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 […]
Tag Archives | railway workers
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 […]
Playing Ally Pally!
In this blog, Mike Esbester, Senior Lecturer in History at Portsmouth, updates us on recent progress on the Railway Work, Life & Death project, including a new project partner, international collaboration, engagement with audiences beyond the academic – and on taking the project to out to a huge new venue. Alexandra Palace is an iconic […]
(Un)safe heritage?
In this post, the third in our series of blogs looking at sites of historical interest in Portsmouth, Mike Esbester, Senior Lecturer in History at Portsmouth, explores what might be learnt from an apparently unexceptional piece of the city’s built environment. Mike’s research and teaching focus on the everyday, including ideas about mobility and accidents […]