ST PAUL’S CATHEDRAL SERVICE IN MEMORY OF RAILWAY MEN

As may be gathered from the number of pages this is more than the Service at St Paul’s, it is also the Roll of Honour of those who were employed on the railways. A staggering figure of 186,475 railwaymen of Great Britain and Ireland joined the Colours during the war and of these 18,957 lost their lives and here are their names. The various railway companies which employed them are shown in alphabetical order; there were sixty-five different companies from the Alexandra (Newport and South Wales) Docks and Railways, to the Great Northern, to the Midland Great Western of Ireland and finally to the Wirral Railway. This list is in itself a fascinating comment on the times, indicating as it does the dependency on the railways to get about and how widespread the system was. Also included is the Underground Electric Railways of London, making sixty-six companies in all. The dead are shown in alphabetical order under the Company for which they worked, with their rank, any decorations and their Grade (job) and here are some intriguing occupations: Number taker (presumably not a train spotter); Holder-up (what did he hold up?); Wagon Lifter (strong men only need apply?); Passed Cleaner (failed ones were out?) and a Rullyman, a word that does not appear in my dictionary, so I haven’t the foggiest idea what he did.
The first few pages of the book contain the actual Service, held on Wednesday 14th May 1919 in the presence of HM The King and other ‘Royal personages’ and the Lord Mayor of London. Buglers for Last Post and Reveille were provided by the Grenadier Guards. A major national occasion!