The Great Thorpe Railway Disaster 1874

The history of Victorian England's tragic railroad catastrophe in Norwich, featuring profiles of the accident's many victims.

Foreword by Pete Goodrum, author of Norwich in fifty Buildings

At Norwich Station on ten September 1874, a momentary misunderstanding between the Night Inspector and young Telegraph Clerk resulted in an inevitable head-on collision. The residents of the picturesque riverside village of Thorpe-Next-Norwich were shocked by a “deafening peal of thunder”, sending them running through the driving rain towards a scene of destruction. Surgeons were summoned from the city, as the dead, dying and injured were taken to a nearby inn and boatyard.

Every class of Victorian society was traveling that night, including ex-soldiers, landowners, clergymen, doctors, seamstresses, saddlers, domestic servants and a beautiful heiress. For many months local and national newspapers followed the story, publishing details of subsequent deaths, manslaughter trial and outcomes of record-breaking compensation claims. The Board of Trade Inquiry concluded that it was “the most serious collision between trains meeting one another on a single line of rails [. . .] that has yet been experienced in this country.”

Using extensive research, nonfiction narrative, informed speculation and dramatized events, Norwich writer and biographer Phyllida Scrivens's The Great Thorpe Railway Disaster of 1874 pays tribute to the twenty-eight men, women and children who died, revealing the personal stories behind the names, hitherto only recorded as a list.