The Industrial Review, Social and Political. — 1877-11-03 (London, England)

FATALITIES IN COAL MINES.  WITH respect to the sufferings of the Blantyre colliers, it is well to be assured that the mine where they occurred is free from firedamp; but, though this may encourage for the present, experience shows it cannot be depended upon as a constant security, and it is for constant securities that science must now be set on quest, without stint of effort or of cost. Nothing is more certain than that the poor fellows who lost their lives in such numbers were overtaken by swift death with instant suddenness and perished pick in hand. We do not say that this form of destruction can be made utterly to cease; but we do say that by due care and precaution it may be reduced very greatly in frequency and in destructiveness. To the sad widows and orphan children it is some comfort even to recover the dead bodies of the husband and father; but what all of us want, both those who are colliers themselves and those of us who sympathise with such as are, is that, once for all, a resolute effort shall be made to reduce this source of premature death to the lowest point practicable. It is not right that society should content itself with light coal prices while those who get us the coal are day and night at work in momentary dread of being swept out of mortal existence. Nay, even the dead bodies are not yet all recovered; and, as we cannot but note, quite as much speed is used to set the murderous mine in motion again as to clear the field of slaughter from the mutilated slain. Mutilated, alas! so dreadfully that, when identified at all, they were better recognised.by some article of dress than they could be by any personal feature remaining entire. The bereft ones are receiving relief at the rate of five shillings a week for mothers and half-a-crown for children; and this, though small enough, is well; but the great and urgent demand for all is means of prevention to ward off the recurrence of like death-dealing land misery-gendering calamities. Moved by the sufferings of the Irish Roman Catholic miners who were so numerous among the dead, the Marquis of Bute has sent five hundred pounds for the relief of their widows and orphans; but what we wait for with most anxious expectation is the procedure to be adopted under the guidance of Mr. Secretary Cross, who, wiser than most holders of the same office, seems (honour to him!) to take a serious and wider view of the duties and responsibilities attaching to it.  Mr. Macdonald, speaking as it were by the graveside of the poor fellows who were blown to death or suffocated in the Pemberton mine, near Wigan, has put the matter very calmly, but very pointedly. "If," he asked a large meeting of yet unsacrificed miners, the gas were diluted and rendered harmless in every mine, and in every part of the mine, would there have been the accident in the Pemberton mine ? (Cries of No.') Could there have been this fearful slaughter of 225 human lives in the Blantyre mine in Scotland? Would there have been such a slaughter as was at the Moss pits? Could there have been a slaughter such as that at Bryn Hall? Could there have been a cloud so thick with colliery disasters in and around Wigan that he thought the very sun itself refused sometimes to shine on it, in consequence of the fearful accidents which had occurred in this lo.:ality ? (Cheers.) Wherever gas was not diluted and rendered harmless, wherever human lives were taken away through a colliry explosion, wherever an ann was maimed or a limb destroyed he affirmed that was a crime, at least in his opinion, against the law of the country and in the sight of Heaven, and ought to be so considered by intelligent men.' About seventy bodies have been recovered, leaving more than a hundred others in the mine; in which more after-damp has been shown than was suspected, besides a serious accumulation of water in some of the workings. At a meeting of miners in Messrs. Dixon's employ, a !man bore distinct testimony to this effect: that he had fired shots himself, and knew another man who had; adding that he worked with a gauze lamp, and that, on a lad coming down with a naked light, he left.