3-082-134 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Disastrous Flooding of Audley Colliery; entrance to the pit, 1895. 'Seventy-six men will...[probably] 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...Of the missing, thirty-seven are married, twenty are young men over sixteen, and six under sixteen years of age. A relief fund has been promptly opened, and donations have been already received from Messrs. Rothschild, the Earl of Dartmouth, and others. The North Staffordshire Permanent Relief Society, to which all the entombed men subscribed, has allotted sums for the immediate relief of the families affected. The water entering the mine from the old workings is steadily subsiding, the reservoir in the abandoned Rookery Pit having fallen four feet in twenty-four hours. Some days must still elapse before the work of exploration can be resumed...All further relief will be administered through the North Staffordshire Permanent Relief Fund. The accident has brought once more before the public the dangers attending life "deep in unfathomable mines," and again proved the existence of a splendid courage, shining the more brilliantly from the darkness of death which has evoked it.' From "Illustrated London News", 1895.