DEATH IN A PIT. SIXTY-THREE MEN LOST IN A MINE.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 411, 16 October 1889, Page 5

DEATH IN A PIT. SIXTY-THREE MEN LOST IN A MINE.

Edinburgh, September 6. Sixty-three men and boy& have perished through a lire in the Mauricewood pit, near Venicink, Midlothian. Twenty-one bodies have been recovered. This lire was one of the most disastrous mining calamities that have ever befallen Scotland. On Thiu-sday morning sixty-five mineis, including a contingent of boys, went down into the pit to prosecute their usual calling, and all but two have perished. The pit belongs to the Shotts Iron Company, but rather more attention was directed to the production of coal, though the ironstone was still worked. The mouth of the pit is situated on the top of a hill, a short distance from the turnpike road. The shaft descends a distance of eighty fabhoma, running in a southerly direction. From the bottom of this shaft is a level mine extending fifty fathoms, at the e:.trome end oi which the shaft of the Greenlaw pit communicates, branching off near the junction. The Greeniaw pit i 3 an incline which descends on a scale of about a hundred feet for a distance of 160 fathoms. The coal sides of the incline were lined with wood, but the roof, which vras of ironstone, was bare. It is this wood lining which appears to have taken tire, and that, too, at a point lower than the connection with the Greenlaw pit, the con&equence being that the men who were engaged at the lower levels were literally hemmed in and could find no way of escape Then ensued a scene which, happily, is not often witnessed, and which, perhaps, is best described in the words of one of the survivors, David Robb, who was at the deepest part of the workings. He says : "I immediately shouted to the boys that tUe pit was on fire. Mitchell, a boy named Willie Urquhart, and a boy named Tolmie, volunteered to go into the workings to warn the men. Not far from the bottom of the incline two men —Hunter and Wrierht — were driving a new road, and Tolmie went specially to warn them. Just at that moment 1 got the bell from the top to fend up the men's carriage. As it was leaving empty, I formed a resolution to go with it, and jumped in. "I had no idea of the serious nature of the fire. I thought if I could get to the eighty-fathom engine-house I might bo ablo to turn water down the pit and extinguish the flames, but before I got to the eighty-fathom station the smoke became so dense that I was almost suffocated. I could see nothing and I heard no one. I thought I should never come through it, and at the eighty-fathom station where the carriage halted, as usurl, all I could do was to yell ' for God's sake reel away.' That meant to go on. Fortunately they heard me, or I should nob have been alive to tell the atory." From the time of the alarm until now ! relays of men have worked at the task of ' rescue, but without any result. All through last night there was kept up a straggle with the overmastering fumes in putting up brattice work to obtain ventilation. While working on the incline, the men came upon the bodies of John Walker and Hugh McPherson. Both bodies weie found in the vicinity of the eighty - fathoms engine. It was part of the duties of these men to attend to it, and they seem to have died at their post. Dr. Badger, who examined the bodies on their arrival at the surface, states that the corpses were frightfully scorched, not with actual fire, but with the hot air in the pit, the temperature of which is stated to have been high enough to melt lead. The flesh adhered to their clothes, and the ghastly spectacle was rendered the more hideous by the fact that on endeavouring to remove their boots the feet nearly parted from the legs. Shortly after 3 o'clock it was found that the east side of the pit had begun to fall in, and in order to retain the sides and roof a large number of props were utilisod. A quantity of stuff, however, fell, considerably hindering the operations of the rescuers. About 4 o'clock information reached the pithead that although six bodies were vieible on the west side they could not be approached. On the east side there is not a man alive. In consequence ot the fire on the east side of the workings and the after-damp on the west side the explorers cannot reach the bodies, although they can see a number, and from their position it would appear as if they had mado a rush almost in a body to ctet out. of the foul air which overwhelmed them.