KINGSWOOD. Kingswood, Somerset. 27th. May, 1839.

The colliery was the property of Messrs. Braine and Company and eleven were reported to have drowned in the pit when water entered the workings.

When a vein of coal was exhausted it was the usual practice to make a cutting 8 to 10 fathoms at the end of which another vein was usually found. The men were cutting from an explored vein when they holed into a vein that had been worked fifty years before and was filled with water. Thirty-six men were at work. Twenty-five were saved but all those in the lower workings lost their lives.

Those who lost their lives were:

  • William Johnson who left a wife and four children.
  • Samuel Wiltshire, Johnson’s son-in-law who left a wife and three children.
  • William Johnson aged 20 years.
  • Joseph Goolden
  • Stephen Goolden.
  • William Framcom.
  • John Dursley.
  • George Palmer, a lad.
  • George Francom, a lad.
  • John Holbrook, a lad.

A local report of the accidents said:

On Monday afternoon, about one o’clock, an immense body of water broke into the coal-pit. We hear that the pit completely filled, and that it will take many days to take the water off before the bodies of the sufferers can be brought up. Had the water broken in an hour earlier, the loss of life would have been much greater, many of the men and boys having left the pit to take their dinners. On Wednesday the water had gained on the engine, which had been incessantly at work since the accident and 120 feet of water was in the shaft. The workmen had broken into an old pit which had been close for nearly 100 years and the first intimation of danger was the extinction of the candles from the foul air which preceded the water. The man nearest the pit mouth rushed to the rope and clambered up in a cluster, two of then in a state of nudity. Twenty-five was thus saved from impending death, but the number before stated, the greater part of whom had been employed in a lower part of the work, perished.

 

REFERENCES
Durham Chronicle.
Annals of Coal Mining, Galloway, Vol. 2, p.42.
Latimers’ Local Records. p.102.
Mining Journal. Vol. x, p.78.
Sykes’ Local Records.
Children’s Employment Commission. Appendix, p.693.
A History of Coal Mining in Great Britain.
Sketches of the Collieries of Northumberland and Durham. T.H. Hair.
The South Shields Report.
Fynes’. History of the Northumberland and Durham Miners. p.162.
Great Pit Disasters Great Britain. 1700 to the present day. Helen and Baron Duckham.

Information supplied by Ian Winstanley and the Coal Mining History Resource Centre.

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