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Local Records
1784
November. — An explosion took place in Wallsend colliery, by which three men lost their lives. Another explosion occurred in December, when two men lost their lives. These explosions were supposed to have taken place at the spark of the steel mill, by the light of which the people were working in the shaft. The bodies were not recovered for several months. In repairing the shaft after these explosions, the mode of throwing the rays of the sun down a shaft by a mirror, so as to light it, was accidentally discovered in the following manner :– While the people were working in the shaft, at about 80 fathoms from the surface, a carpenter was employed to do something at the head framing, immediately above the mouth of the shaft, and in using his saw, he turned the bright blade of it, accidentally, so as to throw a pencil of the sun’s rays suddenly down the pit, to the great terror of the workmen below, who though the pit had fired again. The cause of their alarm being, however, soon discovered, it suggested the idea of applying a mirror to throw the light of the sun down the shaft, which mode of lighting has since been frequently resorted to when other lights could not be used. [LRS]
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- LRS — Local Records or Historical Register of Remarkable Events by John Sykes, Published in 1833 in two volumes
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