IMPORTANT PROSECUTION.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 5 December 1901, Page 4

IMPORTANT PROSECUTION.

The custom of "laying the pit idle" in cases of fatal accident has long been a vexed question in Northumberland, and the occasion of endless disputations between masters and men. An important prosecution arising out of one of the Bedlington Pits being laid idle after the fatal accident in August was instituted against 12 miners at Bedlington Court recently. Tho summons was for neglecting or refusing to follow their employment undor the Employers' and Workmens' Act, and damage of 5s was claimed of each defendant. The prosecution stated that a miner was killed at half-past ten at night, and in consequence of defendants refusing to go to work the next day the pit was laid idle Although a custom justifying the men being loosed out when a fatality happened was admitted, there was no custom for laying the pit idle on the following day. The defence contended that it mattered nothing whether it was a minuto before or a minute after midnight when the body was brought out of the pit. It was not a question of a day, but of three shifts. The working shifc went out, and tho next two did not go in. The custom had prevailed throughout the whole country for 100 years. The summonses were dis= missed.