26th January 2012

The two memorial services marking the 150th Anniversary of the Hartley Pit Disaster were amongst the most moving I have ever attended.

 On Thursday 16th January 1862 the cast iron beam on the pumping engine snapped, blocking the shaft of the Hester Pit, entombing 204 men and boys. The oldest was 71 years old; three generations of his family perished. The youngest was just 10 years old; in all 43 boys under the age of 16 died. The number was so high because it was a shift changeover and two shifts were underground.

Most were buried at Earsdon and as the first coffin was interred, carts were still leaving Hartley Village, four miles away. The disaster captured the public imagination. 60,000 mourners and onlookers lined the route.  Queen Victoria herself wrote a letter of condolence.

If good can come from such a tragedy, then two improvements happened. The Mines Act which followed meant mines had to have at least two shafts; if one was blocked those trapped might escape through the other. Secondly the public subscription for dependents turned into a Permanent Relief Fund for mining families.

But this was, fundamentally, a story of human tragedy. 204 men and boys died, leaving 102 widows and more than 250 children fatherless. Shortly after the funerals the families would have been turned out of their colliery owned houses.

And there were further disasters, many in our region. Organised trade unions, health and safety laws and new technology made mining safer but really only the demise of the industry ended disasters.

Local memorials such as the one at Earsdon are important but isn’t it time that we, like other parts of the world including the United States, had a permanent national memorial to remind us of the true price of coal?