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	Individual Details		Individual Details

Age:	48
Died:	6th Sep 1873
Accident:	6th Sep 1873
Year Born:	abt. 1825
Colliery:	Skelton Park (Ironstone)
Company:	Bell Brothers
Occupation:	Miner
Notes:	shot blowing through
Buried:	[not known]
Category:

Explosion of Gunpowder.

The accident arising from this cause, No. 17 in the list, occurred somewhat carelessly. A bord in which two men were working was known to be nearly holing into a headway the face of which was 10 or 12 yards in advance of where the holing was expected to take place. Shots were being fired in the bord daily, and on the day before the accident occurred the viewer had warned the men at work there that they were near holing and that they were to "take care not to shoot the men in the headways." The men afterwards "had a jowl," a process of beating with a hammer or pick on the face of the place and having some one on the other side to listen, by which means a tolerably accurate estimate can be made of the distance intervening. They estimated that they had two or three yards to go, and that until next day it would not be necessary before firing a shot to go round to warn the workmen in the headways. They were also, I think, led to delay this necessary precaution from the fact which was known to them that the face of the headways as above-named was so far in advance of the holing place, and the consequent unlikelihood of the headways workmen being near the holing when it should take place. They prepared a shot, the hole for which was afterwards found to have been within a few inches of being through, and then fired it; the firing taking effect on the headways side, one of the headways men, being at the very moment at the place in search of a tool which he wanted, was instantly killed. The precautionary measures to be used in such cases should not be altogether left to the workmen, nor should the "jowling," which does not always indicate truly the distance, be the only test of the nearness of holing. Accurate measurements should be taken by the officials and detailed surveys if need be. I am informed that many lives have been lost by similar cases in Cleveland.

• 1873 Mines Inspectors Report (C. 1056), South Durham, Westmoreland, and Cleveland District by James Willis, H.M. Inspector of Mines, Page: 15, Accident Number: 17 Where to find this report
• 1873 Mines Inspectors Report (C. 1056), South Durham, Westmoreland, and Cleveland District by James Willis, H.M. Inspector of Mines, Page: 9 Where to find this report

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