Death and injury
While there are many occupations that are fraught with danger, being a navvy was unique in the number of different ways someone could be physically damaged or meet death in the course of a normal working day. The perils the navvies faced on each shift – risking being crushed, blown-up, drowned, buried alive, suffocated or maimed for life – would challenge the stoutest heart. From the cutting of the first sod to the finishing of the final tunnel portal, death and serious injury claimed hundreds of victims, young boys among them.
So commonplace and accepted was this dreadful situation that when shown a list of 131 gravely injured navvies working on Box Tunnel near Bath, Brunel remarked: “I think it is a small list considering the immense amount of [gun] powder used and some of the heaviest and most difficult work”, before adding: “I am afraid it does not show the whole extent of accidents incurred in that district”. It is believed that 100 navvies died building the tunnel. Woodhead Tunnel under the Peak District was also notoriously bad. At one time, with 32 killed and 141 seriously wounded, social reformer Edwin Chadwick likened these casualties to “a [war] campaign or a severe battle”. These are just two examples, but there are hundreds of others. The actual numbers of navvies killed on different works is difficult to pin down because of poor and confused record keeping at the time. What is sure is that too many navvies gave their lives to deliver Britain’s railway network.