A Serious Charge Against a Station Master - 1888

In the later nineteenth century the station master was seen as a respectable member of society who was usually beyond reproach. However, occasionally I find the odd individual that betreyed this image, such as this case from 1888 of the Great Western Railway's Station Master at Yarnton, near Oxford:

'Before Oxford City Magistrate this morning George Taylor Beavington, station master at Yarnton, and his wife were charged with stealing and receiving from a brake-van on the Great Western Railway, in transit from Charlbury to Oxford on May 31st, a post office mail-bag and contents, including a five-pound note. - The evidence showed that on being questioned by the Inspector the male prisoner admitted he had taken the bag. - Both Prisoners were remanded for a week.[1]

Naturally, Beavington lost his job immediately, and when the case was eventually heard by the Oxford Assize Court on 25 June he was sentenced to twelve months hard labour. The case against his wife was not proceeded with.[2]

[1] The North-Eastern Daily Gazette, Friday, June 08, 1888
[2] The York Herald, Tuesday, June 26, 1888

'The Position of a Station-Master is not Arrived at in a Day.' - Promotion in 1889

The following short clipping is from an article entitled 'Station-Masters, by one of them', and was published in Chamber's Journal  in March 1889. Interestingly, it suggests that not only was advancement up the railway promotional tree more likley to be determined by who a railway worker knew, not on skill, but also that only a few were destined for the lofty position of General Manager. Personally, I find the latter point more plausible that the former, as while nepotism did go on, railway work by this time had become more professional than the author claims:

'The position of a station-master is not arrived at in a day. The average number of years for which a man has to work before he attains this post is about twelve. There are men, and many of them of great practical experience, who have been aiming at this position for twenty years or more, and have not reached it yet; and may never do so. It is the same on the railways as in the army, navy and the other professions : influence, to some extent, is almost indispensable; and though men of marked ability have risen in the railway service by virtue of their own merit, still these instances are few and far between. Soldiers and sailors cannot all be generals and admirals, neither can every railway servant become general manager. The French soldier is taught to believe he carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack; so might every railway man be taught that seal of a general manager is within his grasp. If honours are never attained, both services will profit by the energy displayed by the members in attempting to attain a position that is held by very few men within half a century.'