Continued from Parts 1 and 2 ….from the Scotsman, Tuesday 23rd October 1877….. “When the colliers are at work, they dig the coal from the face, and throw it behind them. The mineral is conveyed in hutches to the pit bottom, and thence to the surface but when the end of the seam has been […]
Continued from Parts 1 – 3 ….from the Scotsman, Tuesday 23rd October 1877….. The weather during Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st was extremely boisterous and wet, and the sudden fall in the barometer was exceptional. There was during Sunday, it is understood, an unusually large flooding of water in both pits, due alike to the […]
Continued from Part 1 yesterday….from the Scotsman, Tuesday 23rd October 1877….. “There are in the immediate neighbourhood four pits, working different seams of coal but number 1 and number 4 are connected underground; numbers 2 and 3 forming a second twin working. The accident happened in number 2 and 3 pits. In these mines attention […]
Exploring the lives of those men and boys who lost their lives in the Blantyre Disaster. I’ve investigated the tragic story of 3 Blantyre brothers who died in the Dixon’s Pit Disaster on Monday 22nd October 1877. Francis (23), John (22) and James Welsh (15). John Welsh b1824 married Elizabeth Smith b1831 on 5th March […]
UPDATE: This target has now been met! Thanks. Enjoying Blantyre Project? I’m on the ‘scrounge’. Can you please Donate a little to help with 2020 Running Costs? As a non-profit charitable website providing a FREE ancestry, research and community history archive service here and on Facebook, I unfortunately have unavoidable annual costs each December of […]
By the afternoon of Monday 22nd October 1877, reporters up and down the country were scrambling to find out more details about the Blantyre Disaster that had unfolded that morning. It would take larger newspapers like Edinburgh Evening News, who determined for the “scoop”, could call upon reliable contacts in the area. Their Hamilton correspondent […]
By the morning of Day 2 of the Blantyre Pit Disaster, an emerging picture of the full scale of the tragedy was unfolding. On the morning of 23 October 1877, the Scotsman Newspaper issued a full page article, which we begin to explore here: “One of the most appalling colliery accidents that has ever happened […]
By midday on Monday 22nd October 1877, news of the colliery disaster in Blantyre was travelling rapidly around Britain. Even in those times of slower, more basic communication, the established telegram network was being worked frantically as newspapers all over the UK picked up the breaking tragedy. On Monday afternoon the Gloucester Citizen rushed to […]