19^th February 1909

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The Colliery Disaster

Messages From The King And Queen

(From Our Special Correspondent.)

Newcastle-on-Tyne, Feb. 18.

The following message from the King has been received at the West Stanley Colliery to-night by Mr. Hall, the manager :—

To Manager, West Stanley Colliery, Durham. — The King commands me to say that he is terribly shocked and much grieved at the appalling colliery disaster which has occurred in your district and at the fearful loss of life which it has entailed. His Majesty is greatly afraid that no real hope remains of any of the entombed men or boys being rescued, but he would be glad to have any information on the subject. He begs you to express to the bereaved families for him his heartfelt sympathy and condolence in their great and irreparable losses.

— Knollys.

The Queen has sent the following telegram :—

To the manager, West Stanley Colliery.

The Queen wishes to express her deepest and most heartfelt sympathy with the poor widows and families who have lost their bread-winners in this terrible colliery disaster, and trusts help may be sent from on high to bear this crushing blow. The Queen is not without hope that some of the entombed men may yet be rescued, and wishes to be informed if such is the case.

The manager has sent telegrams in reply as follows :—

To the King :—

Profoundly touched by His Gracious Majesty's telegram of sympathy, which will be conveyed to the bereaved families. Every effort is still being made, but there is very little hope of further survivors.

To the Queen :—

Much touched by the keen sympathy of Her Gracious Majesty, which will be at once conveyed to the bereaved families.

Increase In The Death-Roll.

It is feared on further inquiry by the colliery officials that the number of entombed men has all along been considerably underestimated. It seems that some men, how many is not yet clear, went down the pit on Tuesday without lamps, not needing lamps in their working places. Previous estimates have been based on the number of lamps taken out from the lamp-house, and as the timekeeper at the bottom of the shaft is among the dead, this was the only method of calculation available. It is now feared that besides the 34 rescued at least 130, and possibly nearly 150, men and boys were trapped by the explosion and have perished. One of the rescued men, Leadbitter, died to-night from the effects of after-damp, reducing the number of those saved to 33.

The exploring parties have now been able to make a fairly complete search of the workings and they have found only the dead. Mr. J. Burn, one of the owners of the colliery, who has taken an active share in the work, thinks that the bodies are equally distributed in the four seams. The position of those in the lowest seam of all, the Brockwell, has now been ascertained, though all the dead men here have not been moved. Quite a large number are half-buried under the falls, and it will be a task of some difficulty to extricate them. The workings, and more especially those in the lower seams, are more or less wrecked, and it is evident that the explosions must have been of great force. Some of the men are badly burned and mutilated, others, more particularly in the upper seams, have clearly fallen victims to afterdamp. Although there are still difficulties to be overcome by the explorers, there are signs, Mr. Burn says, that the afterdamp is decreasing. As a matter of fact the search parties have never been compelled to abandon their efforts on account of the atmosphere in any of the workings, and although Mr. J. W. G. Timonds brought a corps of men equipped with the life-saving apparatus from the Elswick works on Tuesday evening, it was not considered necessary to use it.

I asked Mr. Burn if he had any theory as to the cause of the explosions. His reply was :— "We have absolutely no evidence yet to show where the explosions took place or how they originated. It will be a difficult matter to find out and much patient investigation will probably be necessary before we are able to explain the occurrence." Among those who went down the mine to-day were Professor Redmayne, H.M. Chief Inspector of Mines, and Mr. Donald Bain, the inspector for this district. The official expert examination of the workings, however, cannot be undertaken just yet. The colliery officials are devoting all their energies for the present to the work of bringing the dead to the surface. It is a task which has occupied them throughout the whole of the day and will probably have to be continued to-morrow and on Saturday.

Scenes At The Pit-Head.

It has indeed been a sad day for the throngs of men and women who have lingered around the pit-yard in the hope of learning the identity of the dead. The engine house and three other buildings near the shafts have been converted into mortuaries for the time being. As the rough open wooden boxes, each containing its quite figure muffled in brattice cloth and other coverings, have been brought up in the cages they have been carried reverently to the mortuaries, passing on their way through the midst of the waiting crowd. Inside the humble buildings they have lain in melancholy rows until they have been identified, and then they have been placed tenderly in the coffins which are in readiness.

It was in the early hours of the morning when the pit-head was in darkness save for a few flickering gas jets here and there that the first body was brought up. By 8 o'clock 40 had been recovered, and at 6 o'clock to-night 70. The raising of the bodies to the surface is still going on in both shafts, for the Lamp shaft, which was blocked yesterday, is now in working order and access is obtained through it to the deep Brockwell seam, which was only to be approached yesterday in "kibbles" from the Busty seam. Before midnight it is expected that about 100 of the victims of the explosions will have been brought from the depths. There are considerably more than that number of brave men toiling below, searching the workings, building up the road-ways, carrying the bodies to the shaft and placing them decently wrapped in the heavy cloths in the rude boxes prepared for the purpose.

Relief Fund.

A fund has been opened to-day for the relief of the bereaved families. The following appeal has been issued by the Rev. Ralph Watson, vicar of Beamish :—

In conjunction with the Bishop of Durham it was decided that a subscription list be opened at once for the immediate relief of the widows and families of the miners who have been killed. There are several cases where all the breadwinners perished. Subscriptions, which will be duly acknowledged, may be sent to me or to the West Stanley Widows' and Children's Distress Fund, North-Eastern Bank, West Stanley. The fund will, of course, be administered impartially among all denominations.

Apart from this relief fund the widows and children of those of the men who were subscribing members of the Northumberland and Durham Miners' Permanent Relief Fund will benefit to some extent. Mr. John Wilson, M.P., the general secretary of the Durham Miners' Association, informs me that each widow will receive 5s. a week until death or remarriage, with 2s. additional for each child until the age of 14 is attained or the child goes to work. Mr. Wilson has had exceedingly sad cases of bereavement brought to his notice. Many families have lost two or more members in the disaster. In one case five brothers have perished. Their father was killed in a colliery accident 27 years ago and their old mother is now left alone in the world. Another woman who has lost husband and son is lamenting the fact that the latter, a boy of tender years, had been taken down the mine on this particular day by his father just to see what pit life was like. He had not begun work but it was his ambition, as it is that of most boys in the colliery districts, to become a miner like his father. Mr. Wilson, by-the-bye, left London at 10 o'clock yesterday morning with Mr. J. Johnson, M.P., and both of them had descended the pit with the search parties before 6 o'clock at night. Mr. Wilson is content, from his own experiences below ground, to accept the opinion of the mining engineers that no further rescues are possible.

The Inquest.

The inquest has been opened to-day at St. Andrew's Church Institute, and formal evidence of identification of some 50 bodies has been given. The coroner's jury will continue their sittings daily until all the dead have been recovered and identified. Then the inquiry will be adjourned until March 29, by which date it may perhaps be possible to throw some light upon the cause of the disaster. At the beginning of the proceedings to-day the coroner, Mr. John Graham, told the jury that he hoped that would be the last time they would have to view bodies. The whole matter was under revision. There was a Committee of the House of Commons sitting with a view to recasting Coroner's Law. They were trying to reform the law regarding the viewing of bodies. If anything was wanted to support the contention that viewing should be optional it was cases such as that calamity. Could anything be more absurd and repulsive than viewing in such cases as this ? That case was a lever if such a lever was needed. At the same time he admitted that the custom of juries visiting the places of accidents and examining the plant was a valuable asset.

After the jury had returned from the mortuary in the pit-yard, Mr. J. H. Burn said that as the inquest was open to the public he would like to say a few words on behalf of himself and his brother, who were the joint owners of the West Stanley Colliery. To the friends and relatives of those who had perished he expressed their deepest sympathy. In the second place he wished to thank those who had been good enough to assist them in their hour of need, for the unselfish way in which they had risked their own lives to save the lives of others. He would like to say in the third place that they had always carried on the colliery with the greatest regard to safety and had the greatest confidence in their managers. At the same time a most appalling disaster had occurred, and so far as he and his brother were concerned, they wished the fullest inquiry to be made. He spoke also on behalf of the manager, Mr. Hall. They wished to ascertain the cause of the disaster in the hope that although it could do no good for those who had gone it might prevent a repetition of such a calamity in future.

Among those present at the inquest were Professor Redmayne, Mr. Donald Bain, Mr. John Wilson, M.P., and Mr. J. Johnson, M.P.

"General" Booth yesterday telegraphed as follows to the manager of the mine :— "The terrible disaster that has overtaken so many brave men at West Stanley has appalled me. Will you kindly express my true sorrow with all who suffer from this calamity, and especially my deep sympathy with those whose loved ones have been torn from them ? I am sure the Salvationists will by their prayers and efforts do what is in them possible to mitigate this calamity."