The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-23 00:00:00

THE WEATHER.—SUN OFFICE, JANUARY 23, 1862.
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
45—highest since noon yesterday.
33—lowest this morning and during the night.
40—this day at noon.

BAROMIZTER-29.68.
WlND—Southerly; rather fresh, with dull weather.

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THE SUN.

LONDON, THURSDAY, JAN. 23, 1862.

The worst is now known in regard to that
appalling catastrophe at Hartley Colliery. And,
in very deed, it is the worst. All dead ! The whole
of the 215 men and boys, without one exception.
A single spectral form has not emerged from that
dreadful gulf of destruction, to say like each of the
horror-stricken messengers to JOB—" And I alone
have escaped to tell thee." The whole of these 215
labourers may indeed be said, in their last adven-
ture, to have "gone down into the Pit."

Yesterday, in commenting upon this most afflicting
casualty,we wrote of it as of the most terrible acciden
that has perhaps ever taken place in our colliery dis-
tricts. And the event now proves that in penning
those words we were not writing in any way in the

language of exaggeration. It is impossible to read
without emotion the simple and affecting record of
the spectacle presented to view, when at length
last evening the yard seam, hard by the engine
drift, was reached by three gallant fellows, who, in
defiance of poisonous gases and of the perilous condi-

:on of the half-cleared shaft, were lowered down

to reconnoitre. Foul and pestilential, almost
deadly, though the atmosphere was in that dreadful
scene of death, nevertheless the three brave-
hearted pitmen who penetrated yesterday into the
yard-seam as Polunteers were enabled to see enough
to recognise in its full horror the futility of any
further hope of carrying relief to their entombed
mates. The spectacle witnessed by them was, so
far as the multiplicity of deaths went, like a peep
into some dreadful slaughter-house—like a
glance, after the fight was done, over
the fatallest, spot in some destructive
battle-field. Not a survivor was thcTe : all the
buried colliers, men and boys, lay huddled together
in groups—groups, some of them telling eloquently
indeed of the last yearnings of home affections
strong in life among these poor fellows, strongest of
all in death. Families were there clustered together
—" children in the arms of their fathers; brothers
with brothers." It is consolatory in some sense to
read there immediately afterwards that "most of
them looked placid as if asleep :" though it tells a
tale of the last frantic efforts of some to escape,
when we find it added almost in the same breath,
" but higher up, near the furnace some tall
stout men seem to have died hard." These,
doubtless, were the men who were heard " jowling"
in a last desperate effort to break their way out into
the daylight, as recently as Sunday. Some solace,
at least, it must be to the bereaved relicts and
orphans of the deceased to bear in mind now that
the sufferings of those they loved, and who have
been torn from them suddenly by so dreadful a dis-
aster, are past and gone, What the actual horror
of their situation must have been during four or five
agonising days, it is too painful now seriously or
deliberately to conjecture. Besides, it would
be utterly idle, of course, to do so. In lieu
of expatiating upon this head, we would
rather turn our regard from the appalling
past to the melancholy future down yonder at
Hartley New Pit, in those desolate wilds of Nor-
thumberland. We would rather take into conside-
ration the possibility of preventing the recurrence
of these dire calamities. We would rather meditate
on the most effixtual means of assuaging the anguish
caused down there in so many poor homes by the
frightful slaughter en masse of those who were the
main stays and the manly props of those afflicted
households.

Is it not practicable -- that is the first
thought—is it not in some way practicable
to prevent the recurrence of these awful
catastrophes P Is it not at once manifest
—that is the reflection the instant afterwards
is it not at once manifest that much may ensily
be done towards the relief of those whose hus-
fathers have thus been lamentably
bands and