3-082-133 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Disastrous Flooding of Audley Colliery; the Pit Bank, 1895. 'The shadow which rested over Diglake Colliery, North Staffordshire, since the fatal inrush of water on Jan. 14 has deepened. After heroic efforts, rescue work has been abandoned as hopeless. The workmen, who had been risking their lives, reached as far as the bottom of No. 2 dip on Jan. 19, and continued labouring for many hours on behalf of the entombed miners. Seventy-six men will, in human probability, be discovered dead as soon as the water subsides, making the disaster one of the greatest which has befallen British mining for many a year...Pumping was continued with marvellous persistence, men taking each other's places at intervals of half an hour, despite the fact that they had to stand up to their waists in water. Two ponies were rescued alive from No. 2 shaft on Jan. 18, the animals appearing none the worse for their imprisonment, though decidedly hungry. The disused workings from which the water broke cover an area of eighty acres, and the water must have been accumulating for the last forty years. Of the missing, thirty-seven are married, twenty are young men over sixteen, and six under sixteen years of age'. From "Illustrated London News", 1895.