Right, SECOND INTERESTING THING OF THE DAY, and @RWLDproject will enjoy this one.

Today, I catalogued four years of inquest (1864-1868). Seventy inquests in total.

Guess how many were railway accidents?

TWENTY FIVE

35%!

Eighteen of the twenty-five were workers, most of them building the line to Wisbech. The remainder were people FOOLISHLY UTILISING THE RAILWAY.

I don't recommend reading railway death inquests unless you have a reasonably strong stomach. "Comminuted skull fracture" may make you vomit, and the archives disapprove.

Anyway, the single worst incident in today's trawl happened on 14th January 1865, in the engineering works at the station. I'm not 100%, but I think this is now the site of Waitrose.

It was Saturday, early evening, most of the men had gone home. A group of ten men remained at work to finish testing the boiler they'd been repairing.

The boiler exploded.

The building was destroyed.

Six wounded men were removed from the building.

Charles Chamberlain's torso was found. The rest was not. He was twenty-seven. He was lucky to die instantly.

William Corby was only seventeen. He'd been standing on the boiler when it blew. He was sent through a brick wall by the force.

Thankfully, he also died instantly.

There was a third death.

Charles Mackness was 28, married with two children. Both his thighs were broken, as was one lower leg. He died the next day in hospital.

The newspapers at the time noted that, if the accident had happened on a weekday, up to fifty men would have been killed or injured.