Durham Mining Museum - Newspaper Articles (original) (raw)

4th January 1872

Melancholy Occurrence at Wellington Pit

On Monday morning, Thomas Howson, Esq., deputy-coroner, and a jury, of whom Mr. Thomas Richardson was the foreman, opened an inquest at the Dusty Miller Inn, in this town, to investigate the cause of the death of James Ryan, aged 11 years. The deceased resided with his mother at 14, Mount Pleasant. Last Saturday, he went to the Wellington Pit with a workman's dinner, and stopped to play about the screens. In playing at hide-and-seek he got into one of the coal-boxes, sank into a quantity of small coal, and was suffocated before he could be got out. Police Constable Whillans, of the Cumberland constabulary, stated that he was present when the boy was brought from the pit top on Saturday afternoon. The accident happened about half-past two o'clock, in one of the small coal-boxes at the screens connected with the Wellington Pit, belonging to the Earl of Lonsdale. Small coal ran into the box from the screens. While the boy was playing at hide-and-seek he got into the box; a wagon load of small coal was taken out of it from beneath; this would cause the surface of the coal to sink in, and the boy was drawn in among the coal and suffocated. He had gone there to take a dinner to Robert Doyle, a man employed at the pit top. The Deputy Coroner intimated that before proceeding further there must be an adjournment, according to the provisions of the Coal Mines Inspection Act, so that information of the occurrence might be forwarded to Newcastle to enable Mr. Southern, Her Majesty's Inspector of Mines for the district, to attend of he should think it advisable. The inquest was accordingly adjourned.

Newspaper transcript kindly provided by
West Cumbria Mines Research.