Further to previous posts on this topic. Firstly I must congratulate ‘noytd’ on the thoroughness of the research undertaken at the PRO Kew. I am rather perplexed at the lack of any formal reference to this fatality. A fireman’s duties involved a fair amount of clambering over the locomotive, for example in pulling coal forward from the tender, filling the water tank from lineside water columns, and altering the locomotive’s lampcode carried either at the front or rear of the locomotive depending on the direction of travel. All these duties involved working at some height above the rail level. In addition, depending on local circumstances, it was the fireman’s responsibility to couple and uncouple the locomotive from its train and where necessary at the driver’s direction he would leave the locomotive in order to notify the signalman of the train’s presence when waiting at a signal on a running line beyond the time stipulated in the rules. All these duties involved the fireman having to climb up into and out of the locomotive’s cab and were in addition to his principal duty of maintaining steam for the driver and helping him watch for line side signals. Most of the additional duties referred to were undertaken when the locomotive was stationary. But all were tinged with danger, a moment’s lack of concentration or a slip could result in death or serious injury.
I have looked at the accident archive mentioned in a previous post and would respectfully point out that it does not include the Assistant Inspecting Officers’ reports on staff injuries mentioned in my earlier post. It only details the accidents subject to detailed Railway Inspectorate inquiries which by the early 1900s were only a very small proportion of the accidents that actually happened. By this time Railway Companies like the LNWR generally carried out an internal investigation into each accident the report of which was forwarded to the Railway Inspectorate who then decided whether the circumstances of the accident dictated an independent investigation by the Railway Inspectorate. The reports of these formal investigations generally into major collisions or derailments were published and these are the ones listed in the accident archive mentioned above.
I had assumed that the accident at Warrington was the subject of an internal investigation by the LNWR and that a report was forwarded to the Railway Inspectorate. In this case it appears that no report was forwarded by the LNWR to the Railway Inspectorate. But it is known that the death was the subject of a Coroner’s inquiry. In this event because the death occurred on a railway the Coroner was legally obliged to notify the Board of Trade of the fatality. This duty had been introduced because in the early days of railways not all fatalities were reported by the companies to the Board of Trade. The legal requirement placed on the Coroner to notify the Board of Trade of all railway fatalities was therefore introduced to act as a safeguard. The Coroners’ returns of Railway Fatalities to the Board of Trade may still survive in the PRO Kew and do not appear to have been investigated by the researcher.
The other possibility is that the fatality at Warrington was recorded in the LNWR’s Register of Accidents. Warrington was located in the Company’s Northern Division and this Register may still exist. When I visited the PRO several years ago I inspected the Accident Register kept by one of the small Railway Companies taken over by the GWR in 1922. I was required to give an undertaking that any information contained in the Register would not be published but I found the information I was searching for.
Finally I would reiterate that the online Railway Accident Archive, though useful, is certainly not a complete record and that much more information is available in the Railway Inspectorate Quarterly and Annual Reports. For example between the years 1874 & 1876 lists giving the names of all employee fatalities and latterly injuries were published. After this date presumably to reduce the physical length of the Returns only statistical information was published. Publication of this continued until the onset of the Assistant Inspecting Officers Reports in about 1900 when investigations were undertaken into employee injuries and fatalities. But it would seem that the Assistant Inspecting Officers only concentrated on certain categories of accident and the incident at Warrington did not fall into one of these. I can only suggest that the locomotive was stationary and that the fireman simply slipped and fell while climbing up into or leaving the cab and that it was just a tragic accident.
John(Helen’s husband)
