1813.] 



Accident at PeU'mg Colliery, 



On the 25th of July, 11 bodies, from 61 to 71) were in- 

 terred. Number 64 was under a large fall. This man was 

 keeper of the Heworth poor-house, and a class leader of the 

 Wesleyan sect of Methodists. A pamphlet has been published, 

 containing 24 pages, and entitled " A short Account of the 

 Life and Christian Experience of John Thomson, Sec. compiled 

 chiefly from his own Journal. By Theophilus Lessey. New- 

 castle-upon-Tyne, printed by J. Marshall, 1812. The profits of 

 this pamphlet will be faithfully applied to the relief of his 

 widow, and five orphan children." 



The boards of 59 and 64 were the only ones fallen in this 

 sheth : each board here was bratticed nearly to its face, more 

 with a view of rendering them pure and clean, than of giving 

 assistance in obtaining the bodies ; for the workmen, out of 

 anxiety to recover them, became fearless of danger, and ven- 

 tured into the repositories of foul vapours before the brattice was 

 long enough to convey sufficient atmospheric air into them to 

 render them wholesome. The 26th of July, being Sunday, was 

 a day of rest. 



On the 27th of July seven bodies were obtained : 72 and 73 

 were much burnt, but not much mangled : 74, 7^5 7^} 77> 

 were found buried amongst a confused wreck of broken brat- 

 tices, trap-doors, trams, and corves, with their legs broken, or 

 their bodies otherwise miserably scorched and lacerated. Before 

 78 was found the brattice represented in the last figure was 

 taken down; a stopping put across the plane-board at number 

 41; and the air thrown past 7^ a^^d 54 through the aperture 

 (which had been partly made by battering down the coal with a 

 prop) and thence into the William Pit. This wall, on account 

 of the prevalence of fire-damp, when 45 was found, had not 

 been crossed till now. 



The 28th of July was chiefly spent in putting up stoppings^ 

 along the wall, from 73 to 7^^. Number 80 had been blown 

 through a stopping. 



Numbers 81 and 82, the latter under a fall, were found 011 

 the 29th of July. 



On the 30th of July the fall, which commenced a little east 

 of 82, was found to continue, and 83 and 84 were dug from 

 beneath it: 85 kept the sheth down-going door opposite the 

 William Fit on the east: his hair, which was of a light colour^^ 

 had been burned off; but had grown again to the length of an 

 inch or more. 



As all the upper parts of the mine in which there was a like- 

 lihood of meeting with any bodies had been once carefully gone 

 over, and it was known that three persons had not escaped from 

 the newly- formed boards on the south-east, the air, on the 31st 



