FELL 775 FEET

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 98, 24 February 1947, Page 7

FELL 775 FEET

PITBQY’S EXPERIENCE «p “LIKE FALLING OUT OF BED” Falling 775 feet down the shaft of a mine pit is something like “falling out of bed in your sleep,” said 15-year-old Charles Wilfred Carter, of South Yorkshire. Charles, a pitboy, was found injured, but otherwise very much alive on top of an elevator cage at the bottom of a 1,554 foot shaft in the Barnborough main colliery near here.

It was like a dream,” Charles said in an interview with a reporter for the London Daily Herald. "The square of light at the top of the shaft grew smaller and smaller.”

The marvel of Charles’ escape lay in the fact that he caught up with the descending elevator cage about halfway down the shaft after falling clear for about 775 feet, thus accomplishing something like a parachutist s delayed action drop.

“Halfway down, the cage would be travelling about 60 miles an hour,” a colliery official told the reporter. “The speed of the boy’s fall at that point would be roughly the same.”

Chailes then had a second escape. The elevator was just about to start up again, carrying him toward the elevator drum and machinery at the pit head, when a miner heard him moaning.

The boy agreed with the official’s estimate tnat he was halfway down the shaft when he caught up with the cage. He said he landed with one leg under him and grabbed the guide chains, remaining conscious all. the way down.