Mum decapitated on the way her from a christening 150 years ago

The Northern Echo’s headline was more graphic, employing the words fearful, railway, christening, decapitation and mother.

James Ludlow, 25, and his wife, Mary Ann, 29, lived at the romantically-named Ironworks Village which was in the middle of nowhere between Stockton and Darlington. It was beside the Clarence Railway, which ran from Aycliffe to Port Clarence on the north bank of the Tees beyond Stockton.

An ironworks had grown up in a remote location on moorland beside the railway. As the train went, it was a mile-and-a-half from the nearest village of Carlton, but the lanes meant a much longer walk.

Terraces for ironworkers grew up around the works but while trains stopped to collect the iron, the railway refused to pick up passengers so they had to walk to Carlton station.

On July 29, James and Mary Ann had left their two children, aged three and four, in the care of Henry Fitzpatrick, a young teenager, in the Ironworks Village, and had gone with Henry’s mother, Jane, to get their two-and-a-half-week old infant christened in Stockton.

They had taken the 3.15pm train from Carlton into the town; at 5pm Father Carlisle had performed the ceremony, and they had then gone shopping, including at the dram shop, before catching the 8.35pm train back to Carlton, arriving at 8.50pm. At that time of night, the most obvious route home was the most direct one: along the railway line, which many people took.

The Echo said they were “the worse for what they had imbibed”; the D&S Times said “they partook pretty freely of drink”; the Carlton stationmaster said they were “merry but not drunk”, James insisted they’d had only a couple of whiskies.

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When they reached the cutting at Whitton, James said the women were “bothering on” so he went on ahead with the baby to see to their other children. That, he said, was the last time he saw his wife alive.

When the women hadn’t arrived home by 11.30pm, he went back with Henry to search for them. In a cutting, they made the horrific discovery that they had been run over by a mineral train.

The descriptions were quite graphic.

“The head of Mrs Ludlow was discovered some yards distant from her body, and Mrs Fitzpatrick was lying insensible, with one foot cut off, in addition to other injuries,” said the D&S Times.

Said the Echo: “Police Constable Murdy was soon on the spot and took possession of the head of Mrs Ludlow, wrapping the same in the unfortunate woman’s shawl.”

An irate ironworker immediately fired off an angry letter to the Echo’s editor, calling out the North Eastern Railway for failing to provide a station at the ironworks. He said: “I think, sir, if you will be so kind as to print this in your paper, and put a good plain heading to it some of the railway big-wigs may happen to see it and try to do something to save our poor wives and children from being cut to mincemeat through want of proper accommodation at this growing place.”

The inquest was held on July 31 in the ironworks. As everyone admitted that the women were trespassing on the line, the jury returned a verdict of accidentally killed, but they added a call for a station at the ironworks “which would, in their opinion, avoid trespassing and danger on the railway”.

The railway company did so quite promptly.

When the ironworks closed in 1930, the Ironworks Village was renamed Stillington, as it is to this day – although all passenger services were withdrawn from the line in 1952.

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The remains of thre Carlton Moor Ironworks at Stillington in 1936, three years after the works had closed