When a disaster becomes a picture postcard …….

Now I remain undecided about this picture postcard which was entitled, “Attending the wounded.  Gretna Green Railway Disaster, May 22nd, 1915”.

The picture postcard, 1915

My Wikipedia tell me that “The Quintinshill rail disaster was a multi-train rail crash which occurred on 22 May 1915 outside the Quintinshill signal box near Gretna Green in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. 

It resulted in the deaths of over 200 people, and remains the worst rail disaster in British history".* 

One of the trains involved was a troop train and “only half the soldiers on the troop train survived.

Those killed were mainly Territorial soldiers from the 1/7th (Leith) Battalion, the Royal Scots heading for Gallipoli. 

The casualties and the rescuers, 1915

The precise death toll was never established with confidence as some bodies were never recovered, having been wholly consumed by the fire, and the roll list of the regiment was also destroyed in the fire. 

The official death toll was 227 (215 soldiers, nine passengers and three railway employees), but the British Army later reduced their 215 figure by one. 

Not counted in the 227 were four victims thought to be children, but whose remains were never claimed or identified. 

The soldiers were buried together in a mass grave in Edinburgh's Rosebank Cemetery, where an annual remembrance is held”.

So truly a terrible event, but there is a little bit of me that recoils from the event being recorded as a picture postcard, which was no doubt rushed our soon after the disaster and was I guess one of a series.  

That has yet to be confirmed but the idea that for months perhaps even years later the pictures of the casualties would be on display in shops, and street kiosks is all a bit macabre.

But then perhaps I am being oversensitive, after all there is much worse displayed in the media today, and before the advent of mass radio, and television the coverage of such an event would be limited to the newspapers and the fledgling cinema. 

And so, it could be argued that the use of the picture postcard allowed for the dissemination of the awful event.

The card comes from the collection of David Harrop who by sheer chance also acquired a letter from a new recruit of “A Company, 3rd Battalion Sea Forth Highlanders”.

He was writing to his brother just four days after the rail crash, and along with the gripes of a recruit was the observation on “the terrible railway smash, [which] seems such a pity after the training all those months and building up their hopes of paying the Germans back a bit”.

Setting aside the comments on the disaster there is much in the letter that would echo with anyone who has undergone military training or even endured a long spell away from home.

He writes of the embarrassment at watching other recruits receiving food parcels including cakes which they share with him, and his surprise that his compatriots don’t write home regularly.

But of course, it is the army life which absorbs him from complaining about the non-commissioned officers “talking to them like dogs” to the news that he had finally been given a rifle, “and have been doing handling of it”.

I don’t know what happened to him, but I do have his name and serial number along with his regiment and I will go looking for him.

I like the way that his brother or someone took time to repair the letter using Sellotape to strengthen the spots where the letter had been folder over.

For now I am equally interested in the company that marketed the picture postcard, who were Sandbride which one source suggests were based in Middlesborough.**

Location, Cromarty, Scotland

Pictures; that postcard, 1915 and extracts from a soldier’s letter, 1915, from the collection of David Harrop

*Quintinshill rail disaster, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintinshill_rail_disaster

**Sanbride postcard, https://mynorthborneostamps.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-san-bride-postcard.html