Job Accidents and the Law in England's Early Railway Age

The research contained in this text chronicles the actions of coroners' courts in the 1830s and 1840s, in order to illustrate the competition and, literally, the bargaining which could occur in a legal arena when a set of forces changed English workplaces. The study argues that the strictness of judge-made and legislated law toward occupational accident victims may be understood within two contexts from that time: lawmakers' anger at the actions of "medical" coroners - notably Thomas Wakely of Middlesex; and their resentment of the actions of coroners' courts. Beyond providing information about legal responses to social change, this study argues that alternative vision of the law of occupational accidents did exist, in complex and contentious form, in the years prior to 1846.