Remembering Scotland’s greatest coal mining tragedy at Blantyre Colliery

The official report by the Mines Inspectors stated that the death toll from the explosion on October 22, 1877 was 207, but that did not include several more who died of their injuries later. Currently the best expert on the disaster is local man Paul Veverka, author and photographer, whose monumental work for the Blantyre Project counts and names 215 dead. Some 75 of the dead were aged under 20, with three of them being just 12, including the youngest victim James Clyde, who had only been working down the pit for three months.

The scale of the disaster was such that many newspapers sent reporters to Blantyre to cover the events, and it is from their archives that I have drawn some extracts.

The basic facts are these: the 1870s were a boom time for coal mining in Scotland, and the rush to get coal out of the ground made for poor working conditions for men and boys. A constant danger was the risk of explosion from firedamp, a gas (usually methane) that would seep unsuspected through a mine, with the Blantyre Colliery owned by William Dixon & Co having a reputation as a “fiery mine”.

READ MORE: The mining lad who became an unmatched legend of Scottish football

It had opened just six years previously and had already yielded 800,000 tonnes of coal – as well as suffering numerous fatalities. By 1877, five pits in all had been dug in the area to various depths, with coal working up to 900ft underground.

Early in the morning of October 22, the pits were cleared for working – ie, no gas was detected. Some 233 men and boys made their way underground and were digging out coal when a massive explosion occurred that affected mainly pits No 2 and No 3. Smoke poured from the colliery and people ran from miles around to find news of their loved one underground. In almost every case, the news was very bad.

Reading newspaper accounts of the disaster it is clear that numerous attempts were made by many brave men to reach the miners deep underground, but in most cases they could only find dead bodies or badly burned men and boys who succumbed to their injuries later.

The situation in the pits can only be described as hellish. The explosion sucked out the air and while most victims died from the blazing effects of the explosion, others suffocated from lack of oxygen. Rescuers fought valiantly but the fate of most of the miners was soon known.

The Daily Telegraph reported: “Few are able to realise the circumstances amid which the noble Scotchmen proved their bravery and devotion. A battlefield is ghastly enough, and its horrors might well appal those who look upon them. The soldier, however, had all the excitement of personal conflict, and sometimes a burning thirst for revenge, to sustain him; whereas, in the High Blantyre mine, the rescuers struggled against an invisible foe, whose distinctiveness was evidenced on every side in the most horrible forms.”

Often with disasters that cause large loss of life, the local newspapers get the story right and hit the correct tone in their reporting, but it still shocks to read what the venerable Hamilton Advertiser recorded: “The bodies conveyed to the morgue were washed and dressed as decently as the circumstances would permit and then handed over to the care of the families and friends. It is to be noted that the bodies recovered almost all had the marks of injuries by burning. Some were contorted in the most dreadful manner, with the faces as black as the coal they had been shovelling.

“Others were torn and bruised, with dark crimson streams of blood trickling through their mud covered and dust begrimed clothes. A few had shreds of their pit clothes torn away and were battered and bruised in a shocking manner. The small number who had apparently succumbed to the choke-damp, wore a peaceful expression as if in sleep and those, when found, were discovered lying on their faces in the levels, as if they had been making haste to the pit bottom, when overtaken by the deadly, suffocating gas.”

The removal of the bodies was slow and painful, and the first burials did not take place until nine days after the explosion. Mass graves were dug at High Blantyre and Dalbeath Cemetery, where the Catholic victims were buried.

The Herald reported from the parish kirk burial: “Many of the onlookers were in tears. Few of them will soon forget the sight – the cold grey twilight, the dark overcast sky, the long deep trench, the silent uncovered multitude.”

Many of the victims’ families had suffered the loss of their breadwinners. A national appeal to help the widows and their children raised tens of thousands of pounds – but the Dixon company evicted more than 30 families from their tied cottages just six months after the disaster.

The official inspection reported to Parliament and seems to have centred on the practice of shot-firing, in which miners used gunpowder to break the coal seam.

READ MORE: Back in the Day: How the 1689 Claim of Right restricted the monarch’s power

The inspectors stated: “Upon the whole the discipline of the mine was loose and the orders which the manager says he gave as to the firing of a shot in particular seem to have been neglected altogether… “Shot-firing was stated to have been prohibited, but there seems to be no doubt that gunpowder was used there … we consider that shot-firing there was most dangerous and ought not for one moment to have been permitted. We therefore suggest that the present mode of working with naked lights and leaving pillars comparatively unventilated be discontinued, and bearing in mind the great calamity, it will be better to use locked Davy lamps as an additional precaution, to prohibit shot-firing, to have the pillars better ventilated and to maintain the strictest discipline.”

Less than two years later, No 1 pit at the colliery sustained a large explosion with the loss of 28 lives.

Dixons erected a monument in High Blantyre Cemetery to mark both disasters which reads “William Dixon Ltd in memory of 240 of their workmen who were killed by explosions in Blantyre Colliery on 22nd October, 1877 and 2nd July 1879 and many of whom are buried here”.

In the following years, miners’ safety was taken more seriously but it’s a sad fact that from 1799 to 1982, there was not one single year that Scotland did not have a fatality connected with coal mining.