3-074-727 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Colliery Explosion near Accrington, 1883. 'Sixty-three lives have been lost by this disaster...at the Altham Colliery, North Lancashire...The explosion of gas occurred at half-past eight in the morning, in the Moorfield pit, which is 283 yards deep. A hundred and ten men and boys were below at the time, when a rumbling noise was heard under ground, followed by a loud report, and a dense volume of smoke issued from the mouth of the shaft. The iron plates which form the platform at the top of the shaft were hurled from their place; the cage stopped in its descent, and it was evident that the pit mouth was blocked up. Immediate alarm was given, and an immense crowd of people...assembled on the pit bank. Nearly all of them had relatives in the pit, and many distressing scenes were witnessed. A party of volunteers...went down the Whinney Hill shaft, and, by three o'clock in the afternoon, forty-eight survivors had been rescued. All these were more or less burned...many had sustained severe scalp wounds and cuts on their limbs, caused either by being thrown down by the shock of the explosion, or falling in their hurried attempt to escape...A subscription is being raised for the benefit of the widows and children of [the] men who perished'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.