Disasters - Names		Disasters - Names

Date:	29th October 1898
Colliery:	New Brancepeth
Cause:	On Surface
Lives Lost:	1

No. 483 occurred at New Brancepeth Colliery, belonging to Cochrane and Co., Ltd., on the 29th of October, causing the death of a boy usually employed for daubing the coke oven doors.

A large building or hopper is kept full of coals to keep the coke ovens going during the pay week ends. The coals are got out by means of slides into tubs carrying about a ton, and when the hopper gets empty it is necessary for men to go into to shovel the coal on to the holes above the slides.

On this occasion one side of the hopper was nearly empty, the coal only being 18 inches thick and shovelling or trimming was necessary, but at the other side there was about 14 feet still left. The deceased boy went up onto this heap, presumably to get out of the hopper, although he had been warned before that it was dangerous. and just as he did so the slide below was opened and the coal he was standing on fell away and he with it, and the coal closed over his head, and when extricated he was quite dead through being suffocated.

Source:

1898 Mines Inspectors Report (C 9264), Durham District (No. 4) by R. D. Bain, H.M. Inspector of Mines, from a copy held in the Scottish Mining Museum, Newtongrange, Midlothian.

	Cairns, Patrick, aged 16, Dauber, He went into a hopper with three men to trim coals, and was told not to go to the left side, where the coals were thick, but he went and at the same moment the slide underneath was opened to fill some tubs, and he was drawn down by the rush of small coal and covered up. When extricated he was quite dead.
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