New Hartley Colliery Disaster. Courtesy Terry McKinney.

About half-a-mile from the Hall, and close to the railway station of New Hartley, is the old shaft of the Hartley New Pit, made memorable by the terrific catastrophe, which occurred there on Thursday January 16th 1862.

The details of this accident may be briefly given thus; On the top of the pithead, or platform, was the engine house, containing the engine in use for pumping water out of the pit. One half of the massive beam, weighing altogether about 43 tons, worked over the mouth of the shaft. Suddenly without a moments warning, this ponderous mass of iron snapped at the center, and the half, weighing twenty-one tons, thundered down the shaft.

Shivering the strong wooden bratticing which divided the pit into upcast and downcast shafts, and tearing and throwing down the walling, filling the shaft with debris as far down as the yard seam.
A cage containing eight men was ascending the shaft at the time the beam broke.
It was at once smashed, and torn as if it had been manufactured of the weakest tin instead of the strongest wrought iron.

Six of the occupants were killed instantly, and three more or less injured escaped most miraculously.
This shaft - the only approach into the mine being blocked by the mass of iron and woodwork.
The supply of fresh air was cut off from the men imprisoned in the workings below, without any hope of escape.
By the Friday afternoon it is probable that all the entombed miners had succumbed to the deadly effects of "stythe" or choke-damp.

In the meantime unremitting efforts were made by devoted friends and relatives to force a passage to the workings. Day after day, night after night, they toiled heroically, frequently overcome by the deadly "stythe".

The whole country was roused by the terrible tidings, and manifested the utmost interest and anxiety in the fate of the imprisoned men. On the Sunday after the accident an immense crowd gathered on the scene, and by afternoon at least 60,000 persons were swarming around the pit. By pony and trap, by railroad and on foot they arrived from all parts of the country.

Steadily Mr. Coulson and his brave assistants and volunteers proceeded with the clearing of the shaft, and on Wednesday morning three of the sinkers, headed by Mr. Emmerson, Mr. Coulsons Chief Assistant, were able to advance into the furnace drift, but were unable to proceed far on account of the gas. In the afternoon one of the shift-men, William Adams, managed to penetrate into the yard seam through the furnace drift.

He was fearfully excited when he came to bank, and he tore his hair like a maniac while relating his dreaded news in spasmodic jerks, screaming and leaping at intervals.

The bodies of the men and boys were found lying in rows, all quiet and placid, as if sleeping off a heavy day's work.
Boys were lying with their hands on the shoulders of their fathers, and one poor fellow had his arms clasped around the neck of his brother.
The scene at the mouth of the pit, were the friends and relatives of the entombed men are waiting in an agony of suspense, has been graphically represented on canvas by H.H Emmerson.

On the body of Mr. Armour, the back-overman, was found a small memorandum - book, containing the brief but significant entry;
We had a prayer meeting at a quarter to two when Tibbs, Henry Sharp, J, Campbell, Henry Gibson and William Palmer.
Friday afternoon, at half past two, Edward Armstrong, Thomas Gledstone, John Hardy, Thomas Bell, and others took extremely ill.

On a shot-box belonging to a hewer named James Bewick the following words were scratched, evidently with the point of a nail; "Friday afternoon, My dear Sarah, I leave you", no doubt the writer died immediately afterwards.

The bodies were interned in Earsdon churchyard on Sunday January 26th, in ground set apart for the purpose in the presence of a vast concourse of spectators. The sad procession was necessarily a long one, and many of the bodies were in the ground before the last mourner had left the desolated village, which was four miles distant. The terrible calamity called forth the sympathy of all classes of society for the widows and orphans of the Hartley men, and a noble relief fund for the relief was speedily subscribed.

Mr. Joseph Skipsey, the poet of the coalfields, in his ballad, has pathetically described the sleep like approach of their death on the "Hartley Calamity"

"Oh father, till the shaft is rid",
Close, close beside me keeps;
My eyelids are together glued,
And I - and I - must sleep,

"Sleep, darling sleep, and I will keep";
Close by - heigh ho! - To keep;
Himself awake the father strives;
But he- he too-must sleep,

Oh, brother, till the shaft is rid,
Close, close beside me keeps;
Himself awake the brother strives;
But he - he too - must sleep,

Oh, mother dear, wert, and wert though near,
Whilst - sleep - The orphan slept;
And all night long, by the black pit heap;
The mother a dumb watch kept.

And fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers,
The lover and the new - made-bride,
A vigil kept for those who slept,
From eve to morning tide.

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