Commander Loftus William Jones: Fighting to the Very End!
Loftus William Jones was born in 1879 in Petersfield, Hampshire, a small town 17 miles to the north of the Naval Base at Portsmouth. His Father was Admiral Loftus Francis Jones, who retired from the Navy twenty years after his son was born in 1899. Given his Father’s position in the Royal Navy and the…
The Charfield Train Crash: Another Tragedy on the Bristol Line
The Leeds to Bristol Express Mail train struck a glancing blow to the freight train before smashing into the engine tender that was shunting the freight wagons off the main line. The express train continued out of control smashing into the carriages of a second freight train before overturning and landing on its right-hand side.…
Feeling the Heat: The Fire and Rescue Service
It’s 3am a faulty games console has set alight quickly spreading to the curtains. The house is filling with thick black toxic smoke. Just a couple of breaths in this will render you unconscious. The temperatures downstairs is several hundred degrees, hotter than your oven on full. Racing through the quiet streets a fire crew…
The Tragic Story of Dr. William Barnsley Allen
William Barnsley Allen was born in Sheffield on the 8th of June 1892 to Parents Percy and Edith. He was educated at Worksop College before going to Sheffield university to study medicine, eventually earning himself a bachelor’s degree in Medicine. He proved to be a talented and knowledgeable physician, gaining a gold medal for pathology…
Nursing at the Front: The Forgotten Heroes of the Great War
Trawling through the newspaper archives from 1914 to 1918 I came across the occasional story of awards for nurses, for their courage under fire at the front. Given the current global situation we find ourselves in, and all the praise rightfully directed at the amazing doctors and nurses of the NHS, I decided that this…
The Ashchurch Rail Disaster: an Avoidable Tragedy
At just after 9pm on a freezing January evening a freight train of some 24 wagons was being shunted between sidings in the sleepy Gloucestershire village of Ashchurch. A relatively routine operation that had been carried out here hundreds of times before. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary as the railway foreman strolled along beside…
The Castlecary Rail Disaster: Tragedy in the Snow
On the 10th of December 1937, in blizzard conditions, an express train bound for Glasgow collided with the rear of a stationary train bound for Dundee, causing the rear carriages of the Dundee train to disintegrate, killing 35 people and injuring 109 others. This was Britain’s worst snow related crash and sent ripples through the…
Three Killed in 1913 Sewer Incident: Brave Rescue Attempt by Two Firemen ends in Tragedy
On Tuesday the 18th of March 1913, William Parry a 35-year-old sewer man working for Kensington Borough Council was carrying out some work in a sewer beneath Pembridge Place, Notting Hill. While he was working, he was completely unaware that coal gas from a nearby main had saturated the surrounding ground and was now beginning…
Billionaire Group to Take Over NHS Services!
See what I did there? An attention grabbing headline designed to entice you to click the link and read my article! I even used a picture I found on google! It is in fact completely made up, with absolutely no evidence to substantiate the claim! Thousands of people do this every day on the internet,…
The Christmas Truce: Humanity in times of war.
With the war a little less than 6 months old and following months of bitter fighting in rain filled muddy trenches, a most remarkable event occurred. In the midst of war we were given a stark reminder that humanity still existed. It started with an exchange of Christmas carols, and after a while a few…
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