Barnard Davis

Barnard Davis was a doctor of Shelton in Staffordshire. Still a student in 1820, he boarded the whaling ship sailing for the Arctic as the vessel’s surgeon. Not for another twenty years did he become a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1868.

An active and important member of Stoke-on-Trent's Athenaeum, he helped establish the first Museum of Natural History, Pottery and Antiques. Yet is for all his other achievements, he is best remembered for his huge skull collection. He began with his first two skulls in 1848 and, by the time the Royal College of Surgeons purchased his collection shortly before his death in 1881, he had amassed more than 1,800 examples.

He was a polygenist, a controversial belief that the different human races have different origins.

Lichfield's First Motorcycle Accident

Sunday 12th June 1904, the date of the first ever motorcycle accident in Lichfield. Between 3 and 4pm a Mr Savage, and electrical engineer from Burton-upon-Trent, was travelling along Pipe Hill when a dog ran out in front of him. He was thrown from his bike with what was described as ‘considerable force’. Injuries included an arm broken in two places, and fractures of the knee and skull. He was taken to the Victoria Nursing Home where he was treated by Dr Fraser and had been sent home on the Wednesday. The newspaper also reported the dog had died, its neck broken.

The Mail Train

Postman William Windridge lived in Dean's Croft, Lichfield with his uncle. On the last day of 1894 he had not been to work due to illness but the next morning had left home at 4:50am, telling his uncle he was going for a walk.

At 10:30am that morning his Uncle William learned how a postman had been killed on the line and, not having seen his nephew for some hours, went along to see find his worst fears realised. Identified by the tobacco pouch he had seen him fill that very morning, for the mutilated remains were hardly recognisable. His skull shattered leaving the contents scattered along the line, one leg severed and missing. His remaining shoe, hat and marks on the body had also confirmed that New Years Day 1895 was the last for 27-year-old Postman Windridge.

At the subsequent inquest further details were revealed. While it had been his job to bring the mail bags to Lichfield Trent Valley Station, he had been suspended some six weeks earlier after the station master found him walking unsteadily and deemed him to have been at risk. While his uncle maintained this was due to illness, the landlord of the Blue Bell Inn, one John Oakley, stated he had been drinking heavily at his establishment the previous day. Indeed he had walked him home that day as he had been the worse for drink and had even been forced to wrestle him into bed and force him to stay there to sleep.

A thorough search did not reveal any blood an any of the engines to have passed through the station that morning. Nor did they ever find the missing limb anywhere near where the impact occurred, at the level crossing here used solely by the farm and not by the public in general.

The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death but strongly suspected this may well have been suicide.