The University of Portsmouth History team’s Mike Esbester has recently had a co-authored open access article published, in Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal. It’s part of a special issue, marking the 50th anniversary of the Modern Records Centre (MRC) at the University of Warwick. The MRC is the major repository for archives of trades unions […]
Tag Archives | accidents
A Norfolk train crash 150 years ago brings the forgotten deaths of rail workers into the spotlight
On the 9 September, our own Dr Mike Esbester had this piece on the Thorpe St Andrew train crash of 10 September 1874 published in The Conversation. Mike compares how memories of the loss of lives in such dramatic events compares with the often forgotten deaths of working class railway workers, whose deaths lack the […]
Discovering a railway-worker ancestor
Our own Dr Mike Esbester was featured on BBC 1’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ on 5 September 2024, helping Rose Ayling-Ellis learn more about her ancestor’s railway accident. The episode is available to watch on BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0022n0p
Accidental dismemberment on the railways
Our own Dr Mike Esbester is co-lead of the Railway Work, Life & Death project at the National Railway Museum. This post from the project, written by co-lead Karen Baker, looks at the work of one of the project’s placement students, Connor Scott, who used the dataset to interrogate just how dangerous it was to […]
Dangerous operations: Railway goods guards’ safety burdens
University of Portsmouth History student Lauren Lee produced a blog for the Railway Work, Life & Death project as part of her work on the second year core module ‘Working with the Past’, coordinated by Mike Esbester. In this blog, Lauren looks at some of the dangers encountered by goods guards while working on the railway, […]
Blackout accidents on Britain’s railways during World War Two
University of Portsmouth History student Evan Cossburne produced a blog for the Railway Work, Life & Death project as part of his work on the second year core module ‘Working with the Past’, coordinated by Mike Esbester. Mike co-leads the RWLD project along with Karen Baker (Librarian, National Railway Museum) and Helen Ford (Manager, Modern […]