NAVVY
“Last Saturday [23 May, 1846] a lad, named Rock, met a dreadful accident on the railway works at Bopeep. One of the laden earth carts was being drawn over the bridge, and, as is usual, the horse unhooked a short distance from the ‘tip,’ when the lad fearing that the animal would run over him, jumped on the rails, and the cart came along and smashed his right leg in a shocking manner. He was taken as soon as possible to the Infirmary, where amputation of the injured limb was found necessary. At first slight hopes were entertained of the lad’s recovery, but we are happy to say that he is now going on well.”
Hastings & St. Leonards Observer, May 1846.
Navvies were largely an itinerant workforce of manual labourers, originally excavating and building Britain’s network of ‘navigations’, the canals. These men were soon needed to build the railways, moving around the country wherever the work took them, where encampments were set up to house them. At its height, around 250,000 navvies worked on the railways’ huge earthworks projects, and in the days before health and safety, thousands of accidents and many deaths occurred. As early as 1839, Parliament wanted railway companies to keep records of such injuries and fatalities on their construction sites. but not all did. And navvies weren’t necessarily considered railway employees and so could conveniently be excluded from the statistics.
Sadly we’ve been unable to identify Mr Rock or what happened to him.
Research and design by:
Danny Coope / Street of Blue Plaques
http://streetofblueplaques.co.uk/
