Many years ago I remember my mother telling me about her favourite uncle who was killed in a terrible accident. When I asked what kind of accident, she wouldn't tell me, just said it was really horrible, maybe she didn't know all the details herself. No more was ever mentioned, and in fact I was never even told his name. It was just one of those things that vanish into history, and I never thought any more about it.
Many years later – about three years ago - I started doing Genealogy. After researching my father's family, I decided to research my mother's family. I started with my grandfather (my mother's father), I had an old copy of a photo to work from, so I knew there were six brothers and one sister, I also knew that they had all been born in Edinburgh, so I had a good starting point.
From my grandfather's marriage certificate I was able to get their parent's names. From there I went to the census record for 1891 to get the children's names. I then got the birth, marriage, and death certificates for all the children. Unlike the English system, where you have to order your certificates, then (after paying that horrendous £9 a time), you have to wait about three weeks for them to arrive! The Scottish system is much better, you can get your certificates on line immediately, after paying just a small fee, approx. £1. Having an English father and a Scottish mother, I'm getting plenty of experience of both systems!
When you get a Scottish birth certificate you get a page with three births on, yours and two others. The same for the death certificate, but you just get two per page for the marriage certificate.
As I was studying the death certificates, I noticed that on one certificate, all the people had died at the same time in the same place. Most unusual. These three people had died on December 10th.1937 at 4.40pm. at Castlecary Station. I looked further along to find the cause of death. Severe shock associated with concussion and facial injuries, result of railway accident, he was aged 65. I had found my mother's favourite uncle, Alexander Tod Bathgate, and that terrible accident she had spoken about!
One thing I like about doing genealogy, is the fact that if you come across something really interesting, you can veer off and follow that interesting path, so I decided to see what I could find out about Alexander Tod Bathgate, and also if anything had been written about the train crash.
I found quite a lot had been written, the best is the daily reportage in The Glasgow Herald, this is now online.
It really had been a dreadful crash, and was one of the worst train crashes in Scotland, 35 people died and almost a hundred were injured.
Alexander Tod Bathgate was an older brother of my grandfather (Frederick William Rendle Bathgate). He was born on March 10th.1872 in Edinburgh, married Mary Mc Millan Napier on February 9th.1894 in Edinburgh, and retired from his work as a Transport Inspector in 1937 aged 65.
On May 17th.1937, newly retired Alexander and his wife Mary, arrived in New York, after sailing from Glasgow on the Transylvannia. They went to stay with their married daughter, Alexandrina (known as Rena) Samuelson, who was living in America with her husband. After spending a few months there, Alexander and Mary returned to Glasgow on September 5th.1937 sailing home on the California.
What a tragedy he was killed at the end of the year when he had just retired. Mary (his wife) went out to America a few more times, and another married daughter went out to live in Australia.