Originally published in Belgravia (John Maxwell) vol.1 #4 (Feb 1867).
They are strangely and terribly alike, the calamities at collieries; alike in their causes and effects; alike in many of their details; and they rarely come upon us singly. Although there may be nothing remarkable in this, beyond mere coincidence, it is nevertheless a notable fact that from the earliest times of which we have any record, these catastrophes have occurred in twos. In March 1766, ten men were killed at the Walker colliery in the north, and a week afterwards thirty-nine were destroyed at Fatfield. On December 6th, 1773, several persons were killed at a colliery near the Wear, and two days afterwards twenty-eight lost their lives at Chator's Haugh in the same district. In June 1794, thirty victims were the result of an explosion at Rickleton pit, near Picktree; and within two days, twenty-eight more were killed at Harraton. In October 1799, thirty-nine men were killed at Lumley, and the bodies of the poor fellows were never recovered. In October 1805, thirty-five men were killed at Hebburn, and in November thirty-eight at Oxclose. On September 28th, 1813, there was an explosion at Hall pit, Fatfield, by which thirty-two persons were killed; and in December of the same year, twenty-two lost their lives at Felling from a similar accident. On the 2d of June 1815, Success pit, Newbittle, exploded, and fifty-seven people were killed; and on the 27th, Sheriff Hill pit exploded, causing the destruction of eleven. On October 19th, 1821, another pit at Newbittle exploded, and two persons were killed by the explosion; and on the 23d, fifty-two were killed by a similar misfortune at Wallsend. We might go on enumerating instances of the kind ad infinitum. These we have simply ticked off in an old statistical list relating to the Durham and Newcastle district, and we give them merely by way of illustration.
In each case the accident arose from explosion; and their close proximity, both as regards locality and time, makes them to a certain extent tell in favour of the theory that there is no mystery about the double misfortunes; this plurality being accounted for by atmospheric disturbances. In known "fiery" mines the danger of explosion is generally regarded as greater at a time of any remarkable and sudden fall of the barometer. Under these circumstances, what might be a comparatively harmless act of carelessness one day would be fatal the next. Mr. G.V. Vernon of Manchester, who has not stood alone in pointing out the effect produced by sudden changes of atmospheric pressure and temperature upon the formation of gas in coal-mines, is convinced that the solution of this great difficulty of the rapid change in the condition of the air in mines is only to be reached by an attentive examination of the law of circular storms, or cyclones: the fundamental principles of which are explained in Colonel Sir W. Reid's work, an Attempt to develop the Law of Storms. Some rather remarkable instances have been given by a writer in the Weekly Dispatch by way of supporting this theory:
"In the early part of February 1857 there was a sudden rise of temperature to the extent of 24 degrees, and a fall of the barometer, both caused by passing cyclones. On the 1st of the month the thermometer stood at 31 degrees; on the 11th it reached 50; on the 18th it touched 55; on the 19th came the terrible explosion at Lundhill, and a loss of 189 lives. Then a sudden fail of 10 degrees followed, succeeded by as sudden a rise to its former height on the 22d and 23d; and on the 23d there was an explosion at Birk-lane Colliery, near Schoales. By the 27th of the month, there was a fall to 47 degrees, and on the following day, the last of February, a jump to 57, and a sudden fall and subsequent reaction, showing a most disturbed state of the atmosphere, till the 4th of March, when an explosion occurred at Shipley, near Derby. In the same year, between the 20th and 25th of May, there was a rapid fall of 15 degrees, and as rapid a recovery; and on the 26th an explosion at Ince Hall, near Wigan."
It is no doubt fair to argue that violent storms producing terrible disasters at sea, frequently occurring almost simultaneously with the active prevalence of fire-damp, are evidence of a kindred cause influencing both; and that meteorological observations at various points, instantly recorded and telegraphed, might therefore announce the approach of a cyclone, and thus serve as a warning to the miner as well as to the seaman. The theory is worthy of a searching scientific investigation; but meanwhile there are ascertained practical means of reducing the present danger to a great extent, which are not carried out, and there is a want of precautionary appliances for assisting the escape of colliers from the mine when great calamities come upon them in the darkness. As an example of the first assertion, the miners at many collieries, even where explosions have taken place, still "blast" the coal. The men at Lundhill have struck since the recent calamities at Barnsley and in Staffordshire for a rate of remuneration that will compensate them for desisting from this dangerous practice. Scores of accidents attest to the fact that many men often lose their lives in cases of flooding, falling-in of earth, and explosions, for want of extra facilities of escape from the mine, which engineering science could readily supply.
When James Everett, a dissenting preacher of high repute, published that quaint little book, The Wall's-End Miner, the terrible calamity at Wall's-End colliery in June 1835 was the most disastrous occurrence of the kind on record. One hundred and three men and boys were swept away by the explosion, which shook the whole district like an earthquake, and covered the high road with a thick coating of coal-dust, which was thrown out of the shaft. Like the recent accidents, this one had its grim companion. "It occurred about two o'clock on Thursday afternoon, at the moment when he (the local preacher) was preparing a sermon for the dreadful accident which took place at Nun's field, only about half-an-hour from the same time the preceding Thursday." Like most other inquiries into coal-pit calamities, the investigation at Wall's End resulted in a vague sort of inference as to the origin of the explosion, made up in this case out of a "gas-pipe drift," some repairs, a naked candle, and a careless miner.
The following note in an appendix by Mr. Sykes to evidence given before a committee of the House of Lords, and quoted by this same dissenting preacher, gives us a curious glimpse at the conduct of the press a hundred years ago:
"Explosions and other calamities," he says, "happened as frequently in our collieries formerly as at the present time; but the servility of the local press prevented their being given to the public. The following extract from the Newcastle Journal of March 21st, 1767, will prove this assertion: 'As so many deplorable accidents have lately happened in collieries, it certainly claims the attention of coal-owners to make a provision for the distressed widows and fatherless children occasioned by these mines, as the catastrophe from foul air becomes more common than ever: yet as we have been requested to take no particular notice of these things, which in fact could have very little good tendency, we drop the farther mentioning of it; but before we dismiss the subject, as a laudable example for their imitation, we recommend the provision made in the Trinity House for distressed seamen, seamen's widows, &c. which in every respect is praiseworthy, and confers honour on that brotherhood.' From this it is reasonable to conclude, that there must at that time have been a dreadful sweep of human life in one or more of the neighbouring collieries; and it is from such injunctions laid upon the newspaper editors, that these occurrences for a great number of years were kept as much as possible from the public. It is not many years since coroners' inquests were first held on the bodies of the unfortunate sufferers of these visitations, consequently 'the ready coffin and the churchyard closed the scene.'"
What must have been the miseries and perils of a collier's life in these times, before the Davy lamp and a free press! In the present day scientific and practical men, who know what they are talking about, will tell you that a vast majority of the cases of explosion, flooding, falling-in of headings, breakage of pit-ropes, over-winding, and all the other ills that pitmen are heir to, might be avoided by proper care and strict precautionary supervision of works. The saving of life which would arise from this carefulness and severe inspection is best shown by the numbers of the victims. The deaths from explosions of fire-damp in Great Britain in ten years, 1856 to 1865, are estimated at 2019. The deaths from falls in the same period numbered 3958; and the total number of deaths from all violent causes in that period were 9916.
Many of the accidents which we mention at the outset of this paper arose from indifference to the Davy lamp, or carelessness in its use: one was the result of obstinacy on the part of a miner who sneered at the lamp and broke it open! In the present day there are pitmen who carry private keys and open their lamps, contrary to regulations. They get more light from the naked candle, and sometimes they open the lamp to light their pipes—smoking at the risk not only of their own but of scores of other lives besides. But this practice would soon be stamped out by severe inspection, and punishment before the magistrates, not by fine only, but by imprisonment. The collier is surrounded with awful perils now, but he is not, offered up an indifferent sacrifice to King Coal, as he was in those dark days before the free press, the Davy lamp, and coroners' inquests. Something has been done for him; and the whole nation, with the Queen at its head, sympathises with him in his distress, and succours his widow and orphans. But it cannot be said that efforts towards reducing his risk to a minimum have gone hand in hand with the largely increased and increasing coal workings. It is something like a reflection upon this great scientific, commercial, and philanthropic age, that colliery accidents should be of such frequent occurrence. At the chief seat of the coal trade hardly a day passes without a serious accident of some kind happening in individual cases. There is not a pit village without its recent annals of violent death underground. If coroners and coroners' juries were not so easily satisfied with the ordinary verdict of "accidental death," coal-owners would be more persistent in enforcing proper regulations in the management of their works. One of the most deadly enemies the collier has to contend with is fire-damp, which is promoted by imperfect ventilation. The Davy lamp will at any time indicate the presence in a serious degree of this foul air; and an elaborate indicator has been invented by Mr. Ansell, but its efficacy is, we believe, a matter of considerable doubt at present. Indexes of any kind will be useless things unless the stoppage of works is enforced whenever certain dangerous symptoms present themselves. Unfortunately in many cases the explosion would come almost simultaneously with the warning.
Many improvements have been carried out of late years, and particularly since the passing of the first Inspection Act in 1850; but to the looker-on the practical benefit seems to fall far short of what is required. On December 20, 1851, fifty men were killed by an explosion at Rotherham, and thirteen two days afterwards at Wigan. In May 1852, there was quite an epidemic of colliery accidents,—ten men being killed at Wigan, twenty-two near Shields, sixty-three near Aberdare, and twenty near Preston. It is ten years ago since that awful calamity at Cymmer, South Wales, which carried off 114 men and boys, and which was preceded, early in the month, by an explosion at Newport, where the fire fiend was content with eleven victims. The flooding of the pits at Clay Cross some years ago was attended with heavy loss of life and property; soon afterwards 189 people were killed at Lundhill. In January 1862, the Hartley calamity carried off 200 men and boys; and true again to the adage that misfortunes never come singly, the next month brought that other catastrophe—the explosion at Gethin—by which fifty miners lost their lives. And now to complete this sad eventful history come the two latest and greatest explosions, the dead numbering little short of 500—as many as have fallen in important European battles before the age of Armstrong guns and breech-loading rifles.
The story of one misfortune of the kind is very much like the stories of all the others—only that the sorrowful features of Barnsley and Talk-o'-the-Hill were heightened by the occurrences coming on the eve of Christmas. On a hazy December morning, hundreds of men and boys went cheerily to their work at the Barnsley pit. If you had been in the district you might have heard them clattering over the rough paving-stones of the little villages with their coffee-tins and their "bits o' dinner-bags." You might have heard them long before the first streak of daylight appeared in the east. Soon afterwards they would congregate about the dark shaft, and go down into deeper darkness, band after band—never to return to those little ones at home, looking forward to the happy Christmas time; for the festal season carries his winter sunbeams even into the blackest squalor of pit villages. Who that is acquainted with the long familiar rows of cottages has not some experience of the pit-boy "Mummers" and the "Waits"—the glories
of St. George and "Whilst shepherds watch"? There are few classes of the community more demonstrative in their celebration of Christmas than the colliers, and in some districts the religious aspect of the time by no means passes away unobserved.
Many of these people who were assembled for work on that December morning may not have seen daylight for weeks together. They had probably worked the day shift—gone down in the early morning and come up again at eventide. Away in dark and cramped headings, in a gloomy unhealthy atmosphere, working in uncomfortable attitudes, by a dim uncertain glimmer from a candle—caged-in lest the fire-demon of the mine should snatch at the tiny light, and explode the foul and insidious gases,—the collier's is truly a bitter lot. You meet him on summer evenings trudging home in the twilight, black and bent, with a bit of coal or firewood on his shoulder, or a few flowers, maybe, begged from some roadside cottage on his way between the pit village and the sometimes distant mines. He has been in the bowels of the earth the whole day, and all he has seen of the sky has been a glimpse of it, like a spec at the end of a long telescopic tube, down which he descended before daylight. But habit has done everything for him; he is accustomed to the work, and, alas, too heedless of the danger. And so, day after day, he fulfils his mission of toil. Others have learnt to depend on him for support. The smoke goes up from the hearths of hundreds of cottages on the strength of the collier's labours. Wives and mothers and infants are depending on the wages of his toil. He has his home joys, such as they are, like the rest of us. In some cases his cottage is particularly clean and neat, with white blinds, shining chest of drawers, four-post bedstead, polished oak cupboard, radiant tea-tray, and humming clock; for these things represent the chief treasures of a well-furnished collier's home. The little house seems to struggle against the black surroundings, and keeps itself pure, despite the coal-dust and the mud. By the hill-side yonder, or on the plain, the pit-engine sobs and groans and creaks and bumps and thumps all day long; and the coal-tubs come up almost every minute, swelling the mineral stacks, and filling the coal-trucks which you will see days afterwards shunted upon railways in all parts of the kingdom. By and by the time comes for "the gude mon's" return; the kettle sings, and "something hot" hisses and splutters in the oven or before the fire. The stalwart fellow, with his young son, proud of promotion to labour, comes home; and, humble though it be, all the delightful sensations of home, in an English sense, may cluster about this hearth, and thrill the hearts of those poor souls who go to make up the pitman's household.
These are the happiest features of the steady, sober pitman's life. There are others of the army of toilers in the mine who go home to less cheerful firesides, and some prefer the public-house at the corner; but when their labour is done, they are all expected. Somebody is interested in everyone of them. They have fathers, wives, brothers, children, who love them in their rough way, and sweethearts too: humanity is none the less humanity because it has a grimy face. The most lonely amongst the miners, who may not be expected by wife or child, or mother or father, has perhaps his animal pets; for the collier is strongly attached to animals and birds. He frequently keeps rabbits or guinea-pigs, and fancy dogs. The "bull pup" is not so great a favourite now as he was a few years ago. Terriers for "ratting," and hulking half-bred poaching-looking dogs, are mostly in request. In the northern districts pigeons are particularly common amongst the colliers; and "the carrier" has the chief place in their affections. Great pigeon-racing matches often take place; and at holiday times, which are very rare occasions, large stakes are involved in these events.
A remarkable instance of the ruling passion strong in death was related to us some time since in connection with the decease of a great pigeon-fancier, whose birds had won more races than any in the district. Did we not feel that the story is true in every respect, we should not risk a charge of profanity by repeating it. The poor collier was dying, and he had received great consolation from the minister. "I'll be sure to gang to heaven, eh, minister?" he said. "Yes, I have no doubt about it, Johnny," said the minister: "you have repented of all your sins, and you have not been a very bad boy." "That's reight; I've done nowt vary bad, and I'se repented on it all; and will I be a hangel, minister?" "Yes, Johnny." "And have wings, minister?" continued the collier, raising himself up in bed. "Yes, Johnny; and have wings." "And will ye coom to heaven soom day?" the collier went on. "I hope so, Johnny," said the minister. "And will ye be a hangel and hae wings?" "Yes, please God," said the minister. "Aye, mon, that's grand!" exclaimed Johnny. "I'll fly thee for a sovereign!"
They are all expected, we say, these poor simple-minded and mostly ignorant men; and herein lies the horror of the fatal alarm which sped like wildfire through the pit villages the other day at noon. The thunder of an explosion had been heard; smoke and dust had rushed up the shaft; and in a few minutes crowds of distracted women and children thronged helplessly about the bank. Many of them had heard, by their winter hearths, stories of the fire-damp, some had small experiences of its fatal results; and now they knew that the vague mysterious calamity which had occurred to them in thoughtful moments as a contingency in their lives had come at last. They were expected, we repeat, these men and boys; expected by wives and mothers, and sisters and little ones; expected by those who had known them from childhood; expected by loving widowed mothers; and they would come no more. The fatal gas had been fired, sweeping the toilers in heaps of dead along the lurid ways. They clung together in their agony for a moment, father and son, friend and brother, these rough miners; for they knew their time had come, and by and by those who had expected them can with difficulty identify their burnt and mangled bodies. The "Mummers" who would have donned the ribbons and fought imaginary dragons with wooden swords; the poor fellows who had practised "Whilst shepherds watch," to sing it at the big house on the hill, or in front of the cottage rows, are dead and gone. With the report of that terrible explosion ringing in the afflicted ear, Christmas came in mourning weeds, with solemn tread and slow, and with the tolling of the funeral bell in place of the pleasant chimes of yore.
The accident at Talk-o'-the-Hill, though less fatal in its results, was an awful calamity, and with proper care and forethought both might have been avoided. It is a bold assertion to make, but the facts will bear us out, and Government has certainly not done all that is required at its hands in the inspection and regulation of coal mines. Twenty-seven Davy-lamp keys were found on the dead bodies after this accident in Staffordshire. If coal miners themselves, instead of sacrificing their own interest and that of the owners to the managers of Trade Unions, were to combine for the purpose of protecting each other from unnecessary dangers, by enforcing amongst themselves a strict observance of regulations with regard to work, and using their influence to promote the proper supervision, ventilation, and regulation of mines by the owners thereof, they would be doing something practical towards insuring their own lives, and promoting the happiness of those dependent upon them for subsistence.
Two months after that startling calamity at Hartley, we stood by a pit bank at Kingswood in Somersetshire, where an accident had occurred, and an old pitman recalled to mind the flooding of an adjacent pit twenty years previously. The story is somewhat dramatic, and it illustrates so well the position of the miner, that we shall be pardoned for repeating it. A party of villagers were dancing in the open air at Kingswood, keeping up the Whit-Monday festival. It was a bright sunny day, and there were many lookers-on both old and young, making up a happy rural picture, notwithstanding the dark background of the coal-pit. Suddenly there was a whisper amongst the people, followed by an awkward pause on the part of several dancers; then all at once the revels ceased, and the revellers regarded each other with looks of consternation. By and by men, women, and children in a state of great excitement were seen running from their cottages to the coal-pit, where they were joined by the Whitsuntide dancers. The water had broken into the "Cassey" pit, and there were eleven men and boys at the bottom, for whom all earthly succour was at an end. Up to this day not one of the poor fellows has since been seen. Their remains still lie amongst the dark flooded workings of the mine, and when some other calamity occurs in the neighbourhood, such as the one at which we were present, old men point to the disused Cassey pit, and tell you of its ghastly burden. We stood at the Potters Wood pit, as we have already said, close by the "Cassey," two months after the Hartley accident, in company with Mr. Lionel Brough, Government Inspector for the district. Several miners were beneath us, blocked up in the débris of a fallen roof. Long before the Hartley accident Mr. Brough had changed the working of this little mine. A new shaft had been opened, and the coal had been worked for some distance in a particular direction. Mr. Brough, finding that there was an old shaft at no very considerable distance, had suggested that the working should be prosecuted so that a communication might eventually be made with the old shaft, whereby, in case of accident to the new shaft, the other would be available for escape. The banksman told us this in Mr. Brough's absence, and said they had been working on this plan long before the Hartley accident occurred. "No mine," Mr. Brough had said, "ought to be worked with only one shaft."
But it required that terrible single-shaft calamity at Hartley to elicit an Act of Parliament for the future regulation of coal-mining in this respect. There was a "staple" or independent roadway in the Hartley pit, ascending nine-and-twenty fathoms from the low main, at the bottom of the mine into the yard seam; there was also a staple leading from the high seam to the bank: so that if there had been a staple in existence ascending some fifty or sixty yards, and connecting the yard seam with the high seam, every soul might have been out of the pit, alive and well, within less than an hour after the accident happened in the shaft. What a contrast is this "might have been" to what really occurred! Who will ever forget the picture of misery and woe on that memorable Tuesday, when hope had all but departed ? Let us glance back at it for a moment. The snow is falling in great white flakes on the new Hartley village. The wind sweeps over the hills and commons, and wails about the homes of the Northumbrian miners. But there is no snow-balling, no boyish rejoicing at the winter downfall, no additional fuel heaped upon the hearth to cheer "dad and the lads" on their return from the pit. Great fires are blazing at the colliery, and the snow flits ghost-like by where the engine has been panting and groaning for months past. This familiar sound has ceased now, and the illuminations are ominous. We have seen these same bonfires before, with men and women moving about in the fitful light, watching wearily and listening to every sound that came from the yawning pit. They are death-beacons, those pit-fires that battle with the surrounding darkness, making night hideous and morning a ghastly reality. The snow falls unheeded on the watchers in the firelight, and the wind only invigorates troops of men who are toiling in and about the shaft, down which 200 miners descended on the previous Thursday, never again to see the day.
It should be borne in mind that the workings of pits extend in some instances almost for miles, beneath fields and villages, and sometimes under the sea, and that an accident may occur in one part which may be unknown for hours to the men labouring in other parts of the mine. When the water broke into the Clay Cross pit, it was long before all the colliers in the different headings knew of it, and men were lost because they had not time to reach the only way of egress. Had there been another shaft, the result could not possibly have been so serious, and the same remark applies to many other mining accidents. When we consider how much England is indebted to coals,—socially, politically, commercially,—it is hard that the miner should even seem to be neglected by the legislature. A host of enactments surround and protect various classes of artisans; but comparatively few have been framed in the interests of the collier, who toils in the midst of constant dangers, and dies too often at his post; whilst we who live at home at ease are sitting, unconscious of his woes, by the social hearth made bright and cheery by the very coals which have cost him his life. We punish the collier when we discover any acts of carelessness on his part. Let others be held responsible in a proportionate degree for faulty shafts, loose brattice-work, ill-ventilated ways, and inefficient inspection.
Looking back at the past, and then contemplating the future, we may form some estimate of the lives which may be saved, in time to come, by prompt and strict legislation. About twenty years ago 40,000,000 tons of coals were annually raised in the United Kingdom. At the present time over 70,000,000 are raised, a large proportion of which is shipped for foreign consumption. In the five years, 1856 to 1860, 381,067,047 tons of coals were raised (and 5089 miners were killed in working it). In 1856, 71,787,522 tons were brought to bank at the various pits in Great Britain, and in 1865 this number of tons had increased to the enormous amount of 98,911,169. It is estimated by wise men (with all due deference to Mr. Stuart Mill) that many centuries must elapse before the British coal-field can be exhausted. The supply in Durham and Northumberland alone, at the present rate of raising, will last, it is calculated, upwards of 1500 years. Will some curious statistician be good enough to calculate, on the basis of present losses, how many more men and boys are likely to be killed in getting it? And how many the legislative screw might save?
The acts of heroism which shine out in the sad story of the recent calamities are fresh in the minds of all newspaper readers, and the world is beginning to understand that true heroism is a characteristic of the pitman. His courage in times of danger and distress is only equalled by his tenderness and compassion. It is an injustice to associate the collier with everything that is rude and lawless. Considering how he lives, and that it is often November with him all the year round,—"no sun, no moon, no stars, no sky,"—the wonder is that he retains so much of his humanity. He is often full of character, and quaint beyond description. When he is at all studious, he frequently takes greedily to mathematics, and as a reader inclines to the grand, the mysterious, and the sublime. Pilgrim's Progress, works on "Animated Nature," and sacred poetry, are great favourites with him. We stood at a book-stall not long since in a northern town on "pay-day," when two Durham pitmen came up to buy books. One of them wanted Milton's Paradise Lost, and the other Young's Night Thoughts. The bookseller told us that he had sold Cowper's Poems to the latter a fortnight previously. Several of them were "taking in" scientific works published in parts; and they all delighted in a Family Bible, "with plenty of pictures." Shortly afterwards we were present at an execution in the same town, and all night long pitmen came trooping in from the distant villages, until the dreadful exhibition took place. They behaved decorously on the whole—far better in every respect than a London mob—and went to their homes and their night-toil in the pits, soon after the "thud" of the strangled murderer had thrilled through the crowd, and sickened them to their heart's content. We have to thank the Dissenting ministers of the north (the Hartley calamity showed how much) for a great deal of both the religious and secular education of the miners. The Established Church has not done her duty by these poor people. A few years ago we lived in a northern parish, where some thirty parishioners had a church and minister all to themselves. The church was liberally endowed, and would hold at least a couple of hundred people. We paid about two shillings in the pound for church-rates. There never were more than twenty or thirty people present at the services; and these could have gone to four or five other churches, all indifferently attended, within a quarter of a mile. At a few miles' distance there were hundreds and thousands of colliers without a church at all. Where the Church does put in an appearance in the colliery districts, she is rarely without large congregations; and the clergyman has only to take a personal interest in the pitman to make him his sympathetic and confiding friend.
Speaking of churches reminds us of the fact that all through the land sermons have been preached and are being preached, and collections made in aid of the sufferers left behind by the dead pitmen who passed away so suddenly, and almost in presence of the great Christian festival. Apart from these subscriptions, there is a long and glorious list of men and women who have given of their wealth to succour the helpless. There will be fitting recognition of their claims everywhere, and in churches and chapels many a prayerful thought has already travelled to those pit villages lying within the valley of the shadow of death; whilst the prayer has gone up to Heaven with a special earnestness that it may please God to succour, help, and comfort all that are in danger, necessity, and tribulation; and provide for the fatherless children and widows, and all that are desolate and oppressed.