Pamela Parry talks about her great-grandfather, who worked at Edge Hill as a brakesman
Resource Type: Audio | Posted on 20th February 2012 by Liam Physick
Pamela Parry explains how her great-grandfather worked as a brakesman at Edge Hill until he was killed in an accident at gridiron sidings in 1907. He lived at the now-defuct Spekeland Vale with his wife, Elizabeth McEvoy, and four children - one of whom was Pamela’s own grandmother. She thinks that they must have been a happy family until tragedy struck
Interviewee: Pamela Parry
Interviewee Gender: Female
Date of Interview: 17th November 2011
Interview Transcript
Jodie: You said that your great-grandfather worked on the railway, didn’t you?
Pamela: That’s right. He lived near Edge Hill station and he was a railway brakesman. I don’t know exactly where he was born, but when he was a baby he was in Seacombe, on Chapel Street, number five, when he was married he lived very close to Edge Hill station at 27 Spekeland Vale – now, Spekeland Vale doesn’t exist any more, but it’s right near Spekeland Street (sic), and there’s this, an old church called St. Dunstan’s which is still there . . .
Jodie: Oh, yeah.
Pamela: . . . right. It was a family of four children, he was married to a lady who was McEvoy before she was married, Elizabeth McEvoy, and they had two little boys Harold and Leonard William, and they had twin girls, and one of the girls dies of diphtheria when she was still a baby, before she turned two – the other baby was my grandmother . . .
Jodie: Ah, right!
Pamela: . . . and I’ve only just found a lot of this out . . .
Jodie: Yeah.
Pamela . . . anyway, I found out he was killed in an accident at gridiron sidings, which is apparently somewhere very near to Edge Hill station, he was hit by a railway carriage, and suffered head injuries and died the same day, and there was an inquest that said it was just an accident, and that was in 1907, and I think that’s about all I can tell you about him.
Jodie: Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s really interesting, thanks. (Pamela laughs) Yeah, it was, it was really dangerous, wasn’t it, all those years ago?
Pamela: Oh, yeah.
Jodie: Yeah.
Pamela: When I found out he’d died so young, cos he was in his early 30s, I think, or at the most 36, I realised that it was likely, or very probable, that he had died in an accident and, you know, give his job, yeah . . .
Jodie: Yeah.
Pamela: so . . . but I, I like to imagine that the little boys were very proud of their daddy, they were only very young when he died, but they must have been very proud, you know, his, you know, working on the railway in those days . . .
Jodie: Yeah.
Pamela: . . . so . . .
Jodie: Yeah.
Pamela: . . . and I think they were a happy family until that point.
Jodie: Yeah.
Categorised under: Work & Industry
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