Sapperton Tunnel – Radnor Street Cemetery

The re-imagined story …

‘Mother always said there was nothing I could have done to help, but I never believed her. Today I can still hear the cries of the men, although mother said that wasn’t possible, they were too deep in the tunnel and I was too far away.
But I wasn’t.

What she didn’t know was that I was there, by the mouth of the tunnel as the ballast train screeched through. I was the first person on the scene, a 10-year-old boy walking home from school across the railway line.

platelayers

A gang of platelayers image published courtesy of Newton Abbot Railway Studies.

I knew the platelayers were at work in the Sapperton tunnel that day in April 1896. I had seen them arrive with their truck and their tools while I was about my early morning tasks on the farm. A section of the tunnel was under repair and I wished I could see inside.

The tunnel was a feat of engineering carved beneath the Cotswold escarpment and a source of wonderment to this 10-year-old boy. By the end of that day in April 1896 the Sapperton tunnel would be the stuff of nightmares, a scene that would haunt me for years.

For weeks afterwards it was all anyone talked about in the village. How the gang of five men had been warned of the approach of a down train and had stepped out of the way on to the other set of metals. They did not notice that an up ballast train had entered the tunnel. Two men were killed instantly, their bodies mutilated in a shocking manner.

And I saw it all. At first I thought all were dead, but then came the moaning and the cries as the two who were less severely injured began to move.

I crept closer. In the light of their lantern I could see a man still lying on the track, his arm wrenched from his body, blood seeping from his head.

Sapperton

Sapperton Railway Tunnel

Help was slow in coming. The three surviving men were eventually picked up by a passenger train passing through the tunnel half an hour after the accident. At Stroud they were taken from the railway station to the hospital, causing a painful sensation in the town.

The men who died were named as H. Ballard and E. Greenaway. Another, J. Hillsley sustained concussion of the brain, scalp wounds and bruised limbs while W. Pointer was sent home from hospital during the course of that evening. The man with the severed arm died on the way to hospital. His name was Frederick Gee.

Mother said there was nothing I could have done to help, but I never believed her.’

The facts …

Platelayer – a man employed in laying and maintaining the railway track. The poorest of any railway employee with little or no opportunity for promotion or advancement. ‘The most neglected man in the service.’ (Will Thorne, Victorian platelayer).

Ganger Frederick Gee 47 was married to Mary Ann nee Willis and left seven children, five under the age of 10 years including a baby son just a few months old, when he died working in the Sapperton tunnel in April 1896.
Frederick was buried in Radnor Street Cemetery where in 1900 the couple’s sixteen-year-old daughter Rosa Ethel was buried alongside him and four years later their son Harry Howard, aged 21.

In just a few short years Mary Ann lost her husband and two of her children, but she was made of stern stuff.

On March 14, 1907 Mary Ann set sail from Liverpool on board the SS Cymric with her four youngest sons Sidney 17, Ernest 15, Frank 13 and eleven-year-old Wilfred, to begin a new life in the United States of America.

The family arrived in Boston, Massachusetts on March 25 and in the 1910 US census they can be found living in Forest Dale, Salt Lake City, Utah.

In 1917 Mary Ann, then aged 62, married William A. Tolman. William Augustus Tolman was 69, a widower and a member of a prominent pioneering family in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons). William’s father Cyrus had arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1848 with Brigham Young’s second company.

Theirs was a brief marriage. William died from smallpox in 1920. He was buried in the family plot at Oakley Cemetery, Cassia County, Idaho with his first wife Marintha.

Mary Ann died in 1929 aged 71. She had survived the death of two husbands, two sons and a daughter.

During September I frequently travelled by train from Swindon to Gloucester. It is a relatively short journey, some 45 minutes, through attractive Gloucestershire countryside stopping off at the small stations of Kemble, Stroud and Stonehouse and passing through the Sapperton tunnel.

Sapperton tunnel is, in fact, two tunnels separated by a short gap. Work began in 1839, a difficult building project not finished until 1845. Maintenance work was (and continues to be) ongoing. Back in the day a terrifying place in which to work with poor visibility on a busy rail route.

In 1896 an accident occurred resulting in four fatalities. Was this the accident William Beames witnessed, the effects of which caused his own tragic death later that same year?

This newspaper report contains some disturbing descriptions.

A Suicide’s Death – Tired of Life

Shortly after the above, Mr Browne held an inquest at the Carpenter’s Arms, Gorse Hill Swindon, on the body of William Beames, aged 48 years, a platelayer on the GWR Works, of 86 Bright Street, Gorse Hill. Deceased, it may be remembered, attempted to commit suicide by cutting his throat with a pocket knife at Wootton Bassett, in August last, and although the wound healed up he died on Saturday last from other complaints, after lingering for upwards of three months, his death being accelerated by his own rash act. Mr A. Bowker was chosen foreman of the jury, and the following evidence was taken:

P.S. Goddard, stationed at Wootton Basset, said that on the 17^th August last, at about a quarter to seven o’clock in the morning, deceased came to his house and made motions to go into his house. He could not speak. Witness removed an handkerchief he was wearing, and then saw a tremendous gash in his throat. Dr Wride happened to be passing at the time, and witness called him in. The doctor dressed the wound, and gave him some warm milk with a little whisky in it, afterwards telling witness to take the man to the hospital. He (witness) obtained a brougham, and conveyed Beames to Swindon Victoria Hospital, where he was refused admission. Witness then took the sufferer to his home at Gorse Hill. He had previously asked him where he lived, but Beames could not speak, and therefore wrote his name and address on a piece of paper. Witness asked him why he did such a foolish thing, and Beames replied, “Because I am tired of this world.” Afterwards deceased was taken to the hospital at Stratton Workhouse. Witness went the next day to a field where Beames said he had been when he cut his throat, and there saw a large quantity of congealed blood. Witness found a pocket knife in his pocket, which he now produced.

Sarah Beames, wife of deceased, who appeared to be very ill, said her husband had been in a low depressed state since his father’s death in June last. Deceased was a platelayer in the GWR Works. Deceased was also troubled about a platelayer who was killed on the line at Stroud some time ago; he worked in the same gang. Deceased left home on Friday, the 14^th August, and she heard no more of him until he was brought home on the following Tuesday. He was in the Workhouse Hospital eleven weeks, and then he was brought home where he was attended by a doctor.

Mr Thomas Hartigan, assistant to Dr Rattray, said he attended deceased up to the time of his death. Previous to that he had been attended by Drs. Wride, Pearmen, and Muir, alternately. He was suffering from a wound in the throat, and bronchitis. He died of dilated heart caused by the bronchitis, accelerated by the injury to his throat. The wound in the throat had quite healed up. The immediate cause of death was heart disease.

The jury returned a verdict accordingly.

Swindon Advertiser Saturday December 19, 1896.

cemetery views (73)

William Beames was 48 years old. He was buried on December 17, 1896 in grave plot C199. This is a public grave. He was buried with five other unrelated persons.

Tag: Sapperton Tunnel

Frederick Gee – platelayer

William Beames – tired of life