Now! Then! 2025! - Yorkshire On This Day

A Yorkshire Almanac Comprising 365 Historical Extracts, Red-letter Days and Customs, and Astronomical and Meteorological Data

14 April 1848: The tombstone epitaph and verse for James Myers, killed on this day while working in the Bramhope Tunnel, and for his daughter, who died three weeks later

The Navvies’ Monument, Church Lane, Otley is a memorial to the navvies who died in the Bramhope Tunnel’s construction and is a scale model of the tunnel’s northern portal

The Navvies’ Monument, Church Lane, Otley is a memorial to the navvies who died in the Bramhope Tunnel’s construction and is a scale model of the tunnel’s northern portal (Chemical Engineer 2017/08/07).

Mark Stevenson. 2018. James Myers Memorial Stone, Yeadon Methodist Church, Chapel Hill, Yeadon, Leeds. Geograph. Online: Geograph. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, without modification. Get it:

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Excerpt

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IN MEMORY OF
James Myers of Yeadon who came to his death by an accident in the Bramhope Tunnel on the Leeds and Thirsk Railway on the 14th Day of April 1848
Aged 22 years.

What dangers do surround
Poor miners every where
And they that labour underground
They should be men of prayer.

Also of Harriet Daughter of the above said James Myers who died May 3rd 1848
Aged 3 years.

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

Comment

The musicians Greg Mulholland and Summercross quote the doggerel in Jimmy and Harriot, a fictionalised song about the dangers of navvying (Mulholland 2014), which I think features in the full version of The navvies who built the Bramhope tunnel:

A factual accident description:

A second’s absent-mindedness cost William Willoby (aged 23) his life at Bramhope Tunnel in December 1846. According to a witness, the tunnel inspector, Richard Taylor: “He had been at the works working all night and after coming up the Shaft at Six in the morning he walked from the Shaft by the cabin as if going towards his Lodgings, turned back upon some occasion and walked into the Shaft. No-one saw him fall.” (Brooke 1983)

The inscription on the Otley monument quotes respectively Genesis 23:4 and Luke 13:4 to the effect that the navvies did not deserve their bleak reputation:

In memory of the unfortunate men who lost their lives while engaged in the construction of the Bramhope Tunnel of the Leeds and Thirsk Railway, from 1845 to 1849. This tomb is erected as a memorial, at the expense of James Bray, Esq., the contractor, and of the agents, sub-contractors, and workmen employed thereon.

I am a stranger and sojourner with you: give me a possession of a burying-place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.

Or those eighteen upon whom the Tower in Siloam fell and slew them: think ye that they were sinners above all the men in Jerusalem? I tell you, nay: and except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

The Otley monument does not include Myers and others buried elsewhere. I wonder what the total death toll was for the construction of this 2.138-mile tunnel from Airedale to Wharfedale, connecting Horsforth with Harrogate.

Because of the nature of the ground, accidents did not cease once the navvies had left.

Unprocessed:

  1. James Bray
  2. Our navvies: a dozen years ago and to-day
  3. Bramhope.org
  4. Tim Barber

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Original

IN MEMORY OF
James Myers of Yeadon who came to his death by an accident in the Bramhope Tunnel on the Leeds and Thirsk Railway on the 14th Day of April 1848
Aged 22 years.

What dangers do surround
Poor miners every where
And they that labour underground
They should be men of prayer.

Also of Harriet Daughter of the above said James Myers who died May 3rd 1848
Aged 3 years.

84 words.

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