Disasters - Names		Disasters - Names

Date:	1929
Colliery:	Wallsend, Edward Pit
Cause:	Suffocated by natural gas
Lives Lost:	1

An accident very difficult to explain happened at Wallsend Edward Colliery, Northumberland. An experienced pitman was engaged during the night shift laying rails on the roadways after the stonemen had taken up the bottom canches. He descended the pit at 10 p.m. and should have returned to the surface at 6 a.m. the following morning.

At 5.40 a.m. he was seen at work by two coal cutter men and appeared then to be completing the work on his shift.

Nothing further was known until about 4 p.m. the same day when a message was received at the colliery office to the effect that he had not returned home.

Search parties were organised and at 10 p.m. one, consisting of the colliery officials and workmen, found him dead in an old bord opposite the place where he was last seen at work.

The old bordway had not worked for over a month owing to a very heavy fall in it. After making a small road through the fall for the purpose of getting out a Siskol machine, the bord was abandoned and was fenced off by planks across the whole width, the lowest being about 2ft. above floor level.

The rescue party found an accumulation of firedamp inside the fence and before entering it the gas had to be removed by means of compressed air. They found deceased lying on his face with his head inbye about 21 yards from the entrance to the bord. There were no marks of external injury and a post mortem examination showed that death was due to asphyxiation. He was fully dressed with his tea bottle in his pocket and his extinquished electric lamp beside him.

There was no evidence to explain why deceased went into the bord unless he had hidden something there before it was abandoned, and thought it a good opportunity, being alone, to recover it.

A further suggestion was that he possibly lost his light and inadvertently crawled underneath the fence, but as he knew the district well he would not be likely to do this as there were no rails in the old bord; a man trying to find his way out of a pit without a light usually does so by keeping in touch with the line of rails. A further suggestion was that he became mentally deranged and committed suicide. The Coroner's Jury returned an open verdict.

The management of the mine had ordinarily a good checking system in the lamp room but on this occasion owing to shortage of lamps it was not working properly, and the failure of the man to arrive at the surface at the proper time was not discovered.

Source:

1929 Mines Inspectors Report

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