100 Disciplinary Actions - A Glimpse of Railway Discipline in the 1860s

Although there has been much commentary in the literature on the subject of railway discipline, there has been no quantitative work on the extent to which the railway companies actually employed the three main methods of punishment: fines, demotions and dismissals. Thus, I thought I would review a railway company’s ‘Black Book’ of disciplinary actions to see how frequently each method was used. While there are a number of Black Books have been digitised (by Ancestry.com), I chose one from the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) which covers some of 1862 and 1863. Naturally, I couldn’t analyse all the 90-odd pages of entries for a blog post and so I restricted myself to a hundred that were entered between 1^st August and 7^th November 1862.

Fines were clearly the most regularly imposed punishment. However, the amount of money that employees had taken off them for offences varied from six pence to five shillings depending on the seriousness of their infringements.

Clearly, the company imposed the lowest and highest fines infrequently. Only in one case was an employee fined six pence. In August J.H. Ainscough, a Telegraph Clerk at Victoria, was reported for the ‘wrong delivery of a telegraph message.’ At the higher end of the fine spectrum, only three individuals received the maximum fine of five shillings. In October two Porters at Victoria Station, Messrs Ireland and Conherr, were fined this amount for ‘getting drunk and fighting in a public house.’ Evidently, the company’s reputation was at stake and managers weren’t going to tolerate individuals damaging it while off the premises. The third five pound fine was given to W. Lebbage, a signalman at Brighton station. Possibly this was two fines rolled into one as he both ‘neglected his signals and points whereby an engine was thrown off the road’ and had ‘strangers in his box.’ Whether the two offences were related is unknown.

Most of the employees, fifty-nine out of the hundred, received a one shilling fine, possibly suggesting that this was a ‘standard’ rate. The most common offence to incur this, which was imposed in twenty-five cases, was the rather mundane transgression of ‘coming on duty late.’ The other one shilling fines were imposed for a range minor infringements of the rules or neglect of duties. In August at London Bridge Station four porters, named Gutsell, Peel, Pinter and Burns, were all fined for ‘running alongside of trains and catching hold of the doors while trains are running into station contrary to order.’ In September a C. Cartwright was fined for ‘putting a passenger in the wrong part of 10.50 am train on [the] 12th August.’ Later that month a Guard, J. Croft, was fined for ‘Causing detention of luggage that was put out at Forest Hill by mistake instead of at New Wandsworth’ Station.

Higher fines of 2 shillings (6 instances) and 2 shillings 6 pence (10 instances) were given regularly for more serious offences. Eight employees were fined for causing damage to property, whether it was the LB&SCR’s, other railway companies’ or private individuals’. G. Fulman, a Guard at Victoria, was fined 2 shillings 6 pence in October for ‘causing damage to a first class carriage by not seeing to the proper fastening of the door.’ In September T. Hawkings, a Van Foreman at Brighton, was fined 2 shillings for ‘Loading a van too high whereby roof of shed at Redhill was damaged.’ Other fines of these amounts were imposed for individuals, such as signalmen, delaying trains or for operational errors. T. Eldridge, a Guard based at London Bridge, was fined 2 shillings 6 pence in October for ‘shunting his train without signal from the underguard and leaving several passengers behind.’

Only for very serious offences were individuals dismissed and twenty examples were recorded. Two offences were guaranteed to end an employee’s career, being absent without leave (four instances) or being drunk (one instance). Indeed, in three cases, those of Baldstone, Graves and Baker, the two offences were committed at once. The other frequent cause of dismissal was serious neglect of one’s duty. In this period porters occasionally doubled-up as guards. Thus, two porters, W. Balley of Victoria and A. Allen of Balcome, were both dismissed for falling asleep while doing this duty. But not all individuals were asleep when committing transgressions, and J. Bailey, a signalman at Balham, was evidently fully awake when he was fired for playing cards on duty in August. Only in two cases was actual criminal activity involved, the most serious being that of J. Baker, a Porter at London Bridge, who was fired in September for ‘stealing a £5 note from a passenger.’ He was ‘sentenced to a month’s imprisonment with hard labour.’ While Baker was fired for trying to do something surreptitiously, T. Mead, a Porter at Carshalton, clearly wasn’t. In September he was fired for ‘use of filthy language to one of our customers.’

In the entire sample only one individual was demoted. S Brown was a Lampman at Victoria when he was found not to be up to the job. Consequently, in October he was reduced to being a porter and his wages dropped from twenty-six to eighteen shillings a week.

Naturally, this is only a small sample of the disciplinary actions the LB&SCR took during its existence. Indeed, I have only given some basic statistics and highlighted interesting cases. But the LB&SCR wasn’t unusual in punishing their their employee's transgressions of the rule book by these methods. Therefore, a more detailed quantitative study of Victorian railway discipline is required. Issues surrounding how much individuals were fined, the types of offences that employees faced dismissal for, and how these changed over the decades needs to be seriously addressed and analysed.

All taken from: The National Archives: RAIL 414/759, Names, offences, punishments etc, of various members of operating staff (black book), 1862-1863, p.1-11

Crime and Punishment on the Victorian Railway

The Victorian Railway was a harsh place to work. While death was an ever-present threat, there was also the danger that the slightest infraction of the company’s rules may result in disciplinary action. Discipline came in four main forms, fines, demotions, suspensions and dismissals. While the latter three forms of punishment were infrequently inflicted on individuals, fines were a regular occurrence. Between August 1862 and December 1863 the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway imposed 482 fines on its Traffic Department employees. The department only had 1800 men, indicating that it wasn’t difficult for employees to breach the company’s rules and regulations. The 482 fines were imposed for the following:-

Errors in work – 135

Late on Duty – 107

Neglect of Work – 105

Damage to Property – 73

Breach of Regulations – 31

Misconduct – 27

Insubordination - 4 [1]

While it would take some time to list every type of infraction that occurred on the Victorian railway network, in January 1874 the London and South Western Railway disciplined 35 individuals; amongst which was a guard who was ‘fined for neglecting to see the carriage doors properly fastened,’ a telegraphist who was cautioned for ‘being late on morning duty,’ a signalman who was ‘fined for letting a goods train out of the yard in front of an excursion train’ and four porters who were dismissed from the ‘service for intoxication’ (hopefully not at the same time). Indeed, in cases where individuals turned up to work intoxicated or were found asleep on duty, almost all were dismissed.

Offences were usually recorded in the railway companies’ ‘Black Book.’ However, to warn other staff against making infractions, the companies would list all of the previous month’s within the monthly Working Timetables, or would send round a circular to all staff. While the offending individuals were not named, the circulating to the staff a list of all cases of misconduct was clearly meant as a corrective, to diminish the number of infractions and to enforce the rules.

Fines on most railways were between 1 and 5 shillings, however, in the case of more serious offences being committed or repeat offending, fines could go as high as £1. Once again, like in the case of the death of railway employees, disciplinary actions disproportionately affected the lower paid employees of railway companies. Of the L&SWR’s 35 disciplinary cases in January 1874, only one employee punished, a station agent, was a member of the higher-paid grades. The remaining 34 individuals were in the low-paid grades, for example porters, gangers, enginemen, guards and telegraphists. Indeed, the same was the case on other railways, and on the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway in August 1872, of 55 punishments given out, only 7 were to employees in higher grades.[2]

Therefore, the suspension, dismissal and fining of staff would have meant either temporary or permanent hardship for the railwayman’s families. Indeed, if a porter was paid £1 (20 shillings) a week, a fine of 5 shillings may have constituted a week in which the family would be forced to eat less. Further, larger fines for serious offences would have meant that some families may have gone without food for a week. Indeed, I don’t think I need to explain what effect suspension or dismissal of a railway employee would have had on his family if they were on a low income.

Therefore, the rules railway workers had to follow in the Victorian Period were harsh, but the consequences of an infraction may have been harsher.

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[1] Kingsford, P.W., Victorian Railwaymen, (London, 1971) p.22

[2]Kingsford, P.W., Victorian Railwaymen, (London, 1971) p.27