3-065-846 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Astley Deep Pit Colliery, Dukinfield, near Manchester: scene of the late explosion, 1874. Industrial accident at the workings of Messrs. B. Ashton and Co.'s Dunkirk Colliery. 'It was fatal to fifty-two lives...Four hundred men and boys are employed here, in two sets alternately, by day and night. There were about 150 at work...when the explosion took place...a party of five men were employed in underpinning or propping [a tunnel], to prevent a fall of "dirt," as the earth, or any substance not coal, is usually called. While they were so engaged, within twenty or thirty yards of the downcast shaft, the huge mass of the roof actually fell...There must have been a vast discharge of inflammable gas from the rent made in the roof above. This instantly took fire and exploded...The "after-damp," or "choke-damp," as usual, caused the death of many whom the fire had spared...A large number of men at the surface, directed by Mr. Hilton, the colliery manager, worked diligently that night to get the entrance cleared and to search for their lost comrades...The families of the men killed are much pitied, and a subscription has been opened for their relief, which was headed by Mr. Ashton, the principal of the Dunkirk Colliery Company, with £500'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.