12th October, 2006
Mining Accidents
Mining has always been a dangerous occupation. The illustration of bell mines (from staffspasttrack.org.uk) shows the potential for danger in the early days of the industry. Shafts were sunk into the seams and coal was mined until there was danger of collapse and then a second shaft was sunk nearby. I wonder how many times a wish to draw too much coal caused a roof fall resulting in death or serious injury.
Coals were winched out of the mines in baskets. These unsafe loads occasionally caught the sides of the shaft and tipped their contents onto the miners below. Worse still, the workers, some of them women and children, were winched in and out of the shafts by the same unsafe method. Many tipped out of the spinning baskets and were killed or injured in the resulting fall
Even in later times entrance and egress to mines was a dangerous undertaking. This is an extract from Donald Anderson's book (p69) discussing practices in Pemberton Colliery,1850:
"It was also common practice for men and boys to stand in a small tub or basket suspended by chains from the end of a rope and requiring a careful balancing lest they fall out where there were no guides or conductors. The tub, during its slow descent or ascent, would be constantly turning round, having a tendency to make persons dizzy. Many cases have been known of them actually falling out of the tub and being killed under such circumstances."
No records for mining casualties were kept before 1850. Coroners' bills for expenses give some indication to the extent of deaths in the mines before this, but accurate figures cannot be obtained because it is likely that some incidents which may have involved mining accidents were not recorded as such.
This table is taken from Donald Anderson's book. (p142)
| Number Killed | |||
| Cause of Death | Male | Female | Total |
| "Falling down a coal pit" | 13 | 3 | 16 |
| "Coals falling on him in a coal pit" | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| "Explosion of inflammable air in a coal pit" | 48 | 14 | 62 |
| "Killed in a coal pit" (probably from falls of roof) | 12 | 3 | 15 |
| "Tubs falling on him in a coal pit" | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| "Falling off a stage at a coal pit" | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| "Killed by wheel of a coal wagon passing over him" | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Totals | 81 | 20 | 101 |
Gas Explosions
Wigan, in common with all mining areas, has suffered extensive loss of life from gas explosions. Fire damp is an explosive gas which occurs in mines. It is mostly composed of methane and if it is ignited major loss of life often results.
The worst disaster in the Wigan area happened at the Maypole Colliery in Abram where just after five in the afternoon on Tuesday, August 18th 1908, an explosion killed 75 miners.
This was not the worst disaster of the Lancashire Coalfield. On December 21st 1910, 344 men and boys died in the Pretoria Pit disaster at Hulton Colliery, Westhoughton.
Effects on Communities
These events devastated communities, but what must also be remembered are the frequent incidents involving only one person. Perhaps a family's bread winner would be caught in a roof fall and killed or so severely injured he could no longer work, a circumstance causing the family to become destitute.
Donald Anderson, 1975, quotes the following from Joshua Paley (Rev. Paley was a minister at Pemberton in the 1840s):
"There are very few families, in which one or more deaths have not occurred from accidents in the pits, in many, three or four have died thus. Few weeks pass in which some awful occurrence does not take place. Indeed it is most lamentable and shocking to consider the scenes that are continually occurring."
Similar sentiments are expressed by William Lord, the Victorian head teacher of the Methodist School at Lamberhead Green. He made these two entries in the school log book:
"21 December 1868: Dreadful colliery explosion, some of the children have lost their fathers."
"16 February 1870. The father of one of our little boys - Daniel Houghton - was killed today. He is now in the class and knows nothing of it."