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Baddesley Mine Disaster
Atherstone, in the north of the county with its near nine thousand modern day population, has a long history with a mention in the Domesday Book. It was established as a market town in the 11th century but began its industrial life when it gained fame for its cloth, wool and felt trade in the 16th century and those were trades which led it into the hat trade in the 19th century, an industry which lasted for three hundred years. The town prospered in particular during those years when hats were fashionable for both gents and ladies. The other notable industry for many years was that of coal mining with many of the residents working at the nearby Baddesley coalfield.
Coal mining is well recognised as one of the most dangerous occupations in the world. It has a history which is fraught with hardships and disasters impacting not just on families but whole communities. In the days of the 19th century, before modern day legislation ensured at least some semblance of safety consciousness, the miners ran the risk of loss of life or limb on a daily basis. This was just the same across the country as it was at the Baddesley Colliery just outside of Atherstone.
The Baddesley Colliery was a deep shaft mine, one which was so deep below ground, men had to descend down a seven foot wide vertical shaft to a depth of half a mile. That journey then got them down to the drift level where the real mining took place. Down there they dug and shovelled coal. For those working during the short winter days, they would enter during the hours of darkness, work below ground through the hours of daylight, and finally re-emerge again into the darkness. They would go for days on end never once seeing daylight. Below ground, all they had by way of light was the glow coming from their minerslamps.
Coal was important to the industry of Warwickshire and to heating its homes. Coal needed to be cheap but it was a high price that was paid for its extraction, especially in terms of human life. Hardly a day would pass without some accident in a pit. Falling rock was not uncommon, fires and explosions fortunately rare but devastating when they happened. Apart from the obvious dangers, men had to walk perhaps half a mile or more bent and stooped to avoid the low roofs in the shafts. The air could be stale and at times even poisonous with fatal gases an ever present risk.
Inevitably miners were a tougher breed of men than found in most walks of life. Their hands bore the hard calluses of heavy manual labour, their backbones carried the scars of years of knocks against rough hewn surfaces. And yet how that contrasts with the caring way they tended their gardens and allotments in which they grew vegetables for the table and flowers with which they would compete man to man at the annual horticultural show held in the nearby grounds of Merevale Hall. This was an important event in the local calendar and shows starkly the contrast between life above and below ground for these men, perhaps representing the freedom and love of open spaces and fresh air they were denied underground.
May 1882
Imagine the Atherstone miners in 1882 on their way to the pit. It was May Day and six oclock in the evening when the team of eight miners and a boy arrived at the pit where there was general maintenance work for them to do. Three stallmen, William Smith, George Bates and Henry Radford were all there along with the colliers John Ross, Joseph Orton, William Blower, William Knight and William Day who at seventy one was the eldest of the group. Then making up their complement was Joseph Scattergood, the youngest at thirteen who worked as an incline boy. Josephs father Edward was the local blacksmith and his mother Mary had packed him off that afternoon with his snap tin of sandwiches and a farewell. The little lad had not long been thirteen years old and was in his first year of working in the pit. Joseph and those who worked with him had all walked from their homes that morning, some in Baddesley Ensor, others from nearby Baxterley or Atherstone. Arriving at the pit head, they all descended the half mile deep shaft down to the drift level, going down number 1 shaft, one of two for entry to the mine. There was also a third but smaller shaft descending to the same level but that was just for ventilation.
At the bottom of the shaft was an engine which was used to haul the coal up from the lower level where the team would be working at the bottom of the drift. It was from that point where they arrived at the shaft bottom that they began the thousand yard walk down the incline to the Deep Workings where they would spend the night. There was a double underground roadway they used that led deeper and deeper, in the direction of Hurley. It was along here the coal was hauled up by the engine higher up. Between those two shafts were passageways which they passed en route and which periodically connected the two shafts together. Folding doors were in place at each end of these connection passages. These doors were to help control the movement of air, the general idea being that air would flow down one passage and up the other.
Deep workings
Eventually the group arrived at the bottom, at the Deep Workings, and it was only when they arrived there that their time on shift officially started. There they were met by Charles Day who had already been on shift since two oclock. He briefed them on the maintenance work they were to do and left them to carry out their tasks. There was some reluctance from the group since the following day the pit would not be operating. Trade had been poor and the pit workers were working on short time. By this time, fortunately, the day shift miners were already on their way home.
As they passed deeper into the pit, they would lower the candles with which they worked to see how brightly or otherwise the lamp glowed. If they dimmed, it indicated a lack of essential oxygen. Each man would carry his own supply of candles in a tin. In some mines, the build up of methane gas was also a problem but Baddesley was well known for being free it that explosive gas. It was not only dark down there but wet as well. Water had been seeping in to the workings and at the very bottom a considerable amount of water had collected. Up until quite recently the water had been hauled up the thousand yard slope in wooden leaking tubs, up to where a pumping engine had been installed to take the water away.
This leaking of the water had caused some damage to the wooden flooring which had lifted and it was this damage which had led to the installation of another pumping engine in the deeper workings. It had been placed in the return airway passage such that any fumes would not effect the miners. It consisted of a boiler which produced the steam to power the small pump engine. In the roof of the passageway, a channel had been cut in order that the fumes and smoke from the boiler would pass up and along the channel. In effect this was a bit like building a chimney out of a coal ceiling. We all know the effect of a chimney fire but what if the chimney is made of combustible material?
Disaster
John Parker, the manager, had overseen the installation of the boiler and pump. Mr. Gillett, a consulting engineer from Derby, visited Baddesley on a few occasions each year. Parker had consulted Gillett who granted permission for the work to go ahead. He did however stipulate that a brick archway should be built around the boiler and that it should only be used once a week. In his wisdom, Parker had seen fit not to install a shield of fire bricks, despite the expectation that he would do so, and the boiler was used continuously. This clearly created a fire hazard and that evening, as the small team of nine set about their various tasks, disaster loomed and the inevitable was about to happen.
The early warnings had already been there. In fact on April 26th, Gillett visited the site to inspect the work by which time the boiler had already been running for two weeks. Noticing the lack of brickwork, Parker told him that it was the volume of water that stopped him from installing the brick shield. Almost as he was speaking the coal above the boiler caught fire. The fire was put out with water and Parker arranged for a hosepipe to be rigged up to keep the area permanently sprayed. But that was five days earlier and we return to the day of the disaster.
Back up at the surface, Joseph Day had arrived for work to relieve his father at ten oclock that evening. He had been born at Grendon Common on the edge of the coalfield and now lived in Speedwell Row in Baddesley Ensor with his wife Anne and their three young sons, all under seven. They would all be fatherless before that week was over as would the fourth child, a son which would be born in seven months time, just a week before Christmas.
Smoke
Joseph descended the shaft and there at the bottom met his father, Charles. But on the way he had noticed that there was smoke in the shaft and he commented on this to his father, stating he had no idea where it was coming from. His father went up the shaft to see for himself. The smoke was getting worse and poisonous fumes beginning to gather. Such was the density of the smoke, that he found breathing difficult and was exhausted by the time he reached the surface. Clearly a major problem was building down below.
Day sent for the manager of the mine, John Parker, who lived at Baxterley, also on the edge of the coalfield. He left instructions that when Parker arrived he was to follow him down the mine as soon as he arrived. Day went back down the shaft and attempted to go down the incline but was unable to penetrate the smoke. He knew that down there somewhere was a team of miners in desperate need of rescue if they were not already dead.
It was not long before Parker arrived with a team of men and descended the pit shaft. This was to be the first of three rescue parties involved in the incident. There at the bottom they met Day who had just come back up the incline. Between them they made several brave but futile attempts to penetrate the smoke but to no avail. The situation was desperate, not just for the lives of those deep down the thousand yard long incline, but for others who were now down there trying to save their fellow workers, the pit and their livelihoods.
So serious was the problem that the pit owner, William Stratford Dugdale who lived at the very grand and nearby Merevale Hall, was summoned. It took some while for the message to get up to the big house but when he arrived, Mr. Dugdale brought with him his colliery agent John Pogmore and Johns son Frank, a twenty seven year old solicitor. They also lived over at Merevale in the Colliery Agents House. These men may not have been used to the inside of a mine, but nonetheless they ventured deep down into the shaft to see what should be done. It was soon recognised that only someone with the skills of a mining engineer would have any hope of finding a solution. The hours were passing by, the fate of those deep in the shaft had surely already been sealed, but every effort had to be made in the possible hope of at least some lives being saved.
John and Frank Pogmore went by horse and cart to fetch Reuben Smallman, a mining engineer from Chapel End. On his arrival, and it was now three oclock in the morning, the layout of the mine was explained to him and having gained an understanding, he took charge of the situation. By this time a rescue party had already been down the pit having been led by Parker shortly after the alarm was raised. They continued until Reuben Smallmans arrival when a second party went down with Smallman and they worked through until six in the morning.
Smallman devised a way to gain access to the deep area by using the communication channels which linked the two roadways down the incline. Wooden screens were to be built across the passage and covered in a special cloth which the smoke could not penetrate. A gap of a foot or so was left between the top of the frame and the shaft roof. It was hoped in this way that a draft would be created over the tops of the frames which would take the smoke down the passage. It was presumably hoped that a section at a time could be cleared by opening the normally closed doors at the end of each inter-connecting cross passage.
By now many of the second rescue party were exhausted, some still being there from the first party. At six oclock in the morning, a number of men were sent home suffering from exhaustion or smoke inhalation. Others, after a chance to recover their energy, went back down the pit and were joined by new volunteers who had been called for and these readily and willingly arrived.
It was now about eight oclock in the morning. The number of men in the mine was increasing and there amongst them, hoping to raise morale if nothing else, was Dugdale, the pit owner. He knew little about the mine procedures but understood motivation and hoped that his presence would lead to greater things. It has to be said at this stage that men who enter a pit on a daily basis know the risks, but it is a calculated risk, to be balanced against the benefit of being able to feed a family. To enter a pit when it is burning is a different matter. That is true heroism when the reason to enter is not financial but humane, perhaps to lay down ones life for ones friends or family, families such as Charles Days. He was down there as were his three sons, Joseph, Thomas and William.
Fireball
Mr. Smallman the engineer commenced putting his plan into operation. Sadly all their best efforts to reach the seat of the fire in this way were to no avail. The smoke beat them back at every attempt. It was about half past eight when, all of a sudden, there was an unexpected and ominous stillness. The air in the mine was quite perfectly still the lull before the storm. From deep down the incline came the roar of a huge explosion and the growl of an advancing fireball as it rushed up the incline shaft in what a fire-fighter would recognise as a flash over. This is where the atmosphere and exposed surface areas reach such an intensity of heat that fire breaks out along great distances at a pace faster than a man can run.
Dugdale, the two Pogmores, Parker and many others were all either seriously burned by the intense flames or suffering badly from smoke inhalation. Twenty three men from that rescue party were to escape that terrifying moment but sadly over the days and weeks to come, they were all to die from their injuries or from the effects of smoke inhalation. Their struggle for life in the moments after the explosion would have been terrifying. As the scorching breath of death roared up through the mine shafts, they would have been smothered by the smoke and noxious fumes, their lungs choking and burning for the oxygen already consumed by the flames, veins bursting and skin scorching in the intense heat. For all of them it was a lingering and for some agonising death over a period of days. There was no comfort to be taken in the knowledge that loved ones had not suffered at the end.
Inspector of mines
A telegram was sent to Mr. Evans, the Inspector of Mines, but he was away at the time and Mr. Arthur Henry Stokes, his assistant was sent for. It was about nine in the morning when he arrived to find Smallman the engineer lying badly burned in the engine house. So bad were his burns, Stokes only recognised him by his voice when he spoke. He explained as best he could just what had happened below and said that there were still three men down in the mine and one of them Mr. Dugdale, the owner. He also explained that he felt it was too dangerous for any more rescuers to go down and he felt there could be another explosion at any time.
The fate of most of those in the rescue party had already been sealed. Over the coming days their lives would extinguish one by one, and all because they had dared to go into the pit in the hope of saving others. Despite the odds, Stokes called for more volunteers who were prepared to brave the risks involved to do just the same as those who went before, to go into the mine as a further wave of rescuers, to go down the pit to see what lives could be saved. Stepping forward was Samuel Spruce, a mining engineer with considerable experience. Then came Frederick Samuel Marsh, a colliery manager, and Thomas Henry Mottram, another manager. These men, along with Parker, were not Baddesley men but were all good engineers. To provide the local knowledge, Charles Day, who had first raised the alarm, also stepped forward. He had three sons down there and not one of them was to survive. William Morris joined him. They descended the shaft down into darkness of the engine level, filled with dense smoke and noxious fumes.
Mr. Stokes, the Mine Inspector, recounted at the later inquest how he and the team of six set out to recover anyone still alive down in the mine. Making their way along the shaft, they found a strong movement of air from behind them. They were working in the dark for fear of a flame igniting another explosion. They decided to relight their lamps, just three lamps between the six of them. They moved forward using a tub as a wind shield. They found the roadway fairly easily but having gone some distance into it, it became quite a different matter.
The smoke was so dense that Stokes described it as like a heavy black curtain that could be cut with a knife. Fifty yards into it and he shouted Is there anybody beyond?. The response was immediate. Over herecame the voice from the darkness. The only way the team of six could move forward in the dense black smoke was along the floor. Down there the bottom foot of the shaft had relatively clear air. From that one foot level up to the ceiling was at least eleven feet of dense black smoke. In the darkness, on hands and knees with heads lowered to ground level, the front three moved forward, keeping hand to hand contact in a line, with the two on the outside keeping contact with the walls and steering Stokes in the middle. Behind them, ready to rescue the front three if need be, came the other three in similar fashion. In this way they made their rescue bid into the smoke hoping to find a survivor.
Recoveries
Advancing rapidly, considering the conditions, Stokes kept shouting and Here. Herekept coming back. After some distance, Stokes stumbled over Mr. Dugdale, not that he was recognisable at the time. Stokes took his right arm while Marsh took his left and Mottram grabbed his collar. Between the three of them they dragged his body, laying on his back, back up the incline, stumbling and falling, tired and exhausted with little air to breathe. It was back breaking, energy sapping and exhausting in the most dangerous of conditions. But between them they dragged the victim back beyond the line of smoke. Once out of the smoke they recognised the victim as Mr. Dugdale. Having wrapped him in blankets, they got him up to the surface.
As they lay there exhausted, Spruce, who had been in the second line of three, commented that when they heard Dugdale calling, it sounded as if his voice was occasionally further away. Perhaps there was yet another person to be rescued. Back they went again, back into the dense black smoke and there they found John Collins, a loader. He had climbed up the incline and was covered in burns. He also was taken to the engine house up at the surface level and treated. There he gave them the news that there was another man who had been coming up the incline behind him.
By now Charles Day was totally exhausted. We must remember that he was one of the first to be involved and had been down the pit since two oclock the previous day. There has to be limit to what one man can achieve in circumstances such as those. Fresh volunteers were called for and William Pickering, Joseph Chetwynd and Charles Chetwynd, all colliers, joined their team. Back down the shaft they went for a third time. It was now Joseph Chetwynd who suggested that a rope should be tied around one of them and head into the unknown. It was Charles Chetwynd as the youngest and strongest who tied the rope around himself and ventured forth. Finding the body, he tied around the rope around victim so that he could be dragged out. It was Rowland Till, the carpenter, and in a dreadful state, but still alive. Joseph and Charles, helped by William Pickering and William Morris, partly carried and partly dragged Till back to the surface. Tills life expired soon after but not through lack of effort on the part of the volunteers. Indeed, all three rescued were later to die of their injuries or from the fumes. The final death toll was to mount to twenty three with a further nine left in the mine, the victims of the original smoke and fire. Their bodies, we must assume, were beyond rescue. Thirteen rescuers survived but with injuries and just five others were fortunate enough to survive uninjured.
When Mr. Evans, the Inspector of Mines finally arrived at the mine, he found that smoke was coming up most of the shafts indicating that there was a well established fire raging out of control below. The only way to put out the fire would be to starve it of oxygen but such action would likewise starve any survivors in the unlikely event that there were any. After consultation with Mr. Gillett, it was agreed that further rescue attempts would be futile and only endanger yet more lives. Enough had been lost already. The following day the decision was made that the mine should be sealed. The lives had already been lost and at least this way the mine could be saved to be re-opened in the future. Six months later the seals were opened and the bodies recovered.
There was a sombre mood at the annual flower show that year. It would have been inappropriate to hold it at Merevale Hall. But nonetheless it went ahead and was held on the vicarage lawns.
Albert Medals
Queen Victoria later bestowed the Albert Medal on those brave men who went down into the mine knowing fully the risks they took and who had carried out such heroic acts to save their fellow man. They were Reuben Smallman, Arthur Stokes, Charles Day (who had lost three sons in the disaster), Charles Chetwynd, Joseph Chetwynd, Samuel Spruce, Frederick Marsh, William Morris, Thomas Mottram and William Pickering. On Monday, February 19th, 1883, Lord Leigh, the Lord Lieutenant of the County of Warwick, performed the honours presenting the medals at the Corn Exchange in Atherstone. The Albert Medal at the time was the highest award for bravery available to civilians. Reuben Smallmans medal is now held at the Nuneaton Museum. It was the equivalent of the militarys Victoria Cross and was later to become the George Cross. All forty seven men who took part in the rescue were presented with commemorative bibles paid for out of the Relief Fund.
Lord Leigh summed up the bravery of these heroes quite nicely in his presentation speech. I do not believe that any brave soldier who ever had the Victoria Cross presented to him had performed an action more gallant than any of these heroes. Loud cheers echoed around the Corn Exchange as the medals were pinned onto the chests of our heroes.
After the disaster, life continued in the communities around the Baddesley mine. Joseph Clay, not previously mentioned, had been called out at midnight and worked in all three rescue parties. He died from his injuries on May 4th, just three days after the event. Joseph left a wife and a number of children. It was his youngest son who was to marry the youngest daughter of Charles Day, one of that brave band of rescuers awarded the Albert Medal. That marriage was blessed with just one daughter, the mother of Celia Parton to whom I am indebted for much of the detail in this chapter.
Copyright © Roger Evans 2003