 people and incidents in it, covering Britain and Ireland, from 1855 to 1939. They’re an amazing insight into railway work, railway workers and railway dangers in the past – much of it still very relevant today, sadly.

As well as being important for my own research, and understanding work on the railways in the past, it’s been used by tens of thousands of people worldwide. The range of people interested in these records and the Railway Work, Life & Death project is really gratifying. Academics, of course, but rail enthusiasts, local historians, family historians, social historians, archives and museums, heritage railways – and the current rail industry, too, as it seeks to learn from the past. It’s brilliant knowing that what we’ve been doing is so well used, whilst also has the potential to contribute to improving safety in the industry today.

 

From a distance, these stories can be seen just as moralizing. But what are the most outstanding cases you have documented so far – that have a twist?

Most of the time, it’s actually the typical cases that are most important. The single big incidents that affected larger numbers of people did happen, but were very rare. Far more typically workers were hurt in small incidents, in ones and twos, but those numbers added up over the course of any given year to a large total. That said, we’ve worked – with descendants and the current rail industry – to mark some of the accidents, that’s been really important. One case happened near Bristol in 1921, and involved a gang of track workers being hit by a train; another happened in 1922, at a small place called Wilmcote – again, a gang of track workers were hit by a train. And recently we worked on the centenary of an incident at Manton Junction in 1924, which has resulted in a memorial plaque being installed and learning points used in the industry now.

For me, the work has become very much about the people, and recovering them from the anonymity of the past. The statistics were known at the time, but the names less so – and they’ve been forgotten since. Yet each one was an individual, with families and part of communities. Working with the descendants of the people named in the records and finding out about them as people has been a privilege. Last year, I met the daughter of a man involved in an accident in 1924 – Dorothy was 104 and able to tell me about her father; I never thought I’d meet someone so close to the individual I’d read about in the records!

I think I’m still touched by the cases, particularly those – and I find them virtually every month – where a worker has died and left behind a family, including a pregnant widow. Equally, the cases where there are life-changing injuries, and a previously fit and active worker ends up taking on a much less physical role on the railways, really bring home the sometimes-devasting impacts of these accidents.

Sometimes the incidents did lead to changes in policy, practice or procedure – but sadly more often than not it was cheaper for the companies to carry on as they were. You see the same accidents happening again and again. For the most part, the incidents that happened weren’t spectacular (which is why they were barely noticed at the time, unlike passenger train crashes). That means there generally weren’t huge policy impacts or changes we can directly link to an incident. I doubt the incidents really registered with the railway companies’ management teams, and so they had little incentive to make sweeping (and potentially costly) changes.

What has been very positive has been finding traditionally under-represented groups in the records. We’ve found plenty of railwaywomen, international staff and disabled workers. If we can highlight their contributions to the industry and indeed the country, we can make help show how there is a place in rail (and has been for a long time) for everyone.

 

What was the status of the British railway man in the 19th century?

In general, railway work in the 19th century was a good option. It was stable, respected, relatively well-paid and could be a route to jobs for your family, too. That said, there were some big downsides. The discipline was severe – companies expected total obedience. Until well into the 20th century, you were a company ‘servant’, which gives some idea of what the company expected of you! The railway companies were strongly paternalistic, too – they thought that they knew best, and only they should be involved in managing their staff. They were strongly opposed to trades unions, refusing to recognise them or negotiate with them until around the time of the First World War.

And for some roles – particularly the manual jobs – it was hard, dirty and dangerous work. Shunters, goods guards, and track maintenance workers were amongst the most dangerous jobs on the railways – and indeed in Britain. Anything that put you trackside, in amongst moving trains, carried a high risk. The work – and its costs – were largely invisible to the public: there was no scandal or outcry that for every passenger hurt on the railway in a crash in 1900, six employees were hurt doing their work. In 1913 alone, that equated to nearly 30,000 worker casualties, including around 450 deaths. For a single year, that’s truly staggering – certainly from today’s perspective. Long hours didn’t help – the 8-hour working day wasn’t introduced until 1919.

 

How great a difference was induced through the idea of safety education before the First World War, and what were the methods that have been inforced?

Interesting and important question! I’d suggest that safety education really repeated existing ideas, but in a new format. It stressed that safety was an individual responsibility, so training people was the only solution. In doing so, it implied that in most cases ‘carelessness’ was the root problem – but I wouldn’t see it that way. If employees weren’t given enough time to get the job done, or they weren’t provided with enough people, adequate equipment, training or procedures, then how could they be anything but careless? No-one goes looking for an accident, but if you’re being pushed to get the train ready and out on time, then we can see how and why staff made mistakes – mistakes for which they paid, with their bodies.

What safety education did do well was appear to show the railway companies taking action – albeit action which was ‘we’ve given you this booklet, it’s up to you now’. Safety education remained advisory, so there wasn’t anything that was enforceable, outside the rule book. But it was attractive, particularly being so visual, so it spread outside the rail industry too, until it was found pretty much everywhere in British life.

 

Have you considered expanding the ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ database beyond the borders of the UK?

Yes! We’d love to – and we’ve had interest in America, Australia and India. It would be really valuable to be able to look comparatively across nations – making it possible to see what is specific to a particular nation or cultural context, and what transferred. We know that if it were possible to do what we’ve been doing but in other countries there would be lots of beneficiaries.

However, the challenge is making it happen – no surprise there! I came up with the idea in the UK, and through existing connections and happening to be in the right place at the right time, we were able to make something happen. I’ve taken the lead on the project, though it’s really too much for one person to do. What it needs is a team – in the UK and beyond. I know the records and material in the UK, but I’m just not familiar with documents, organisations or contacts in other countries. It needs someone ‘on the ground’ there, with that detailed level of knowledge.

There’s another practical matter, too: time and resource. Over the years, I’ve tried to find the funding to build a team to manage the project more strategically, but without any success, so we’ve done what we can on a voluntary basis. If anyone is willing to get involved, we’re always keen to hear – particularly if it might be possible to do something similar in another country. What I hope we’re able to do in the UK is show what is possible and how it’s useful to people, and that might be valuable in setting up international partners. I’d also be happy to help others get started on a sister project in their country.