On 8 December 1862, at the Edmunds Main Colliery, Worsbrough Dale near Barnsley, three underground explosions killed 59 men and boys. In a coal field that was known to be fiery and to harbour gas, death was nothing new. Added to the inherent risk of working underground, proprietors regarded safety in terms of avoiding lost production, rather than saving life and limb. Women saw their menfolk leave for work wondering if they would come home and spent each shift half expecting a visitor with bad news.

Accounts of mining disasters usually focus on the number of deaths and the circumstances that led to the fatalities, but what effect did such a sudden and brutal mass loss of life have on a local community?

Eyewitness reports from the journalists who were on the scene shortly after the first explosion describe how anxious wives and mothers thronged to the pit, hungry for news. Their overwhelming emotion was concern for their men. Within a few hours, as it became clear that dozens of miners had perished leaving their dependants without a breadwinner, personal grief for some would inevitably have started to mingled with worry about how they would manage. Few mining families had savings and support from public funds could be both niggardly and arbitrary.

Thirty-six women were widowed, 93 children left without a father, and at least two elderly women robbed of the son who was supporting them. A relief fund was set up within days of the explosion but receipts were modest. This may have been a consequence of current stories about the relief fund for the disaster at Hartley Colliery near Newcastle earlier that year. It was believed that £80,000 of donations had been received of which less than half had been distributed. Some of the balance was rumoured to be unaccounted for.

The immediate financial predicament of the bereaved was not helped by Barnsley’s Board of Guardians, who may have had the rumours about the Hartley fund in mind when deciding how to deal with claims for assistance. Almost two months after the explosion, a local newspaper printed details of the low levels of allowances which the Guardians had made available to some of the women. Others had received nothing and the Board was berated for apparently having decided to use charitable donations to the fund to protect local ratepayers, rather than provide help to dependants of the deceased.

Any support that extended families or kind neighbours could provide would have been constrained by poverty. On the day of the explosion, Edmunds Main had around 900 men on its payroll, but with fires burning underground and foul gas circulating, but it could not be worked for many months. As the 800 or so men who no longer had a job there sought work at other local pits, local miners considered that employers cynically exploited the expanded labour supply by holding wages down, even when the price of coal increased.

Widows who wished to earn some income to maintain themselves and their families had limited opportunities. One possibility was domestic service, though live-in posts were problematic for those with children to care for. These women may have found their options confined to heavy domestic work such as that of a charwoman or laundress, as they tended to be day workers. Eliza Pickering, widowed in middle age and still with a young family to support, can be found on the 1871 census as a charwoman.

Miners’ widows were usually allowed to remain in a colliery house if they took pit workers as lodgers. However, a woman would need more than one lodger in order to cover the rent and the housekeeping costs, so becoming a landlady was only practical if there was a room which could be shared by several lodgers.

In many cases, a miner’s death led to rapidly realigned families. Whatever feelings a woman retained for her deceased spouse, some widows quickly formed a new relationship with another partner. The 1851 census and local baptism records for the 1850s show that a few widows of the disaster at Darley Main in 1849 soon began to cohabit with their sole lodger.

Other widows quickly chose marriages of practicality with a man who would provide for them and possibly their children. High maternal mortality in childbirth produced a steady supply of widowers with dependent children who needed a housekeeper. Some bachelors found a woman with sons a desirable wife because the earnings of the youngsters, combined with his own, could secure the man a reasonable lifestyle in his own home rather than in lodgings.

The Edmunds Main disaster united the community in anger as well as grief. Throughout 1863, feeling ran high against the owners of the colliery, who the widows, miners and the National Association of Miners held responsible for the deaths by encouraging unsafe working practices. Locally there was a passionate sense of injustice. In mid-Victorian times it was normal for an inquest to take place a day or two after a death and for a verdict to be quickly reached. Within a week, the coroner’s jury had concluded that the deaths of William Davey and George Pickering, two miners who died a few hours after being brought out of the pit, were caused by blasting with gunpowder, an unsafe working practice sanctioned by the under-steward, who had himself died underground.

What spread through the community by word of mouth was that relevant evidence had not been put before the jury. Although the local mines inspector concurred that the owners were in no way responsible for disaster, bereaved women and miners’ representatives refused to let the matter rest. The widows formed what would now be termed a support group. Mary Gawthorpe, Elizabeth Lister and Jane Wildsmith emerged as dominant forces. Mrs Lister appears a clever, confident and articulate woman with a clear grasp of the issues, as evidenced by her speech to a meeting, and public appeal for donations to progress a legal claim.

When the bodies of the dead miners were finally brought out of the mine in October 1863, a second inquest was held. This time the bereaved were represented by an experienced lawyer funded by Lord Rainham. Mr Sleigh produced evidence that, after the deceased under-steward banned the use of gunpowder because of the risk of an explosion, Joseph Mitchell, one of the pit owners, offered the team digging the tunnel a bonus of a sovereign a fortnight if they progressed at a rate beyond what could be achieved without gunpowder.

Mitchell declined to appear in the witness box. This inquest jury also concluded that death had been caused by unsafe working with gunpowder but attributed responsibility to the owners. It was a significant victory for the community. The bereaved now had a claim for compensation. With support from the mineworkers’ association, the widows took their cases to court. Before they were heard, and with no admission of liability, the owners agreed an out-of-court settlement of £1,550 to cover all claims.

This was the first time that compensation had been paid in England to the families of those killed by an underground explosion. Within a the month, the money had been distributed to the families with widows receiving £20 and children under 12 £8 each. The young boys who worked as trappers were worth £5 to their dependants.

Not every victim of Edmunds Main was recognised in the tally of deaths and injuries. Non-physical injuries, if noticed, were not recognised. This makes the death of a traumatised 13-year-old in June 1864 particularly interesting. John Christopher, one of two brothers working to support their widowed mother, was caught in the explosion. He got out of the pit with no physical injury, but was so frightened by the experience that he stopped eating or talking and gradually faded away. It seems likely that others also suffered with post-traumatic stress disorders.

After any pit disaster, there was a period of adjustment to a new normality. Posthumous children were born. After receiving their compensation some widows, including Mary Gawthorpe and Jane Wildsmith, remarried. At least one local miner packed his belongings and sailed for a new life in the USA. The community waited for the next time. It was not long. Just four years later, in December 1866, two explosions at the nearby Oaks Colliery extinguished a further 361 lives. {