"I am a coal miner, as you can see, and have been all my life. I was one o' them as had the providential escape from the SLOUGHTON COLLIERY explosion, which all the newspapers, I'm told, are a-talking about just now. They may talk with good cause, but they don't know, and cannot know, what we suffered, in our minds more than our bodies, - we as survived to escape. I pray to my God night and day - and I am not much used to praying, neither - that I may never again go through such a scene as that night was. Many a man prayed then, who had never thought of it much since he was by his mother's knee.
"Now I shall tell you what happened to us then, as well as I can; for it was a dark and smoky business, you know, and not long a-doing, till we got walled up in the ruin; and also, if you please to hear me begin my life a bit, of some things of the same kind that have happened to me afore. These explosions are nothing new to me. I have been all my life a miner, man and boy, now these two-and-forty year: first at BILSTON, and now here in DURHAM. I must tell you all in my own way, from the beginning: only, as you write it down for me, just be so good as make it all clear grammar-like and spelling; for I'm no great hand at that.
"I went down in the pit when I was six year old. My father and mother passed me off as seven and a half; so they got my wages. I was employed in carrying picks [little short-handled pickaxes that hew down the coals] to be mended, and often carried three at a time. I got two and sixpence a week. When I was a few months older, I was put to keep a trap-door. At first they let me have a candle, but after a week they said I could sit just as well in the dark to attend to the trap. I sat in a little hole like a chimney-place, cut in the coal. Sat in this way twelve hours a day, all in the dark. Not so werry dull and lonesome as you'd suppose. A good deal of company coming and going all day. When the horse came with an empty basket and skip, he could open the door with a poke of his head; but when he came along with a load, I pulled it open with a string. He knowed all about it. I sat there with a string in my hand. For this work I got eightpence a day. Some time after I was moved to a trap, where I always had to pull the door open for a horse and tram, empty or loaded, and then I got tenpence a day. Besides the coming and going of the horses, and the men and boys, trappers have other amusement, or perhaps they might get very sad, or go to sleep, as we often did, and get woke with a whip. This other amusement was often a cruel one. I was taught it by other boys. There were rats and mice in the pit, as came down in the oats and hay, and they lived by stealing the candles, horses' food, and the bait-bags of the men. I sometimes killed a rat with a large coal; but when I caught mice, I used to pull the tails of three or four of them into a split stick, and then shake them until they fought like mad. I always kept a bit of candle to see the sport by, sorry I am to own it, now I'm a man. There were also a great many jack-gnats, and wood-lice, and old forty-legs, and black clocks, - long-legged, black beetles with horns. I was often cruel to the jack-gnats when they olistered me, and I used to try and make the clocks fight, but they soon shammed dead, and the old forty-legs always ran away.
"After about a year and a half in this way, I was put to sweep the tram-road and clear the rail with a whisp of hay, and pick up coals off the road; and next they set me to walk with a candle before horses. The candles were short sixteens. I was eight years old now, and got three-and-sixpence a week, which I took home to my mother.
"Before I was nine years old I had a bad accident from an explosion. The wild-fire came rushing along a road, and knocked itself out against the opposite end just at the cross way, when I was coming, which saved my life; but some of it reached me, and I was scorched all over the breast and arms. I lay ill for nine weeks. It was caused by a man opening the Davy lamp to prove to another that the gas about them was not so bad as he said. They had betted a pot of beer on it. These sorts of doings are common enough, even when you hear the gas pit-pit-pitting in little explosions as it gets through into the lamp. I once heard a man, one of the under-goers, who was on his way to remove a pillar, complain that his Davy did not show light enough; so, another man accompanied him with a lighted candle in his hand to help him see his work better. A dreadful explosion followed, a few minutes later, and nine men and two boys were killed. The two underneath, where the pillar was to be hewn away, were got out all black, like coke and cinder. If they hadn't been Christians, there was no call to bury them, as far as their bodies were concerned, poor fellows. Wrong too; for they caused the death of other poor fellows by their carelessness and folly.
"After my accident I did not go down again in the pit for six months. I warn't strong enough. I drove a 'gin' on the bank. [the 'gin' consists of a horse going in a circle, and working a wheel that winds up or lets down loads into the pit]. The work was not hard, except in cold or wet weather; but then I often stood in a hovel by a fire, and kept th' old horse going by pelting him with small bits of coal, to let him know I was there. I learnt to read at an evening-school at this time; and to write a little too. But I've forgotten both since.
"When I next went down into the pit I drew little waggons of coals, with a girdle and chain; this is called hurrying. Hard work it was. The blisters were often as big as shillings and half-crown pieces. All full of water they were. And the blisters of one day were broken the next, and the girdle stuck to the wound. Sore work, I promise you; but I got one-and-sixpence a day for it, and the last three months, two shillings.
"After this, I was hired as foal to my uncle, a young fellow of nineteen who was a putter. Those who push the little waggons of coal along the tram-roads are called 'putters'; and when a young boy helps an elder he is called his 'foal'. When two boys of fourteen or fifteen years of age push together, equally, they are called half-marrows. I was a foal for near a twelvemonth; and then a half-marrow, and got twelve-and-sixpence a week. One day the butty (overseer) sent us to a part of the mine where we had never been before. There was fire-damp there, and it put out our candles, one after another, as fast as we lighted them. So we saw as it was not safe to try it on any longer, and we began to scramble our way back in the dark. Laughing we were a great deal. But we missed our way, and got into an old working as had been abandoned for years, and got quite lost. We wandered about here two whole days and nights afore we found our way out, and were nigh starved to death!
"I was strong of my age, and the butty said I had some sense in me, and set me to use the pick sooner than is usual. In general the miner does not use the pick, and become a holer or undergoer [those who go into holes and undermine masses of coal] till he is one-and-twenty. I was set to do this at nineteen, and earned four shillings a day, and sometimes more. Got badly burnt once at this work. I was lying in a new working where the air was bad, and I was obliged to use a Davy lamp. I had bought a new watch at Tipton, and I wanted to see what o'clock it was by it - else, what was the use on it? - and as I couldn't tell by the Davy, I just lifted off the top - and pheu! went the gas, and scorched my face all over, so that the skin all peeled off. It was shocking to see. I was laid up with this for two months - and sarv'd me right, I say now, but it was hard to bear at the time.
"As for accidents from the explosion of gas, I say there's no help for them, and never can be, so far as the men themselves are concerned. I have been oftentime very careless myself, as I've told you, and so are all miners, and always will be. You may cure the mine of gas, perhaps, but you'll never cure the men. Nor, I don't well see how you're to cure the gas, at all times, neither. When a heading [the working at the end of an excavation] is made up a slant, the gas collects in the upper end, and to disturb this gas, as you must do, and distribute it, and drive it away, a'nt so safe and easy a matter, without a chance of a bit of an explosion or two. The worst time of all is when an up-hill heading is united to another heading, for then you're almost certain to have a rush down of the gas, and if there's an uncovered light in the way, you're sure of an explosion. Well - then, don't have a light in the way, on such occasions; make the juncture of the two headings in the dark. That's easy said; and so we're ordered, and so we ought to; but to get men to do it, that's the job. Besides, if it was all being done in the dark, a boy might come running that way with a lighted candle in his hand, a-singing 'Susannah' - and then where are you?
"You want to know if there's no authority, and no order down in the mines - nobody to walk about and prevent accident from carelessness? Well - there's the butty, as gives out the work; and there's the doggy, who is always a-walking about to see it done. But what's one man to miles and miles of darkness underground, with gas or bad air everywhere, and roof and walls always liable to fall in? The overlookers have enough to do to take care o' themselves, at times. Some years ago - 1838 about - at Tamworth - a butty coming to his work in the morning, walked right into the pit's mouth with two candles in his hand; and only t'other day, in one of our mines here, a doggy had his head blown off with the wild fire.
"It doesn't come of drink, this carelessness of the miners; it's just in our nature not to care - that's all. We do drink and eat too, a good deal; but not in the mine. Our dinners there, are not much, except on particular days, when there is a feast; but when we come up from the pit, we have hot suppers at night in our cottages. The doctors say that a miner needs to eat near three times as much as a mechanic who sits at his work all day; and we do eat three times as much. We're not a drunken set o' people; only on Mondays there's a many drunk, and not very handsome-like on Tuesdays. We mostly lie in bed and sleep half Sundays. Some of us are tee-totallers - but a werry, werry few. The Marquis o' Hastings, who's a great coal-owner, once told a collier that he knew a miner who had never drank a quart of beer in all his life, put together, yet he had lived to the age of ninety, - if he had but ha' drunk a quart of ale a day, he'd have lived for ever!
"After I had been an under-goer three years, I had a large piece of coal fall upon me from the roof in one of the workings which broke my leg. My mother was dead, and I was not married at this time, because the girl I should ha' married, took up with somebody else; so I went to my sister to be nursed. She and her husband were going to live at Durham, and persuaded me, when I was well, to go along with them. I soon went down into the pit again, and used to earn five shillings a day. It was here that happened one of those very bad explosions I told you of when you first spoke to me about this last business. The one I now speak of was in the Willington Colliery."
"It was in the Bensham seam of this colliery [Willington] that the explosion I am going to tell on took place. It took place on the 19th of April 1841, at a little arter one P.M. The Bensham seam lies about a hundred and forty fathoms from the surface; the coal is over four feet in thickness in most parts, and the pit is good nine feet four wide from wall to wall. The coals are drawn up in iron cages; two tubs on each cage. The pit had been in work some time. We had advanced two hundred and eighty yards from the bottom of the shaft. Besides this, there were two north headways, each seven feet wide, which had advanced more than two hundred yards. Holings were made between each of the headways for air. We had an up-cast shaft, called the Edward Pit, by which the air ascended to the surface, after ventilating all the workings. The current of air, you understand, descended by another shaft, as was called the Bigge Pit. One current went one way; another current another. There was pains enough taken to give us enough wholesome air.
"It was at the west the explosion took place. I was at work with another man and a boy, near five hundred yards, reckoning ins and outs, east of the shaft. A sudden rush of wind and dust came past us. It put out our candles. We knew directly there had been an explosion somewhere, and we ran along in the dark as fast as we could. We fell down several times, tumbling over stones and large pieces of coal or timber that had been shaken and blown out. When we got to the foot of the shaft, we found the iron cage stuck fast, all jammed with the explosion; but we made the signal, and another cage was lowered to us, into which we jumped, before it reached the bottom, by scrambling up the sides of the shaft. When we got to the bank, and had taken our breath a bit, we saw the chief viewer of the pit come running to us with his Davy lamp. We each took a Davy, and went down the pit, to see who we could help. We knew there had been sad work among them. When we got down to the bottom of the shaft, we soon heard moans and groans. They were two lads, still alive. We got them hoisted up in the cage to the bank; but they lived a very little while. Soon after, we found two more quite dead, shockingly burnt. We had not gone much further when we found there had been a great fall of the roofing; and among the loose coals and stones, and timbers we found a horse and a pony, all mangled and singed. We now met the after-damp, and were thinking of returning, when a groan made us go forward, and we brought out the body of a young man alive, but in such a state, be couldn't be recognised. We now found that the doors of the trappers in several places had been blown out, and consequently the air currents had ceased to ventilate all the west and north workings, so that those who were there, and had escaped the explosion, would be likely to lose their lives by the after-damp.
"A strange smell of burning now made us know that some other sort of fire was at work, and as we ran in the direction it smelt like burning straw, which told us it was the stables as had taken fire. And sure enough, there were all in thick yellow smoke and red flames. The horses were prancing wild about, and one, who was blind, got out, and tore away, and killed himself by running agen a wall. We all saw death before us, if we couldn't master this fire; because if it communicated with the workings in the west and north, where the bad gas was, there would be another blow-up worse than the first. Mr. Johnson, the viewer, acted like a man. We all gave our minds to the work, and succeeded in stopping out, with wood and wet clay plaster, the entrances to these workings. Fire engines were then got down, and we continued to pump at the stables, and at the walls of coal which had took fire on each side, and after we had drenched them with water for several hours, the fire was put out. It took thirteen hours and more to do this.
"The main currents of air were restored as usual, and we then continued our search for those who had suffered by the explosion. We found Robert Campbell and another man crushed and buried under a fall of stone, and William Coxon, and Thomas Wood, and Joseph Johnson, all dead, but not b urnt. It seemed as if they had got to this place, and then been suffocated and poisoned by the after-damp. Johnson had the top of a linen cap forced into his mouth, to keep out the poison - but that was no use. A little further on, we found two more men, and near them three little boys - trappers they were - all burnt horrid. Some distance beyond, Thomas Bainbridge, James Liddel, and William Bower, together with two if not three, more boys, who had been blown a long way, and also Robert Pearson and Richard Cooper, both very little boys - trappers. Up by the north heading we found the body of John Reed, the deputy who had charge of the pit, and also five others, some burnt, some mangled.
"The cause of this explosion, which cost all these lives, was traced, on examination of all signs and appearances, to the trapper boys, Robert Pearson and Richard Cooper. Cooper's body was found away from his own trap, and lying close beside that of Pearson, where we saw reasons for knowing he could not have been blown by the explosion; and all on us come to the conclusion that he had left his own trap-door open, and gone to play with Pearson. The proper course of the ventilation was thus destroyed, and when George Campbell, whose body was found near, went there with his candle, to fill coals, the gas that had accumulated while the boys were at play instantly exploded.
"You are surprised that children should have charge of these air-doors, on which the safety of the whole wine chiefly depends; but it has always been so. They are often trappers at six years of age. I was myself. Seven and eight are the most common ages; sometimes nine. In course the Queen's Ministers don't know anything about these underground matters. Some gentlemen were sent to look after us, about eight years ago. They said the Queen sent 'em; and they came down among us in the pits, and about on the bank; but I suppose they kept what they found to themselves. [Dicken's note: Far from it. See Report and Evidence of the Children's Employment Commission; and in especial, those of Dr. Mitchell and Mr. Leifchild.] For here we are with our little trapper boys, and our explosions, and our burnt and mangled men, just as we have always been. It's a hard life, any way; but to be killed slap off, is worst of all.
"Now, as to the dreadful explosion and loss of life that happened at SLOUGHTON, I thought I could tell you all about it, in some sort o' order; but directly I begin to think about it, so many things come at once that it's not easy to think at all, or know what to say first. The overman had been out late on Sunday night. He went to the pit at two in the morning to see that all was safe. At three we all came to work, and a hundred and fifty of us, men and boys, went down. One of the workings was new opened, after being closed thirteen years. A dangerous place o' course. One o' the undergoers was sent in to remove the first pillar. I went to work with others at a good distance. We were at it about two hours, and then all of a sudden a rush of wind and coal dust cut by us, taking out all the candles, and there was a rumbling noise. We knew very weel what it meant, and we all ran towards the shaft. As we ran we came upon others in the dark, and others came rushing out! upon us from the side workings, and all of us together ran in a crowd and crush along the dark ways, in the direction of the shaft, and presently we found those who were foremost had fallen, and we got a sudden giddiness and gasping, so we knew we had met the choke-damp. It's a deathly, sleepy sickness you feel, and sinking at the knees, only you're sure it's not the breath of sleep you're afeeling, but you're breathing death. I called to those a-head to stop, and so did others near me, but many of them would go on, and down they went, one after the other. We felt the bad air couldn't be passed through, and we hurried backward in a worse disorder, if that's possible, than we had come on; and at last we all stopt in a scrambling crowd in a place where we found the air could be breathed. Here we remained. What a time it was, good Lord of Heaven! At first the elder ones of us tried to keep some order, and quiet the rest by telling them, as we know'd those on the bank, and plenty of others would be sure to know what had happened, and they'd soon come to help us. They would attend to this for a little, but soon they began to get wild and desperate, and so they went on crying out and shouting like mad, ending with a scream, until they were tired out. All this time many were down on their knees praying, and some lying about with their faces hid on the ground, and all of us expecting every minute another explosion, or else the advance of the after-damp would bring us certain destruction. And here we remained, hemmed round by the walls and by the after-damp, which we could no more get through than through the walls theirselves - hour after hour, every minute of which was a long torment of all sorts of things in ourselves, and in all those about us. I gave myself up for lost after the first hour - then I took hope a little; but after more time had gone, I gave up hoping, and was as bad as the rest. Still as more time went on, I began to pick up a! bit. I knowed our friends would help us if they could. Ay, but could they? - that was the chance. And then again I fell into despair, and crouched down, and covered my face and head with my hands, and sat there a trying to pray, and make my last peace with God, amidst all manner of cries and loud praying, and miseries of despair and madness of those huddling in the darkness all round me. Sometimes they got a little silent and solemn-like, and listened to the voice of one man who had never ceased to pray aloud all along; but presently somebody called out his wife's name - two or three cried out on their children, their mothers, the girls they were to be married to - and in a moment all again was wild cries and rushing about in the dark.
"You know how we were saved. A great part of the roofing had fallen with the explosion, and this had shut off the fire from us, and the advance of the after-damp. Our friends made their way through the ruin - got fresh air in to us, and helped us out. Some died from exhaustion when they reached the bank; but most of us recovered, to thank God again and again in the arms of our wives and relations, who were all standing in crowds to receive us. They had come from all parts round about. The bank was like a fair, only a different sort of merriness, and many had no cause. The grief of some was a sad sight for any man. Five-and-twenty had been killed; some crushed, some burnt to a black cinder, so that they couldn't be told; some torn all in pieces, and the head of Anderson flung into a horse-tub - and the rest damped to death.
"We think the explosion was caused by the gas from the old working, now opened after being closed thirteen years. Some noise made the undergoer go to this place, and instead of taking his Davy lamp, he ran there with a lighted candle in his hand. He, and the man who was at work there, we found under each other all black and mutilated. He was a mere body of cinder, and was only known by a little book in his pocket, as escaped. The Queen's gentlemen, when they came down here among us, said they could mend these things; but they haven't you see. We think the Queen wasn't told."
Mr Dickens writes: An effectual remedy for these horrible accidents is indeed most difficult to devise. For even if the Government instituted a system of police inspection, it would require one officer, at least, to be constantly perambulating the dark roads and by-ways of every mine; and still, as the miner, whose evidence we have just read, very truly says, an explosion might be caused by a moment's carelessness at one end of a mine, while the "authority" was at the other. To us there appears no other chance of a remedy so good as this: - First, most stringent laws as to the proper ventilation of mines: Secondly, a system of Government inspection, extending to that of frequent visits by day and night, at times not known to the masters or miners; and, Thirdly, a regular system of registration of all accidents that occur in mines, especially as regards defective machinery and the explosion of gases. This system of registration has been put in operation with respect to the Factories, with very good effect. No child can receive an injury, which disables it from work for a fortnight, without a report of the same, under penalty of a heavy fine on the mill-owner, being sent to the Inspector of the District. The publicity caused by this has brought the question so continually into notice that the fore of public opinion has operated most beneficially in reducing the number of accidents. If then, a system of inspections and registration has been found necessary with regard to works above ground, where the difficulty of concealment must be so great, how much more necessary is it in works conducted hundreds of feet or fathoms under ground, where almost any recklessness or gross abuse may be committed with impunity, because unknown, and where none of its wrong doings come to light except with these terrific explosions and waste of industrious human lives?
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