The railway navvies

THE NAVVY was a phenomenon of the 19th century when public works such as the construction of new railways needed human muscle to shift massive quantities of earth, often at the rate of twenty tons a day for each man on site.

The word navvy is a shorter version of navigator, the name given to the canal builders of the 18th century and was inherited by the railwaymen. It was used more particularly to mean a man with a pick and shovel, an excavator as opposed to a bricklayer or a mason, and invariably referred to someone employed on the building of railways.

It was a rough and ready life that attracted itinerant workers from other countries, particularly Scotland and Ireland where the only alternative was ill-paid employment on the land. They were also prepared to live together, often in encampments by the line, and they invariably had an ability to eat heartily, drink heavily and fight fiercely.

The navvies came to the Bourne area to help build the railways and their first job was on the Bourne to Essendine link on which work began in the autumn of 1857. Such a large concentration of tough workers renowned for their strong language, love of beer and immoral behaviour was regarded with some concern by the people who lived locally and there were many attempts to keep the men on the straight and narrow path of Victorian righteousness. A director of the Bourne and Essendine Railway Company responsible for the project was Mr John Lely Ostler of Cawthorpe House, a local landowner and a dedicated Christian who sought to pass on his ideals to others by bringing preachers to speak to the men in their off duty hours, a practice that continued even after he died in June 1859.

The line was completed in 1860 but Ostler had laid firm foundations among the railway navvies in the Bourne area and the practice of employing visiting preachers for their spiritual welfare continued on other railway projects in the ensuing years, particularly the line between Bourne and Little Bytham junction that opened in 1894. As the railway progressed towards the town, particularly during the two years from 1891-93 that it took to build the last section through Little Bytham, Toft and Lound, earnings were as high as £1 a week or even 30s. if on piecework, far higher than could be obtained elsewhere and this attracted a motley collection of hardened labourers from all parts of the British Isles.

By this time, organised evangelism had taken root with the establishment of the Navvy Mission Society, a Christian action group founded by a Yorkshire vicar, the Rev Lewis Moule Evans who actually worked as a navvy himself. He recruited ladies of means and Christian conviction who were able to devote their leisure time to taking the word of God to most of the railway construction sites during the years of its existence between 1877 and 1918. The society has now become the Industrial Christian Fellowship but the records of those missionary days have been preserved in the library at Lambeth Palace and at the University of Leicester.

The society set up mission rooms at the Victoria Hall in Bourne (now demolished), at Little Bytham and Castle Bytham, and regular meetings and entertainments were arranged for the workers as an alternative to their usual pursuits. At Bourne for instance, Mr A Mousley, son of the contractor Mr William Mousley, organised a concert of music including violin solos, songs and recitations at which, it was reported, "the humorous element met with hearty appreciation". The society sent missionaries to speak to the men and Miss Spofford, who had been crusading among the workers engaged on building the Manchester Ship Canal, delivered what was described as "a very powerful and earnest address" on behalf of the Christian Excavators Union, an organisation associated with the Navvy Mission Society, and the men apparently listened to her with rapt attention.

The majority of the navvies were well behaved and many were sending money home to needy families. But there were those who spent all they earned on drink and often worked through the day while still drunk. Petty crime therefore was inevitable and navvies were convicted and fined and sometimes jailed by the courts for poaching and stealing, often poultry from local farms but also from each other and on one occasion a navvy absconded with the money from their sick club. The Midland Railway tried to keep law breaking, particularly drunkenness, under control by appointing special constables at 30s a week but the experiment was short-lived.

Fighting was also a way of life and regular bouts were held on Sundays to determine who should be Cock of the Camp for the following week. It was also the accepted method of settling quarrels and many were badly injured. There was at least one death during the construction of the railway when two of them, James Hook and Thomas Smith, met in a bare-knuckle contest in a field near the line in which Hook was felled and collapsed in the shadow of a wall where he was later found to be dead. Smith gave himself up to the police and was sent to jail for manslaughter.

Hygiene was unknown and this may have been the cause of a smallpox epidemic which broke out in 1893. It began among navvies working at Castle Bytham and Thurlby, some of them living at a common lodging house in South Street, Bourne, although many carried on working without revealing their illness for fear of losing their weekly wages with the result that infection soon spread. Unfortunately, the public health authorities were unprepared and inexperienced and it was several months before the outbreak was brought under control and only then after a trained nurse from Hull in Yorkshire was drafted in to help. Details of any fatalities and those taken ill are not known because the medical records for this period have mysteriously disappeared and may have been destroyed in an attempt to cover up inefficiencies in handling the outbreak.

With the completion of the modest railway system serving this town, the navvies moved on and the projects they had toiled over became redundant when Bourne was finally phased out of the railway system in 1964 with only a few isolated examples such as the Toft tunnel remaining as a memorial to their Trojan efforts.