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Distant Disasters
Having had my own near-disaster this week with the fire in the kitchen, suddenly it all gets put into perspective when in researching more family history I come across this...
I am always amazed at what you can learn from census records and certificates...
Best Beloved's great-great grandad, Thomas Jones was born in Bagillt on the Dee Estuary in Flintshire in 1826. His motives for moving around so much aren’t known, but move he did, always to another place with a coalmine, but seemingly in random directions. Maybe he moved toward work, maybe he moved away from trouble. Maybe he was just restless, who knows.
Presumably from Bagillt he went to work in the Derbyshire coalmines because he married Hannah, five years his senior from Alfreton in Derbyshire and by 1847 their first son, William was born, not in Derbyshire, but in Lancashire. Their second son, Samuel was born in Woolley Colliery, Yorkshire, a village which consists of a few rows of terraced houses wrapped round a pit.
Their third child, Elizabeth was born in 1852 back in Somercoates in Derbyshire, but by the time Mary Jane (Best Beloved's great-grandmother) was born in 1855 the family had moved to Nottinghamshire. Uncharacteristically they were still there two years later when George Henry was born (1857) but by 1860 they had moved to Hoyle Mill in Barnsley for the birth of Edward (1861) and Alfred in 1863. At last they seemed to have settled down .
The 1861 census shows the family living at Oak Row, Hoyle Mill, Barnsley. The two oldest boys William and Samuel, then ages 14 and 12 were already coal-labourers. There was one more child after that, Sophia, born in 1865.
Then one year later disaster struck.
Still ranked as the 10th worst mining disaster, the Oaks Pit Disaster, (Barnsley, Yorkshire), of December 12th 1866 resulted in 361 deaths during two separate explosions. For nearly half a century this rated as the worst pit disaster in UK history, until the Universal Senghenydd Colliery disaster in 1913.
The first explosion took place in the early afternoon of Wednesday 12th December. Apparently the bang could be heard up to three miles away. Both pit cages were destroyed in the blast, making rescue attempts difficult but after rigging a makeshift cage rescue teams brought up 20-30 survivors. That was it for survivors, though, The rest of the pit was said to resemble a battlefield.
The following day a second explosion killed 27 rescuers, including the mine engineer and volunteers from adjacent pits.
A third explosion ripped through the workings and that, it seemed, was that, but on the Friday a signal bell rang and one more survivor was brought up alive. Soon after that a further fourteen explosions pit paid to any chance of further rescue attempts. Eighty bodies were never recovered and the pit was later reopened with new shafts and workings.
Imagine standing at the pit-head as that last survivor came up, wondering whether he would be yours, or in the case of Hannah Jones, wondering if it would be one of hers, because she not only lost her husband, Thomas, in the explosion but her two oldest boys as well.
According to his death cerificate, Thomas, aged only 40 was killed on twelfth December 1866 (so in the first explosion) at Oaks Colliery Ardsley, and the cause of death was ‘injuries from an explosion of fire damp (cause unknown)’. The death certificate wasn’t issued until 5th March 1867, presumably after the enquiry had been held.
Listed in the same quarter’s deaths is William Jones, age 19. It was natural that both William and Samuel would worked with their father - probably under the 'gang' systemt which was common up until nationalisation (if not beyond). There's no death certificate for Samuel, aged 17, but after 1866 he just drops off the face of the planet. It could be that Sam’s body was one of the ones never recovered and therefore a death certificate was never issued.
So I've now got a call in to the library at Barnsley to see if there's a list of the dead and missing. Apparently they didn't have the 'tally' system in those days (so strict now, even for vistors in the mining museum) so the list of the dead and missing was compiled by the union not the mine owners. I'd like to have some closure for poor Sam.
Amazingly this pit was within walking distance of where Best Beloved grew up and he was very familiar with the memorial on Doncaster Road in Barnsley (opposite the gates of Kendray Hospital) without ever realising that he'd lost kin in that disaster. (Annoyingly the memorial is only to the rescuers who died in the second explosion, ignoring the 300+ who died in the first.)
After the disaster the Jones family got by as families do. Hannah was left a forty-five year old widow with six children aged between 15 and 3 years old. By the 1871 census the family was living on Eldon Street North in Barnsley. The eldest daughter worked as a dressmaker, Great-grandma Mary-Jane Jones - then aged 17 - was a staymaker and the oldest of the remaining boys was a labourer - but not, I notice, underground. The three youngest were 'scholars' probably at the school where my grandmother taught some fifty years later.
This is Mary Jane Jones.
Mary Jane married George Bedford - another miner - and all her sons were miners too, including Best Beloved's ganddad, Tom Bedford.
Tom Bedford and Frances Haigh had (at least) 13 children, so they effectively spanned two generations. Their children were born as far apart as 1904 and 1929 and after twenty five years of childbearing Frances went on to live to a ripe old age, kept going on a diet of beer and cigarettes. The whole family was a disaster area, some of the younger ones only surviving because the older ones brought them up. Granddad was quite religious (staunch Chapel, I expect being the son of a Welshman), but Grandma was a bit racy. Best Beloved's dad, Harold, was mostly brought up by his middle sisters, the oldest one already having left home before he was born.
The kid I feel sorriest for, though, was George, who died in infancy - of eating a ‘bad’ coconut brought home from the fair, The family story goes that George, screaming with pain, was eventually bundled into the pram by his nine year old sister and wheeled to the hospital because Frances thought he was making a fuss over nothing.
It's hardly surprising only seven out of thirteen survived, is it?
I am always amazed at what you can learn from census records and certificates...
Best Beloved's great-great grandad, Thomas Jones was born in Bagillt on the Dee Estuary in Flintshire in 1826. His motives for moving around so much aren’t known, but move he did, always to another place with a coalmine, but seemingly in random directions. Maybe he moved toward work, maybe he moved away from trouble. Maybe he was just restless, who knows.
Presumably from Bagillt he went to work in the Derbyshire coalmines because he married Hannah, five years his senior from Alfreton in Derbyshire and by 1847 their first son, William was born, not in Derbyshire, but in Lancashire. Their second son, Samuel was born in Woolley Colliery, Yorkshire, a village which consists of a few rows of terraced houses wrapped round a pit.
Their third child, Elizabeth was born in 1852 back in Somercoates in Derbyshire, but by the time Mary Jane (Best Beloved's great-grandmother) was born in 1855 the family had moved to Nottinghamshire. Uncharacteristically they were still there two years later when George Henry was born (1857) but by 1860 they had moved to Hoyle Mill in Barnsley for the birth of Edward (1861) and Alfred in 1863. At last they seemed to have settled down .
The 1861 census shows the family living at Oak Row, Hoyle Mill, Barnsley. The two oldest boys William and Samuel, then ages 14 and 12 were already coal-labourers. There was one more child after that, Sophia, born in 1865.
Then one year later disaster struck.
Still ranked as the 10th worst mining disaster, the Oaks Pit Disaster, (Barnsley, Yorkshire), of December 12th 1866 resulted in 361 deaths during two separate explosions. For nearly half a century this rated as the worst pit disaster in UK history, until the Universal Senghenydd Colliery disaster in 1913.
The first explosion took place in the early afternoon of Wednesday 12th December. Apparently the bang could be heard up to three miles away. Both pit cages were destroyed in the blast, making rescue attempts difficult but after rigging a makeshift cage rescue teams brought up 20-30 survivors. That was it for survivors, though, The rest of the pit was said to resemble a battlefield.
The following day a second explosion killed 27 rescuers, including the mine engineer and volunteers from adjacent pits.
A third explosion ripped through the workings and that, it seemed, was that, but on the Friday a signal bell rang and one more survivor was brought up alive. Soon after that a further fourteen explosions pit paid to any chance of further rescue attempts. Eighty bodies were never recovered and the pit was later reopened with new shafts and workings.
Imagine standing at the pit-head as that last survivor came up, wondering whether he would be yours, or in the case of Hannah Jones, wondering if it would be one of hers, because she not only lost her husband, Thomas, in the explosion but her two oldest boys as well.
According to his death cerificate, Thomas, aged only 40 was killed on twelfth December 1866 (so in the first explosion) at Oaks Colliery Ardsley, and the cause of death was ‘injuries from an explosion of fire damp (cause unknown)’. The death certificate wasn’t issued until 5th March 1867, presumably after the enquiry had been held.
Listed in the same quarter’s deaths is William Jones, age 19. It was natural that both William and Samuel would worked with their father - probably under the 'gang' systemt which was common up until nationalisation (if not beyond). There's no death certificate for Samuel, aged 17, but after 1866 he just drops off the face of the planet. It could be that Sam’s body was one of the ones never recovered and therefore a death certificate was never issued.
So I've now got a call in to the library at Barnsley to see if there's a list of the dead and missing. Apparently they didn't have the 'tally' system in those days (so strict now, even for vistors in the mining museum) so the list of the dead and missing was compiled by the union not the mine owners. I'd like to have some closure for poor Sam.
Amazingly this pit was within walking distance of where Best Beloved grew up and he was very familiar with the memorial on Doncaster Road in Barnsley (opposite the gates of Kendray Hospital) without ever realising that he'd lost kin in that disaster. (Annoyingly the memorial is only to the rescuers who died in the second explosion, ignoring the 300+ who died in the first.)
After the disaster the Jones family got by as families do. Hannah was left a forty-five year old widow with six children aged between 15 and 3 years old. By the 1871 census the family was living on Eldon Street North in Barnsley. The eldest daughter worked as a dressmaker, Great-grandma Mary-Jane Jones - then aged 17 - was a staymaker and the oldest of the remaining boys was a labourer - but not, I notice, underground. The three youngest were 'scholars' probably at the school where my grandmother taught some fifty years later.
This is Mary Jane Jones.
Mary Jane married George Bedford - another miner - and all her sons were miners too, including Best Beloved's ganddad, Tom Bedford.
Tom Bedford and Frances Haigh had (at least) 13 children, so they effectively spanned two generations. Their children were born as far apart as 1904 and 1929 and after twenty five years of childbearing Frances went on to live to a ripe old age, kept going on a diet of beer and cigarettes. The whole family was a disaster area, some of the younger ones only surviving because the older ones brought them up. Granddad was quite religious (staunch Chapel, I expect being the son of a Welshman), but Grandma was a bit racy. Best Beloved's dad, Harold, was mostly brought up by his middle sisters, the oldest one already having left home before he was born.
The kid I feel sorriest for, though, was George, who died in infancy - of eating a ‘bad’ coconut brought home from the fair, The family story goes that George, screaming with pain, was eventually bundled into the pram by his nine year old sister and wheeled to the hospital because Frances thought he was making a fuss over nothing.
It's hardly surprising only seven out of thirteen survived, is it?
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To the best of my knowledge, the coal mine in Bagillt was still open at the time Thomas Jones left. Of course, these days, the only thing that is left are plenty of pubs, and a couple of shafts.
Architectural horror story for
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I kinda fantasised that Thomas might have moved on either one step ahead of the law or one step ahead of his workmates, but one of the other reasons Thomas might have moved a lot is if he was a specialist in either sinking shafts or shot-firing.
A century later my Grandpa George (actually may paternal grandmother's second partner) moved around a lot because his skills as a shot-firer were much in demand.
It killed him in the end, of course (age about 55) not in a dramatic way, but with silicosis. The coroner's report (translated) said his lungs had so much coal dust in them that he should have been dead years earlier. Much Yorkshire black humour exists around miners bringing their own fuel to the crematorium.
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Only lived there for three and a half years, didn't I?
Would he have been qualified and in demand at age nineteen? That, sadly, makes the 'trod on someone's toes' theory more likely. Bagillt - at least the upper parts - are breathtakingly beautiful, but today there's nothing there. Back in the day, there would have been mines and pubs, but very grimy, very bleak, very little distraction, and no taste of the big wide world at all. Today it's a commuter town for Chester (half an hour) and the Deeside industrial estate, but back in the day it would have been the mines or nothing.
On the other hand, IIRC the coal mine would have been on the way out, so shaft-sinkers presumably would not have been in great demand.
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Thanks for the insight. Possibly if the coalmine was failing he moved away looking for work in the first instance. I like the treading on toes idea, but he may just have been one of those people for who the grass in always greener... or the coal is always blacker in the coalmine on the other side of the hill.
Geographically I'm not surprised his first child was born in Lancashire - that doesn't seam like too much of a leap from Bagillt - but I am surprised he managed ot find a wife from Derbyshire on the way. Another record I've found suggests that the Derbyshire wife may have been his second one.
I've become fascinated by this unknown miner. I've managed to piece together so much, yet I know so little about him.
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But there, as in so many situations, what you don't know _can_ kill you...
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And such fantastic photos! Thank you so much for sharing them :)
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I was amazed to find some illustrations of the Oaks Colliery Disaster on the web - in the shape of drawings from the Illustrated London News. Of course they were probably drawn by artists who'd never been anywhere near Barnsley (after all a colliery is a colliery to a Londoner) but they're still interesting.
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(after all a colliery is a colliery to a Londoner)
True. And a colliery is a pit to a Northerner :D
When I was little and first learning to read, I thought that Silverwood Colliery must be a kennel where they bred Collie dogs....
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But as to the accuracy of the pics - I really don't know. I've lived in Barnsley all my life but there are no obvious landmarks. The long view does look as though the colliery is set in a valley - and it is/was in the valley below Kendray Estate, but they built new headgear and sank new shafts after the disaster so it would all have changed anyway.