Letters to the Editor

Colliery Explosions

Sir,

From The Times of yesterday I learn that the verdict of the inquest connected with the recent explosion at the Walker Colliery, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, is "explosion purely accidental." I have carefully studied the report of this inquest in your columns, and am puzzled to understand how such a definite verdict should have been recorded. Experienced men, it is stated, "very minutely" examined the workings after the disaster, and were not able to discover where or how the explosion originated. The ventilation was declared to be ample. Nevertheless, it is certain that fire-damp had accumulated in one part of the pit in sufficient volume to produce an explosive mixture, whether by slow leakage from the coal or, as sometimes happens, by sudden irruption. It is also clear that in this case there must have been a naked light of some kind with which the gas came into contact. One viewer expresses his opinion that ignition may have been due to a defective or injured safety-lamp. I need hardly observe that the gas called fire-damp, or marsh gas, is not spontaneously inflammable, as a chymist asserted a short time ago in The Times in a letter on the Will-o'-the-wisp ; for, if it were, safety-lamps would be useless. It was given in evidence that from the appearances in the locality where the men had been blasting the explosion did not occur there ; and in support of this conclusion was adduced "the fact of the lamps of the deputies who were working there having been found with their tops on and all secure." Now, where blasting is carried on there must be fuses, and these fuses must be lighted ; but it is to be presumed that safety-lamps are not allowed to be opened for this purpose. The Lucifer match is a very convenient and obvious source of light in such cases, and, unless it could be shown that there were no matches underground, the evidence of the satisfactory condition of the safety-lamps found near the site of the blasting operations affords no indication whatever that the explosion did not take place in that part of the pit. The inquest has not thrown any light on the cause of the accident, and a more reasonable verdict would have been "death by explosion, of which the cause is unknown." The verdict, as it stands, exonerates all persons from blame, dead or alive. But a naked light there must have been in this pit, in which the safety-lamp was considered essential to the protection of life. What was that light ? A defective safety-lamp would imply culpable negligence, and so would the use of Lucifer matches in a pit where naked lights were strictly forbidden. The explosion may have been purely accidental, but, assuredly, no evidence was advanced at the inquest to prove that it was.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

Y.

Nov. 29.