72 Sequel to the melancholy Catastrophe at Heaton Colliery. 
pronounce a verdict accordingly. The overman had left the 
ehalk-board on which it is usual to take down an account of 
the work done, together with his pocket book, in an empty corf. 
On these some memoranda might have been expected to be 
noted ; but no writing subsequent to the catastrophe appeared 
on either. Two of the men’s watches had stopped at four 
eclock ;—this period of time might be somewhat more than 
 twenty- four hours after descending into the mine: but it is also 
probable they may have wound up their watches after the acci- 
dent had taken place ; and notwithstanding various reports, 1 do 
aot believe that any document was discovered to throw light on 
this lamentable part of the subject. 
On referring to my former letter, it may be seen that the owners 
ef Heaton mine opened the shaft of an ancient colliery situated 
about 300 yards from the place where the pitmen were known 
to be at work; but, owing to innumerable falls from the roof, and 
the prevalence of earbonic acid gas and carburetted hydrogen 
gas, were prevented from penetrating further than 80 yards into 
the waste. On a Wednesday morning the accident happened, 
and by the following Saturday the scaffold which closed the old 
pit was reached and removed. By these means it is thought by 
some professional men that the pure air, already much reduced 
by respiration and combustion, would be let out through the 
broken coal, and that this would be the utmost possible period 
of these miserable sufferers’ existence. Though it must fre- 
quently have fallen to the lot of miners to have been entombed 
alive in the prosecution of their hazardous avocations, yet I know 
of but two of these occurrences upon record. The first was 
published by Dr. Percival in the Memoirs of the Philosophical 
Society at Manchester for 1785. A pitman, whose name was 
‘Fravas, had the misfortune to be shut up in a mine at Ashby- 
under- Line, owing to a quantity of earth bursting into the shaft, 
which was 90 yards deep. Here he remained inclosed ina ca- 
vity three yards in length by two in breadth—in a seam only 
two feet thick, without either water or food, and where the can- 
it of the w orkmen who dug him out would not burn—for the 
ace of seven days and nights,—and though perfectly sensible 
whe found, he died in a few hours after. 
The other occurrence took place at Beaujoc, im the vieinity of 
Liege, in 1812, and was detailed in a pamphlet by Baron De 
Micond. It nearly resembled the Heaton inundation, except 
that the water rushed from an upper seam of coal, and not from 
a waste situated tothe rise. This colliery is 186 yards in depth, 
and its seam 354 inches thick: —here seventy men and boys were 
shut up without food or wholesome water, and where their can- 
. dles 
