$62 Accident at Felling Colliery, [Ma5^, 



employed in the workings to which the plane board was the 

 general avenue, and as none had escaped by that way, the 

 apprehension for their safety began to strengthen every moment. 

 At a quarter after twelve o'clock, Mr. Straker, Mr. Anderson, 

 William Haswell, Edward Rogers, John Wilson, Joseph Pear- 

 son, Henry Anderson, Michael Menham, and Joseph Greener, 

 therefore descended the John Pit, in expectation of meeting with 

 some of them alive. As the fire-damp would have instantly 

 ignited at candles, they lighted their way by steel-millsy small 

 machines which give light by turning a plain thin cylinder of 

 steel against a piece of flint. Knowing that a great number of 

 the workmen would be at the crane when the explosion hap- 

 pened, they attempted to reach it by the plane-board : but their 

 progress was intercepted at the second pillar by the prevalence 

 of choak-damp : the noxious fluid filled the board between the 

 roof and the thill; and the sparks from the steel fell into it like 

 dark drops ot blood. Being, therefore, deprived of light, and 

 nearly poisoned for want of atmospheric air, they retraced their 

 steps to the shaft, and with similar success attempted to pass up 

 the narrow boards : in these they were stopped at the sixth 

 pillar by a thick smoke, which stood like a wall the whole 

 height of the board. Here their flint-mills were not only ren- 

 dered useless, and respiration became extremely diflicult, but 

 the probability of their ever reaching the places where they 

 expected to meet with those they were in search of, or of finding 

 any of them alive, was entirely done away. To the hopeless- 

 ness of success in their enterprize should also be added, their 

 certainty of the mine being on fire, and the probability of a 

 second explosion at every moment occurring and burying them 

 in its ruins. 



At two o'clock Mr. Straker and Mr. Anderson had just 

 ascended the John Pit, and were gone to examine the appear- 

 ance of the air issuing from the William Pit. Menham, 

 Greener, and Rogers, had also ascended. Two of the party 

 were at this moment in the shaft, and the other two remained 

 below, when a second explosion, much less severe than the first, 

 excited more frightful expressions of grief and terror amongst 

 the relatives of the persons still in the mine. Rogers and 

 Wilson, the persons in the shaft, experienced little inconve- 

 nience by the eruption : they felt an unusual heat, but it had no 

 effect in lifting up their bodies, or otherwise destroying the 

 uniformity of the motion of their ascent. Plaswell and H. 

 Anderson, hearing its distant growlings, laid tliemselves down 

 at full length on their faces, and in this posture, by keeping 

 firm iiold of a strong wooden prop, placed near the shaft, to 

 support the roof of the mine, experienced no other inconve- 

 nience from the blast, than its lifting up their legs and poising 



