#blantyre

On Monday October 22nd 1877 tragedy struck when a firedamp explosion at Blantyre Colliery killed 215 miners, the youngest was aged 12.

Numbers and the age of the youngest casualty vary a wee bit, this post is about all that lost their lives no corrections are necessary.

At 4:40am on that fateful day, four firemen inspected Number 2 pit and found it free of gas and safe to work. Miners began descending into the mine at 05:50 reassured by the firemen's’ report.

The local minister Rev. Wright explained that he could view the pits from his window and at 9am: “A sudden flash darted up from the most distant shaft, accompanied by debris and a report not very loud; then arose from the shaft nearest to us a dense volume of smoke, ‘the blackness of darkness,’ which spread itself, a terrible funeral pall, over the surrounding plain.”

There was thought to have been 233 people down the pits,but there could have been more. Although the explosions were unexpected, it was known that there had previously been fire damp (methane gas) present.

On the surface the blast was heard for miles around, with a dense volume of smoke filling the sky. Soon after lots of people began running from the rows of houses near the pits to gather at the pithead.

What they found on there arrival at the pithead was the scene of a subterranean nightmare. Hundreds of men and boys were already buried in what was to become their final resting place. Of those that were rescued many had suffered horrific burns.

It left at least  92 women widowed and 250 children fatherless. A further two disasters happened at Blantyre in the following years of 1878 and 1879.

An 18 foot tall granite monument marks the two explosion disasters