Late afternoon on Tuesday April 14, 1896, a gang of five Swindon platelayers were engaged on some repairs to the line in the Sapperton tunnel, some four miles east of Stroud, between Swindon and Gloucester. Ganger Frederick Gee, a 47 year old father of seven was working alongside H. Ballard and E. Greenaway when a warning sounded the approach of a down train.
The men quickly jumped out of the way on to the other set of metals but in so doing stepped straight into the path of an oncoming up train which had entered the tunnel at the same moment. H. Ballard and E. Greenaway were killed outright. The Times reported that ‘their bodies were mutilated in a shocking manner.’
But at least their deaths would have been quick, unlike poor Frederick who suffered terrible injuries, his left arm amputated and his skull severely fractured.
Help was slow in coming. Frederick and the other two injured men were eventually picked up by a passenger train passing through the tunnel half an hour after the accident. At Stroud the men were taken from the railway station to the hospital, causing what was described as ‘a painful sensation in the town.’
The injured men were J. Hillsley who sustained concussion of the brain, scalp wounds and bruised limbs, according to the reports and W. Pointer who was allowed to return home during the course of the evening. But poor Frederick died en route to the hospital.
Back home in Swindon Frederick’s wife Mary Ann had a family of seven to support, with five children under 10 years of age, including a baby son just a few months old.
Frederick was buried in Radnor Street cemetery where in 1900 the couple’s sixteen year old daughter Rosa Ethel was buried alongside him and four years later their son Harry Howard, aged 21. In just a few short years Mary Ann had lost her husband and two of her children, but she was made of stern stuff.
On March 14, 1907, with her four youngest sons Sidney 17, Ernest 15, Frank 13 and eleven year old Wilfred, Mary Ann set sail on onboard the SS Cymric for a new life in the United States of America.
The 1920 United States Federal Census finds Mary Ann living at 2163 Lake Street in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1918 daughter Emily had joined the family and on the same census she is living with her husband and two young daughters in neighbouring South Street. Elder siblings Bessie and Frederick Richard James were the only two members of the family who remained in Swindon.
Sapperton Tunnels
Salt Lake City
Views across Radnor Street Cemetery.