THE AVOIDABLE WILMCOTE TRAGEDY - 100 YEARS ON

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: january 2022 :: RMTnews 22 Last October’s RMT News featured a piece on the tragic incident at Stapleton Road in Bristol in 1921, which cost six track workers their lives. Even more tragically, this wasn’t to be the last incident of the kind. Just six months’ later, in March 1922, four more track workers died in a single incident, at Wilmcote in Warwickshire. It seems that little had changed since Stapleton Road. On March 24 1922, the gang of four was hit by a light engine, running past their work site. Edward Sherwood (43), George Booker (43), Lewis Washburn (40) and William Bonehill (27) were killed. All were members of the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR), the union which became part of RMT when it was formed. The safety of track workers was an industry-wide problem – but what made the Wilmcote incident particularly galling was that it involved the same company as at Stapleton Road: the Great Western Railway (GWR). It wasn’t noticeably any more or less safe than the other railway companies of the time, but to have suffered two bad incidents like these in a short space of time exposed the problem. This problem – the safety of railway workers – is at the heart of the ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project, which has uncovered the Wilmcote incident. The project has been set up to help us all find out more about railway worker accidents before 1939 – including Wilmcote. Usually these incidents happened in ones and twos, out of sight of the public; Wilmcote was unusual in that it killed four in a single moment. At 7.40am on the 24th of March, the men were packing a rail joint on the up line, to the south of Wilmcote station. At this point the line was in a cutting, on a curve, limiting visibility. The approaching down goods train was seen, and the men moved clear. It was thought that the gang then resumed work on the up line – facing each other, and bending over – as they were hit by a light engine on their line. The ganger for the section had left instructions to ‘to keep a sharp look-out, and to appoint a look-out man “if necessary.”’ Afterwards he said that he meant this to mean that a look-out should be appointed when men were working on the track. Tragically one of the men, George Booker, was qualified look-out – and had been acting as a look-out when the men had been working at the same location the day before. The men were held responsible for the incident, as they didn’t stand clear of all lines until satisfied that both directions were free of trains, and the sub-ganger hadn’t appointed a look-out. As ever, the fact that this would have involved taking one of the four men from the gang, with a knock-on impact on the time it took them to complete their work, wasn’t mentioned in the official state report into the deaths. The relationship with the Stapleton Road incident was noted: ‘Such a failure to comply with instructions and Rules and Regulations which have been drawn up for the men’s own safety, is the more incomprehensible in view of the fact that almost exactly six month’s previously, under very similar conditions, six platelayers were run down and killed near Stapleton Road on this same railway. Harris [the ganger] tells me the circumstances of this accident were discussed amongst his gang only a week previously, and the need for watchfulness emphasised.’ The state accident investigator, JAA Pickard, urged the railway companies to better educate staff and to supervise them more closely. Following Stapleton Road, the GWR had been preparing a booklet specifically aiming at track staff – though this of course didn’t address the deeper problem of staff working on track amongst moving trains and without any protection. However, the booklet did include specific mention of both Stapleton Road and Wilmcote, a sad legacy of the incidents. The men each left a widow, and between them 14 children; it looks like another In March 1922 four more track workers were killed just months after a similar disaster had taken six lives THE AVOIDABLE WILMCOTE TRAGEDY - 100 YEARS ON Posed GWR photograph, illustrating the type of problem which happened at Wilmcote. Courtesy Railway Work, Life & Death project.