Jimbob52
Member
May 22nd will see the 105th anniversary of the UK’s worst railway accident, at Quintinshill, just north of Gretna, when a southbound troop train collided with a stationary local train and a northbound express ploughed into the wreckage. The death toll, mainly soldiers in the troop train, was 226 or 227; there is some debate because the battalion roll was lost in the ensuing fire.
Should the accident get a mention in the mainstream media, there will probably be a comment that that among the dead were three or four children who were never identified and were therefore presumed to be ‘stowaways’. No matter how often this tale is repeated, I question whether the story is an urban myth.
The origin of the tale seems to be a comment in what is, perhaps, the best book on the disaster, John Thomas’s ‘Gretna, Britain’s Worst Railway Disaster’, published in 1969. He mentions that at a drill hall used as a mortuary, one of the coffins bore a label inscribed ‘little girl, unrecognisable’ and another ‘three trunks, probably children’. The bodies were buried in a Glasgow cemetery. John Thomas provides no source for this comment and does not mention the children in the chapter on Quintinshill in his book ‘Obstruction Danger’, first published only 22 years after the disaster.
An equally readable account of the accident is J.A.B. Hamilton’s ‘Britain’s Greatest Rail Disaster, The Quintinshill Blaze of 1915’ also published in 1969. Hamilton’s style is very much to highlight the personal side of accidents and it would be natural for him to mention the children. (For example, he records that in the immediate aftermath of the crash the son of a signalman at Gretna Green was killed in a motor accident calling this ‘a little tragedy swallowed up in a vaster one’.) Instead, he makes the contrary point: ‘It is a remarkable fact that not a single one of the dead was a woman unless it might have been one of the two passengers killed in the local’. His books ‘British Steam Accidents 1906-1960’ and ‘Britain’s Railways in World War I’ refer to Quintinshill but do not mention unidentified children.
Tom Rolt’s ‘Red for Danger’ and O.S. Nock’s ‘Historic Railway Disasters’ and ‘The Caledonian Railway’ are equally silent about stowaways. The official report on the accident, published in September 1915, refers only to a total of 82 ‘Other bodies recovered but unrecognisable’.
The story seems to have re-emerged in June 2011 when a Scottish councillor (known for his interest in UFOs) arranged for a monument to be erected in Glasgow’s Western Necropolis to ‘the lost children of Maryhill, tragic victims of the Quintinshill disaster, sadly never named or claimed’. Press coverage suggested that some children went missing from the Maryhill district of Glasgow at the time the troop train was being loaded nearby. There is no explanation of why their disappearance was not reported or how they boarded a train under Army control.
In 2013 the story was included in ‘The Quintinshill Conspiracy’ by Jack Richards and Adrian Searle. Personally I find the thesis put forward in this book, that there was a widespread conspiracy to hide the ‘real truth’ behind the disaster, as totally unconvincing. The stowaway story is mentioned though in this account the coffin containing the body parts carried a label saying ‘three trunks possibly children’.
To be fair, the authors make clear that the story of children travelling on the troop train is probably a myth. Instead, they offer an alternative explanation which they find ‘highly plausible’: the children and their Mother were travellers on the express train, going to visit relatives in Glasgow before emigrating to Canada. The family name is quoted. In 2017, a member of this family supported this story which he said could be proven true by testing the remains for DNA. There is no record this was carried out.
It is not unknown for undertakers to put a note on a coffin to aid identification but the very fact that one coffin was being used for the remains of three of the dead illustrates the extent to which bodies had been damaged in the crash. It should also be remembered that the average height of adults in the early part of the twentieth century was much less than today. Soldiers could be as young as 15 and a blind eye turned to official height requirements. Estimating age from the trunk of a body, particularly by doctors overwhelmed by the number of dead, may have been largely guess work.
Nevertheless, I have no doubt the tale will be repeated even though, unless someone has further, factual information, the origin of the tale seems to be just one sentence in John Thomas’s book.
Should the accident get a mention in the mainstream media, there will probably be a comment that that among the dead were three or four children who were never identified and were therefore presumed to be ‘stowaways’. No matter how often this tale is repeated, I question whether the story is an urban myth.
The origin of the tale seems to be a comment in what is, perhaps, the best book on the disaster, John Thomas’s ‘Gretna, Britain’s Worst Railway Disaster’, published in 1969. He mentions that at a drill hall used as a mortuary, one of the coffins bore a label inscribed ‘little girl, unrecognisable’ and another ‘three trunks, probably children’. The bodies were buried in a Glasgow cemetery. John Thomas provides no source for this comment and does not mention the children in the chapter on Quintinshill in his book ‘Obstruction Danger’, first published only 22 years after the disaster.
An equally readable account of the accident is J.A.B. Hamilton’s ‘Britain’s Greatest Rail Disaster, The Quintinshill Blaze of 1915’ also published in 1969. Hamilton’s style is very much to highlight the personal side of accidents and it would be natural for him to mention the children. (For example, he records that in the immediate aftermath of the crash the son of a signalman at Gretna Green was killed in a motor accident calling this ‘a little tragedy swallowed up in a vaster one’.) Instead, he makes the contrary point: ‘It is a remarkable fact that not a single one of the dead was a woman unless it might have been one of the two passengers killed in the local’. His books ‘British Steam Accidents 1906-1960’ and ‘Britain’s Railways in World War I’ refer to Quintinshill but do not mention unidentified children.
Tom Rolt’s ‘Red for Danger’ and O.S. Nock’s ‘Historic Railway Disasters’ and ‘The Caledonian Railway’ are equally silent about stowaways. The official report on the accident, published in September 1915, refers only to a total of 82 ‘Other bodies recovered but unrecognisable’.
The story seems to have re-emerged in June 2011 when a Scottish councillor (known for his interest in UFOs) arranged for a monument to be erected in Glasgow’s Western Necropolis to ‘the lost children of Maryhill, tragic victims of the Quintinshill disaster, sadly never named or claimed’. Press coverage suggested that some children went missing from the Maryhill district of Glasgow at the time the troop train was being loaded nearby. There is no explanation of why their disappearance was not reported or how they boarded a train under Army control.
In 2013 the story was included in ‘The Quintinshill Conspiracy’ by Jack Richards and Adrian Searle. Personally I find the thesis put forward in this book, that there was a widespread conspiracy to hide the ‘real truth’ behind the disaster, as totally unconvincing. The stowaway story is mentioned though in this account the coffin containing the body parts carried a label saying ‘three trunks possibly children’.
To be fair, the authors make clear that the story of children travelling on the troop train is probably a myth. Instead, they offer an alternative explanation which they find ‘highly plausible’: the children and their Mother were travellers on the express train, going to visit relatives in Glasgow before emigrating to Canada. The family name is quoted. In 2017, a member of this family supported this story which he said could be proven true by testing the remains for DNA. There is no record this was carried out.
It is not unknown for undertakers to put a note on a coffin to aid identification but the very fact that one coffin was being used for the remains of three of the dead illustrates the extent to which bodies had been damaged in the crash. It should also be remembered that the average height of adults in the early part of the twentieth century was much less than today. Soldiers could be as young as 15 and a blind eye turned to official height requirements. Estimating age from the trunk of a body, particularly by doctors overwhelmed by the number of dead, may have been largely guess work.
Nevertheless, I have no doubt the tale will be repeated even though, unless someone has further, factual information, the origin of the tale seems to be just one sentence in John Thomas’s book.
