Four killed when disaster struck on the railway at Wilmcote 100 years ago

They would have said goodbye to their families, and probably walked to work together: George and Lewis lived next door to each other on Station Road, and William lived opposite.

But by 8am all four men would be dead.

They were hit by a steam engine on the Great Western Railway line between Stratford and Wilmcote. Each man left a wife to mourn his passing; between them they had 12 – soon to be 13 – children. They were a part of the village community, too, belonging to local organisations. As a result the village and the district also mourned the deaths.

So what happened?

At 7.40am, the men were working south of Wilmcote station. The line was in a cutting, and on a curve, which meant that the sight line for oncoming trains was restricted. The men spotted a goods train coming from Wilmcote towards Stratford. It was believed that the men resumed their work before the goods train had finished passing.

They did not have a ‘look-out’ man – someone whose job it was to keep watch for trains. Instead, they relied upon one of the four of them spotting any oncoming trains. Soon they were seen facing each other ‘stooping over the inner rail at the precise moment when they were struck by the light engine’ (a light engine being a locomotive not pulling a train).

Sadly, accidents to railway workers were common at this time. In 1922 alone 240 workers died and nearly 16,000 were injured. Ironically in this case, all four men had served in the First World War, and survived – only to come back to dangers in everyday life.

As you can imagine, the Herald reported on the case at the time, detailing the accident and the coroner’s inquest.

The verdict found that the men should have appointed a look-out, but also ‘thought the railway companies should call the attention of the men in some special manner to the rules, for he doubted whether the reading of them once in every six months was sufficient’.

At the inquest, a representative of the GWR conveyed the company’s ‘sincere condolences to the relatives of the unfortunate men’. He continued: ‘He was afraid the accident must necessarily inflict hardship on those left behind, and any temporary assistance which might be necessary, would gladly be given by the company before the respective [compensation] cases were finally settled.’

As Edward, George, Lewis and William had worked and died together, so they were buried together. Their coffins were transported from Stratford to Wilmcote by a special train; they were met by representatives of local authorities, the GWR and several hundred GWR workmates. Wreaths on the coffins expressed condolences: ‘In loving sympathy, from comrades and employees of the GWR’. From the station they were carried by the men’s workmates to St Andrew’s Church.

With such a prominent and large-scale accident, it was perhaps unsurprising that the loss was keenly felt: ‘Not only the village, but the whole district has been in mourning since the tragic occurrence, and so large was the assembly at the church yesterday that only comparatively few were able to gain admittance to the building’.

The school children were given the afternoon off, on account of the deaths of fathers of children attending the school. The mayor and mayoress of Stratford attended; representatives of National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) branches at Pathlow, Stratford and Leamington Spa also attended. The men were buried in graves beside each other ‘lined with daffodils’. The costs of the funeral were covered by the GWR, and relief was arranged to enable railway colleagues to be able to attend.

Hundreds attended, with thousands reported as lining the route, with ‘most impressive and touching scenes as the cortege moved slowly on towards the church. … As the procession approached the church the crowd became more dense, and was soon a surging mass of humanity, anxious to pay their last tribute to four men who had died in the execution of their duty’.

In due course, the GWR made payments to the families under the 1906 Workmen’s Compensation Act. Each received the maximum payment possible, £300.5.0. On top of this, the local community rallied around. The mayor of Stratford opened a fund to collect money for the dependents. A committee ‘of representative townspeople and railwaymen has been formed to raise and administer the fund’. A concert was organised by the local NUR secretary, Mr Pickford, and Mr J Marshall, stationmaster at Henley-in-Arden, and raised £36.5.10.

No doubt there was also much that was done informally, particularly in the village of Wilmcote, to help support and comfort the grieving families, but which hasn’t been captured in the formal records that now remain.

What of the families?

Lewis and Catherine Washburn had adopted a son, John Lewis, in the year before the accident, but we know little about their lives after the accident.

Annie Booker was left with four sons to care for; at least three of them grew up to join the railway. Her granddaughter, Lynda Ashby, recalls that for a long time there were no pictures of George Booker in the house. Annie said ‘he’s gone, I don’t want to talk about it’ – an indication of how hard the loss must have hit.

Ellen Sherwood had seven children to look after. She seems to have stayed in the area until 1929, at which point she moved to Oxfordshire, including the role of level-crossing keeper. Was this a job the GWR provided for her, to guarantee some income for the family, out of a sense of moral obligation?

Sadly, tragedy at the hands of the railway was not finished with Ellen – her father was hit by a train and killed, whilst working the level crossing.

Perhaps most tragically of all, Winifred Bonehill – wife of William – gave birth to their daughter, Winifred Joan Bonehill, in the weeks following the accident. Winifred remarried in 1929; Joan met her future husband in the village to which they moved.

What was done to prevent a recurrence?

There were two, relatively short, investigations into the accident – one by the GWR and one by the Railway Inspectorate, a state body. Both concluded that a look-out man should have been appointed. The state report also recommended better training and supervision of the men at work; however far this was achieved is very difficult to say.

The GWR did issue a short new safety booklet, specifically aimed at track workers, warning of some of the common risks of the job, including with posed photographs showing ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ behaviour. None of this, however, addressed the fundamental problem: that staff were being told to work in amongst moving trains, with little or no safeguards.

Remembering the four

The centenary of the accident is being marked today, at Wilmcote, involving the descendants of George Booker, Lewis Washburn and William Bonehill we’ve been able to locate. It is fitting they should be there, alongside representatives of the modern railway industry as we remember them and think about safety in the rail industry today.

These stories are only some of the key moments for the men, their families and about the accident – further detail is available on the Railway Work, Life & Death project website, on our blog.

• Dr Mike Esbester is senior lecturer in history at the University of Portsmouth, and one of the co-leaders of the Railway Work, Life & Death project. The project is a collaboration between the University of Portsmouth, the National Railway Museum and the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick. It looks at accidents to British and Irish railway staff before 1939.

You can keep up-to-date with the project on Twitter and Facebook.