The Birth of Modern Safety
Preventing Worker Accidents on Britain's Railways, 1871-1948
Mike Esbester(Author)
Routledge (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 21. May 2026
Book
Hardback
233 pages
978-1-4094-5007-8 (ISBN)
Description
Contemporary life in Britain is dominated by discussion of safety, risk and accidents. This monograph is the first to explore the history of modern safety culture in Britain and the evolution of ideas of accident prevention. It focuses on the railway industry between approximately 1871 (the date of the first specific state intervention in railway employee safety) and 1948 (the date at which the railways were nationalised). This period shows extremely important and far-reaching changes in how people dealt with safety and accident during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The railway industry was one of the first to introduce safety education into Britain. This study charts the shift from state legislative intervention and formal, punitive measures that required railway workers to be safe, to the introduction of an informal, accessible safety education campaign, which tried to persuade workers to act safely. Using visually attractive items - including posters, booklets, leaflets, and films - people were shown what to do and what not to do. How this happened, and the uses to which safety education and accident prevention have been put have not been examined. The book will draw upon and develop relevant insights from business history, labour history the history of occupational health and safety, and medical history. Readers will find particular value in the analysis of ways in which state, unions, managers and workers interacted to produce dominant understandings of safety.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-4094-5007-8 (9781409450078)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Mike Esbester is AHRC Early Career Fellow at Oxford Brookes University, UK
Content
1. Understanding 'safety' 2. Legislating for safety 3. Regulating and inspecting for safety 4. Safety education: the new paradigm 5. Constructing and managing the safe worker 6. 'All bunkum': worker responses to education 7. 'The only means of preventing accidents': state responses to education 8. Conclusion