At 9.45pm on September 10 1874, two trains collided head-on at the village of Thorpe St Andrew, two miles east of Norwich. According to a press report of the time, a "ghastly pyramid formed of hissing locomotives, shattered carriages and moaning, in some cases dying, passengers". Twenty-five people died and 75 were injured.
Author
Mike Esbester
Principal Lecturer, Subject Area Lead in History, University of Portsmouth
The disaster was big news. There was huge public interest, and the press followed the rescue, the inquiry, the funerals, the manslaughter trial and the compensation awards made.
On its 150th anniversary, the crash will be remembered with a series of events and the dedication of a memorial plaque at Thorpe St Andrew. Beyond the anniversary, the disaster can also help us understand which people British society chose to remember, then and now, and how difficult pasts might be addressed.
The focus on the Thorpe crash obscured a deadly situation: working on the railways was far more harmful than travelling on them. In 1874, 211 passengers died on Britain and Ireland's railways. In contrast, 788 workers were killed. This proportion continued deep into the 20th century. So why wasn't more heard about staff casualties, at the time and since?
Some of the reasons why passenger crashes like Thorpe were such big news remain in effect today. They were undoubtedly spectacular, and often happened in publicly accessible locations, so people and press could get to the wreckage. They affected relatively large numbers of people at once. Crashes were also rare - railway travel was, and is, incredibly safe.
In contrast, railway worker accidents were not newsworthy. They happened daily, mostly in ones and twos and largely out of sight of the public. Though cumulatively far more numerous, they offered no spectacle.
There was another significant element - class. Railway crashes brought industrialised dangers to all ranks of society, exposing the middle and upper classes to risks they wouldn't otherwise encounter. They affected people who were politically articulate and represented, and who could call for change including state action.
On the other hand, staff accidents largely affected the working class. They increasingly paid the price of industrial capitalism, and for a long time lacked an effective political voice. Despite the efforts of the railway trades unions from the 1870s, change was a long time coming. Put simply, the dangers the working classes were exposed to, on the railways and in industries like mining, were easy for society to ignore. Some lives were worth more than others.
Selecting who to remember - now
When society looks back at railway accidents, we mostly replicate the focus on exceptional, large-scale events like Thorpe or the 1921 Abermule disaster, which also saw two passenger trains meet head-on. It's usually possible to point to a comforting sense of progress. The types of crashes involved often led to changes that made repeat occurrences less likely, and therefore improved passenger safety.
However, this comes at the cost of remembering the typical workforce accidents that killed and injured far more people. Those incidents are much harder to find a single convenient location to select as a focal point - and much harder to point to concrete changes which improved worker safety.
Undoubtedly, looking back at these challenging pasts disrupts a comfortable sense of nostalgia. Railways, and steam railways in particular, are often viewed through rose-tinted spectacles. It's inconvenient and uncomfortable to acknowledge how mass travel put workers at risk and that the system was dependent upon life and limb being cheap.
So how should we meaningfully approach and remember difficult pasts? This has been considered around buildings with challenging histories, like homes associated with terrible crimes or former slaughterhouses, for example, as well as how we might remember tragedies like Grenfell.
For railway workers, where there isn't a single point for remembrance, we have to find other ways to recognise the losses. The Railway Work, Life & Death project is one way to achieve this. The project is making information about pre-1939 accidents to British and Irish railway staff more easily available, enabling appreciation of the working lives and dangers of so many railway employees.
A collaboration between the University of Portsmouth, National Railway Museum, and Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick, it works with the National Archives of the UK and the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT). So far the project's volunteers have documented nearly 50,000 accidents in a free database, transcribing original accident records. There are at least 70,000 more cases to come.
The Railway Work, Life & Death database ensures anyone can find out more about railway staff accidents. The project works closely with the rail industry as well as history researchers - including with descendants of railway workers who suffered accidents.
This collaborative ethos is both unusual and important. Collaboration produces new insights and understandings, helping descendants find out more about their relatives. More significantly, it brings victims to much wider attention, ensuring they are publicly known and remembered.
The Thorpe anniversary events will remember the workers who died, along with the passengers. Yet outside the rare train crashes, it's difficult to focus attention on the many workers who paid the price to keep Britain's railway system running. But it can be done, as it was in a recent online exhibition from the National Railway Museum and in a section in the museum's Station Hall redevelopment.
The Railway Work, Life & Death project is doing its bit to foreground individual railway employees and the accidents that killed and injured so many workers. However, as a society we need to ask why we continue to recognise and remember some incidents and people over others, on the railways and beyond.
Mike Esbester does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
