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	Individual Details		Individual Details

Age:
Died:	12th Dec 1856
Accident:	1st Dec 1856
Born:
Colliery:	Byers Green
Company:
Occupation:
Notes:	explosion of firedamp
Buried:	[not known]
Category:

The second life lost by explosion of firedamp, it will be seen by the list, was at the Byers Green Colliery; the explosion appears to have been very slight in this instance, and occurred on the 1st of December. Patrick Sney, who was burnt by it, did not die till the 12th of the same month.

This accident occurred in a whole board, in a series of boards where candles were almost solely used for lighting; but on a chance occasion gas was noticed to be discharged from a small dislocation of the strata, owing to which an occasional safety lamp had to be employed. The board in which the explosion took place had been worked with a naked light in the early part of the morning of the day when it occurred, but no person was employed to work in it in the after part of the day, at the time when Sney left his own working place at a considerable distance, and went into it (it was conjectured to seek some work tools, to take back with him to his own working place) without any authority for doing so, and on entering it the gas ignited at his candle and exploded.

The evidence at the inquest went to show that the back overman, after the workmen had left the place, had observed that gas had accumulated in it, and had, as a temporary signal, chalked the wall side, and also an underground waggon, which he placed as an obstruction and signal to prevent any person entering the place in his absence, while he left and went to procure a proper signal board to put up in lieu of the temporary one; and during his absence Sney had entered the place and got burnt. Sney was not employed, by any one having authority to do so, to work in this pit, he having gone to work along with the person with whom he lodged, a few days before the accident, of his own accord, and thus probably had no work tools of his own, nor any knowledge of the rules established at the colliery. The board had a ventilating brattice in it at the time of the explosion.

I censured the back overman to some extent for not having stood guard at the place when he found gas in it, until some one had been sent to bring an ordinary danger signal, or having the place guarded by some one else while he went for the signal himself, a precaution which I expect will be adopted on any similar future occasion.

The overman and his deputies appeared to have thought that Sney had been employed by the underviewer.

• 1856 Mines Inspectors Report

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