Women on the Move: Working Class Railway Excursions, A Talk by Susan Major

Susan Major discusses the working class railway excursions for women in early Victorian Britain.

This talk is part of the Online Autumn Talk Series 2023 called Railway Architecture and Society in the Victorian Society. Follow this link to book all of the talks.

The leisure opportunities for working-class women in early Victorian Britain have received little attention for various reasons. This was of course a time of great change, as industrialisation drew many thousands of people from the countryside into towns. But the fast-developing railway network provided a ‘connectedness’ across the landscape, enhancing the potential mobility of the working classes.

Early railway excursions gave women the opportunity to travel far away from home in crowded railway wagons, a cheap freedom, which they enjoyed, despite risking offensive behaviour by men.

This talk uses evidence from contemporary newspapers and 19th century literature, to offer glimpses of the leisure activities of ordinary women from the 1830s to the 1860s.

Susan Major completed a PhD with the Institute of Railway Studies & Transport History at the University of York in 2012. Her research focused on early railway excursion crowds during the period 1840-1860, a watershed moment for working class mobility. Her book, Early Victorian Railway Excursions: ‘The Million Go Forth’ (2015), based on her doctoral research, was shortlisted for the Railways and Canal Historical Society Book of the Year Awards 2017.

Susan has featured in a number of TV programmes about Victorian railways: Railways: the Making of a Nation (BBC), Tony Robinson’s History of Britain (Channel 5), and Secrets of the Railways (UKTV). Her second book, Female Railway Workers in World War II (2018), drew upon interviews in the National Archive of Railway Oral History at the National Railway Museum.

All attendees will be sent a recording of the talk.

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