3-052-399 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Leycett Colliery Disaster, near Newcastle-Under-Lyne: the pit after the explosion, 1880. Explosion Staffordshire, '...on Wednesday of last week, by which sixty or seventy lives were lost...[View of] the assemblage of an excited multitude at the pit's month, when the terrible event had become known in the neighbourhood...There had been complaints of insufficient ventilation, and there was an explosion, by which eight men were killed, on Sept. 12 last year...On the day of this recent greater calamity, seventy-seven men and boys went down to begin work in the morning...A new ventilating fan had been fitted up at the pit's mouth since the explosion last September. The roof of this fan was blown off, but the machine itself was uninjured, and the ventilation below was so far maintained that persons could go down with safety; but the guide-rods for the descending carriage were broken, and it was several hours before they could reach the bottom, using ladders for part of the way. Mr. Lawson, manager of another colliery, with seven men, was the first to descend, and about noon four men were brought up alive, one of them Burgess, the fireman. Some others were brought up more or less hurt, but several of these have died'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.