Disasters - Names		Disasters - Names

Date:	14th November 1863
Colliery:	Framwellgate
Cause:	Shaft accident
Lives Lost:	2

No. 69 accident in the list resulted in the death of two persons, a man and a boy, by the breaking of a winding rope in the shaft at Framwellgate pit.

The rope had been in use nearly three years at the time of the accident, but had not done a great amount of work.

It was a 3¾-inch round wire rope, weighing about 12 lbs. per fathom.

The shaft in which it was used is a down-cast shaft for the air.

The rope broke at a point about 12 feet from the shackle where the cage chains are attached to it, this being part of the rope most subjected to bending and resting upon the pulley ; and in this fact I think may be found the cause of the rope breaking at that part, rather than in another part of its length.

The man and boy had got into the cage at the top of the pit to go down, but the rope broke just after they begun to descend, and they, along with the cage, fell to the bottom of the pit.

The boy was not employed in the mine, but intended to go down in a clandestine manner, to see, it is presumed, what the mine was like, as he had a wish to be employed there.

The weight upon the rope, when it broke, would only be about 13 cwt., or less than a thirtieth part of the ordinary breaking strain, of such a rope when new ; it had had about double the weight with which it broke, upon it, only the day before the accident.

I think that the too often repeated winding of the rope over the pulley had weakened the tenacity of the wires at the part where it broke, and perhaps this weakening was aided by an extra amount of corrosion at the same point.

The jury recommended that, from the difficulty of detecting internal corrosion in wire ropes, extra care should be taken in examining them in future.

As inspector, I recommend that the same part of the rope should only be allowed to rest upon the pulleys for a limited period, while the cages are at the top and bottom of the shaft ; this can be effected by having a little spare length of rope, and letting it out from the drum from time to time, at the same time that a part of the end of the rope is cut off.

This is, I believe, the only fatal accident that has arisen from the breaking of a shaft winding rope during the past eight years in this district, if the case of a rope blown off a pulley by the wind, and breaking on falling upon the axle, at Westerton Colliery, be excepted.

Source:

1863 Mines Inspectors Report, Southern District by John J. Atkinson

	Barron, William, aged 11, Wailer, falling down shaft by rope breaking (had no business in shaft)
	Cooper, David, aged 52, Furnaceman, falling down shaft by rope breaking
	All names found

 

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