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This paper examines the work of a group of Railwaymen Poets, whose verse has been collected as part of the Piston, Pen and Press project. It explores their writings both as part of an emerging theme of accident and loss poetry surrounding the railways in Victorian culture but also more specifically as interrelated texts produced by workers sharing common experiences. Whilst many wrote about all manner of subjects, not just the railway accident, public fascination with accident reporting allowed them to both pursue their literary endeavours and also to use poetry as a form of catharsis. Their poetry, this paper argues, should be read as a collective expression of emotion around the dangerous and loss-ridden nature of their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the everyday history of one of the groups of auxiliary workers in industrial towns of Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing primarily from journal and newspaper records, this paper examines the work of knocker ups and the ways in which they became intimately tied to the lives of industries and primary industry workers. The paper then focuses on how knocker ups became highly influential in industrial towns through the multifarious jobs they performed – sometimes knowingly and sometimes less consciously. In so doing, this paper challenges the prevailing notion that auxiliaries merely served their primary clients by waking them up, and re-visualizes the position of knocker ups in industrial towns not as mere auxiliaries but as crucial contributors to social, political and economic life as well as partners in law enforcement in a broad variety of circumstances. The findings suggest a need to revise long-standing views of labour in industrial Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]