Our speaker Mike Collins, making a return visit to Stumperlowe Probus, is an emeritus consultant at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and before retirement he worked in the Department of Medical Imaging at Northern General Hospital.
Mike is now interested in history with a medical bias, and the subject of this talk was inspired by looking at photographs of congested streets in Sheffield’s city centre in the early 1900s before the age of the motor car. There is a Youtube clip – www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzZKrjQFdsM) – that eloquently illustrates both how the city centre was thronged with people and their scant regard for road safety; it was common for passengers to climb on and off the moving electric trams in the middle of the road.
The question Mike set himself was “did the coming of the motor car increase the number of road accidents?”
A study was undertaken to find out if this was true by studying available records in 1900 and by comparing this with the records from 1910 as car ownership had increased. Hospital Annual Reports gave a picture. 659 patients attended the A/E Department at the Royal Hospital as a result of street accidents in 1900. Of these, 210 were admitted to hospital, indicating that they were seriously injured. Coroners’ reports of the 15 fatal accidents in 1900 in Sheffield show that horsedrawn vehicles were involved in 12 of them and mostly to pedestrians crossing the road. In 1910, there was a similar number of collisions, but half were due to motor cars.
Mike concluded that street accidents are less common in modern day Sheffield despite the presence of many fast motorised vehicles. However, the number of fatalities remain roughly constant. By viewing other Youtube clips of Industrial cities around the turn of the last century, it can be seen that other city centres had similar situations.
Mike’s talk was fascinating, and some of his conclusions were surprising.
