Herman
Wagner was German born and moved to England sometime in the
late 1880s settling in Liverpool. He was employed by Liverpool
Corporation Tramways as a horse-drawn tram driver. In 1901
he moved from Kirkdale with his Liverpool born wife Eliza and
family to Litherland, moving in to Hinton Street; to work out
of the Litherland Tram Depot.
Up until the electrification of the Litherland stretch of
the Liverpool Corporation tramway network in 1903, the Litherland
depot still stabled and ran horse-drawn tram cars. On the 25th
August, 1903 Herman Wagner drove horse
car number 330 out of
the Litherland tram sheds on Linacre Road – the last
horse-drawn tram car to run on the Liverpool network. Herman
continued working at the Litherland depot driving electric
tram cars.
During the First World War, two of Herman's five sons
William and Robert Wagner died;
William dying of wounds and Robert killed in action. In the later
conflict of the Second World War, Herman's grandson Thomas
Read was killed in action - A tragic irony of deaths.
Herman
died in 1937 and on the day of his funeral, it was found that
his large coffin owing to Herman’s considerable stature
could not be manoeuvred out of the house at 28 Hinton Street
without upending the coffin. To solve the problem the window
of the front room facing on to Hinton Street was removed and
Herman made a more dignified exit to be driven along Linacre
Road one final time by horse-power to Bootle Cemetery.
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