Railway accidents on the 

L.B.S.C.R.

Evidence given of excessive hours 

worked by Enginemen in 1877

Accidents, due mainly to the negligence and greed of the railway companies, were commonplace. In 1874-6, for example, there nearly four thousand people killed on the railway and over sixteen thousand injured. Two thousand of those killed and ten thousand of the injured were railway servants. The railway companies took no responsibilities for the injuries and deaths caused by their own rapacity.

The Royal Commission on Railway Accidents of 1877 revealed that drivers were accustomed to working four or five hours overtime a day, sometimes ten hours, this was usually unpaid. An eighteen or nineteen hour day was not unusual. 

A Driver Weston gave evidence before the Royal Commission that on one occasion:

“I had been on hours sixteen hours a day in  succession and on the third day I went on the engine at 7.30 in the morning and left it at 11 or 12 at night. I took my meals and everything on the engine. I never left the engine. I complained to my foreman and told him that I found difficulty in keeping my eyes open. Upon the third day I told him that I could not hold myself responsible if anything occurred to the engine or the passengers and that it was unfair to force us to do it. He reported this is to Mr Thomas Wheatley, Locomotive Superintendent, London North Western (Southern Division) . He called me up and said, ‘Weston unless you retract those words, I will dismiss you’. I said, ‘Mr Wheatley, you have the power to dismiss me but I cannot retract what I said’. ” 

In fact Weston was given the option of being reduced to a branch line or being dismissed. He left.

On the Brighton Line Mr Woodhead gave the case of a Engineman who “made 89 hours in 6 Days without a Sunday, and another who worked 16 hours, and 14 hours, and 20 ¼ hours, and 23 ¼ hours, and 16 ½ hours in his week”

*It is not known what the loco shed, Driver Weston was located