Disasters - Names		Disasters - Names

Date:	1st March 1897
Colliery:	Newton Cap
Cause:	Fall of ground
Lives Lost:	2

No. 103 on the list occurred at Newton Cap Colliery, belonging to Messrs. Henry Stobart & Co, Limited, on March the 1st, and caused the death of an under-manager and also a stoneman.

When this accident occurred the deceased stoneman, along with three or four other men, were engaged in timbering a circular place in which it was intended to place a small pump, to be worked by a pony, in order to drain the water from some workings close to, and thus make it possible for some five or six pillars of coal to be taken out.

The deceased under-manager was directing the work. They had got the running baulks into position, and six others on the top of them, and were preparing to put a centre-bearing baulk in, and the deceased stoneman was chipping the stone to make room for it when one of the other baulks broke, owing to the weight of the stone above it; this was followed by a very large fall of stone — as much as twenty tons — which swamped the timber, and caught and killed both men.

The roof in this part of the pit is as a rule good, but at the point where these men were working the goaf is not very far off, and it is probable that it had been working and caused the stone to come away in the way it did.

I understand both these men were careful and possessed good judgment, and I regret very much to have to report their deaths.

Source:

1897 Mines Inspectors Report (C 8819), Durham District (No. 4) by R. D. Bain, H.M. Inspector of Mines, from a copy held in the Scottish Mining Museum, Newtongrange, Midlothian

	Brown, George, aged 50, Under Manager, While timbering new horse pump house a baulk broke and let down a large quantity of stone from the roof which killed them instantly
	Nichol, John George, aged 44, Stoneman, While timbering new horse pump house a baulk broke and let down a large quantity of stone from the roof which killed them instantly, Buried: St. Cuthbert Parish Churchyard, Etherley
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