The Wantage tramway was a two-mile track that carried passengers and freight between Wantage and Wantage Road Station on the Great Western Main Line. Formed in 1873 to link Wantage Road station with its terminus at Mill Street, the line was cheaply built and perilously close to what was then the Besselsleigh turnpike, now the A338.
On a dark Saturday evening in November 1904, a party of young players belonging to the Wantage Athletic Football Club returned home from Swindon by the last up-train and completed the journey to Wantage by tram. There were two cars, and the 15-year-old captain of the victorious team, Albert Edward Hudson, boarded the first one in which the only other passengers were a clergyman and a lady. Although there were plenty of seats inside, Albert stood outside and talked across to his fellow players in the second car. When the tram had passed Grove Park Lodge, Hudson suddenly disappeared, and at the same moment passengers in the second car felt a jerk as if the vehicle was passing over something on the line.
A GWR signalman who was on the rear footboard noticed a dark object on the rails. The conductor, who at the time of the accident was inside taking fares, blew his whistle to bring the tram to a stop. Albert was found slumped face down on the central rail just past Grove Park Lodge. His leg was badly mangled. When asked how he had fallen from the tram, he said: "I don't know. Go and fetch my dad."
A tall lad at six-foot, Albert was the son of a gardener, and the family lived in Vicar's Row. He said that when he was at the door of the tram his legs gave way, and that it wasn't the first time it had happened. His sister Emma later confirmed that apprentice carpenter Albert was not particularly strong, and, after a football match, he always looked very pale and exhausted. He also suffered from giddiness, and it was therefore assumed that he had fallen as a result of a fainting fit.
Poor Albert was taken to the cottage hospital where he insisted repeatedly that nobody else was to blame for the accident. The following morning his leg was amputated, but he died during the afternoon of the following day.
More like this in "On this day in Oxfordshire" by Julie Ann Godson, available on Amazon.
