"At Hopetoun No. 35 (Oil Shale) Mine, in a steeply rising place 12ft. wide by 6ft. 6in., high, in which only safety lamps were allowed, but in which, being an oil shale mine, Bickford igniters were used to light the fuses of the shots, a fireman said he was lighting the second of two shots near the floor level when the igniter split, flame shot out and ignited gas. The fireman and a miner, who died a day or two later were burned, and two other workers not far away were thrown down and injured.

I have not been able to satisfy myself that the truth as to what actually happened in this accident came to light."

"At Kinneil Colliery two men were killed through ice falling down the shaft and depressing the cage cover when a cage load of men was about to be raised. There had been a period of nine days of very severe frost, and ice formed on the wet sides of the shaft. Three shaftsmen were engaged nightly in scaling off this ice, as far as it was possible to do so, and there could not have been a large quantity anywhere on the day of the accident, for the shaft sides were entirely clear next day.

If the cage cover had been of stronger material it might have resisted the blow of the falling ice. It had been considered strong enough before, but it was at once strengthened.

The lesson apart from the unusual occurrence of ice, is that all cage covers should be of extra strong construction . In passing let me say all cages should also be of such height that the head of the tallest man cannot touch the cover. There have been in past years occasional accidents reported from other collieries where something small has fallen on the cage top when men were riding and the shock transmitted to the head of a man when touching the inside of the cover has been sufficient to render him unconscious. In one such case a man received a fracture of his skull and died, although the mark on the outside of the cage cover was barely more than noticeable."

"One of the inrushes of water, that at Fleets Colliery, Haddington, was due to a stupid operation.

A cross measure drift was driven up from near the bottom of a basin in one seam to another seam 15 yards above. Water was known to be in the basin in the upper seam, but the manager and his under officials pushed the drift through and water came down to the lower seam in such quantity that 40 miners were unable to get outbye for four and a half hours, and would not have got out even then but for the fact that an old road was found in another seam by which they were able to get to the shaft after a large fall in this road had been cleared.

In the prosecution which followed, the Sheriff decided that the requirements of Section 68 of the Coal Mines Act, 1911, apply equally to a cross measure drift rising from one seam to another as to a road being driven in a seam itself."

"At Kenmuirhill Colliery (Newton pumping shaft), Lanark.—At a shaft devoted to pumping alone and where the only persons who used it were two shaftsmen, who also acted as pump attendants, the day shaftsman was ascending in the cage at the end of the day when the winding rope broke, and he was killed. The precise length of time the rope had been in use could not be ascertained, but it was known to be about three and a half years. A new rope had arrived at the shaft a few hours before the accident, and was to have been put on the following morning. As the rope was not used for coal winding it hung for certain periods daily where one part at the surface was close by a steam joint in a range of pipes, and where the joint had leaked for a long time. This part was also adjacent to the place where dusty boiler ashes were filled.

The rope broke at this point, and thorough examination revealed a type of corrosion there which did not exist elsewhere in the rope.

The condensing steam and the acid ash dust had played their part. "

"At Prestonlinks Colliery, Haddington, five men had taken their rood in a small area in a part of the mine worked by safety lamps, when one of them lit a match to smoke and ignited gas which burned all five men, of whom two died. Work had been resumed in the colliery after a holiday period and the roof of the airway had fallen. The officials were at fault in employing the men under such conditions, and it was only after the hopelessness of taking proceedings was confirmed by the Crown Office that the intention to prosecute was abandoned. The main witnesses against the management would have been firemen, who themselves had made false reports on the state of the district.

I find it difficult to understand the mentality of workmen in this colliery. Before the accident and since some of the have been to Court for having matched and cigarettes in their possession in the mine workings."

"At Mossbeath Colliery, Fife, a fireman was found lying dead beside an electrically driven auxiliary fan two hours after he had last been seen.

Medical evidence was to the effect that the death was due to electric shock, and the men who found the body say that they saw sparks issuing from the machinery casing.

Examination of the motor showed that some of the stator winding connections were so abraded as to expose bare metal, and it is probable that there was an intermittent fault which made the whole casing of the motor and fan live, but which afterwards cleared itself."

"The other accident in which a fireman and two miners lost their lives, and at least one other man had a narrow escape, happened at Cadzow Colliery, Lanark. Natural gases may or may not have been responsible for the men being overcome, but they were certainly responsible for their deaths.

At the top of a steep drift a place was being driven to connect with another road when it met a 12ft. up throw fault. At the top of this fault coal had been worked off about 3 feet in depth by 5ft. wide by 2ft. 9ln. High, the height of the seam.

There was ample ventilation conducted to the bottom of the 12ft. Fault by air tubes and brattice cloth, and there had been no trouble from the presence of gas.

The leading miner bored three shot holes in the coal which was not holed. He charged each of them with 12 ozs. Samsonite No. 3 and stemmed them. The fireman fired the first shot electrically, and after two minutes' interval went in to examine the place. As he did not reply to the leading miner's shout this man followed the fireman, and as he did not return a third man followed him, but collapsed within site of the fourth and only remaining man, who got out with difficulty.

All this happened within a very short time, and within 35ft of the face, but a period of one and a half hours then elapsed before the last body was recovered by an overman who wore a smoke helmet.

Next day the brattice cloth was found to have blocked the air tubes at the joint between the cloth and tubes, and as the gas cleared immediately this was rectified and as one of the men had collapsed there, it appeared as if in his fall he had caused the derangement of the ventilation. There was nothing else to account for it, as the brattice was no shoddy erection.

When the face was reached the shot (at one side) which the fireman had fired, was found to have done its work. The primer cartridge of the middle shot was found in position and intact although the back part of the shot hole had gone and the explosive had disappeared. The third shot was intact.

Notwithstanding search by sifting of all the broken material in the place no trace of 10 ozs. of explosive from the middle shot hole was ever discovered. It would appear that these 10 ozs. of the charge either exploded with the first shot (in which event they could hardly have left the primer as and where it was found) or that they burned when freed by the explosion of the shot.

A peculiar and hardly definable odour resembling newly split oak was noticed in the place on the day of the accident, and those who tried to enter the place found that their eyes smarted and their throats dried up.

Carbon Monoxide effects were not found when a. post mortem examination of the fireman's body was made, although in other almost similar cases the presence of this gas has been clearly demonstrated.

The men were probably overcome by explosive fumes and afterwards suffocated by firedamp.

The lessons of the accident appear to be not to drive a place low and narrow even in exploration, and to comply with the requirements of the Explosives in Coal Mines Order in every respect, for, if the coal had been holed, much less explosive would have been necessary per shot hole, and if one shot had been fired before a second was charged there would have been no free explosive from a second shot to burn."

"At Viewpark Colliery, Lanark two repairers were engaged in enlarging a main haulage road where the supports consisted of girders with props under each end, or, in some cases, one end needled into the hard side. It appears as if the third and fourth girders back from the point at which the men were enlarging the road, some side stone slipped and displaced the end props from under these girders.

The roof was very friable, and both men were buried under the fallen girders, packing timber and small material. Further falls took place during rescue work.

There were distance pieces between the girder webs, but if the end props have been firmly laced and had each had a clip in front to prevent it being driven out, the chance of accident would have been minimised.

Wooden propping under the ends of the girders is never thoroughly satisfactory in soft material, and steel arching is safer on such roads."

"At Bank Colliery, Ayr 15 men were in a small longwall district in a seam worked partly by naked lights when an explosion occurred, and 14 men were injured, of whom three died.

The fireman on each of the three shifts had reported the presence of gas in nearly every working place for 12 days prior to the explosion.

Electric cap lamps were being used on the shift in which the accident occurred.

There was electricity in the district, but it was not being used at the moment of the explosion, nor were shots being fired. Some, but not all of the men, had been told not to take pipes or matches into the district. The fireman was making his inspection when the explosion occurred. A standby fan was running on the surface, the main fan having broken down. Part of the airway at one end of the line of face had fallen. The general arrangements for coursing the ventilation underground were in my opinion unsatisfactory.

I make no comment meantime as the Fatal Accident Inquiry has not, at the date of writing, been held."

"At Auchinreoch Colliery, Stirling in the Coking Coal Seam which is 2ft. 6in. thick, is worked longwall, and has normally a strong sandstone roof, a miner was filling hand got coal into a conveyor when a long narrow slab of stone 12ft by 2ft 6in by 7ft. thick, tapering to a feather edge, fell on him and killed him. The fall took place from between the front row of props and the coal face.

The roof was supported by props and lids, but if straps been used and well needled into the coal the accident could hardly have occurred.

The lesson here is that straps supported at the face ends are necessary whether a roof is strong or weak."

"At Bedlay Colliery, Lanark, a repairer, unknown to the fireman, entered a short steeply rising place which was up over a fault, and was temporarily unventilated, due to the removal of a ventilating screen while some plant was being moved. He carried an electric safety lamp, but had no means for detecting firedamp and, when his head got amongst gas, he was suffocated.

This accident adds one more to the yearly list of those which seem fated to occur before men will learn the limitations of electric lamps as they are now made. In other respects I do not say a word against the use of these lamps; on the contrary, I wish many more of them were in the hands of the workmen."

"At Blantyreferme Colliery, Lanark, a conveyor pan shifter, with the assistance of another man, was manipulating a conveyor pan into its new position in a low and very wet working. The pan was on its edge, and it was allowedto ride over alive flexible cable connected to a working coal cutting machine. The edge cut through the cab tyre sheath and into a live conductor. Both men received a severe shock and, in the case of one, it proved fatal.

The operation on a coal cutter face like this should be such that when conveyor shifting is going on coal cutters should not be working in the same face and the trailing cables should be coiled up somewhere out of the way."

"One electrical fatality occurred at Gartshore 9/11 Colliery Dumbarton, where an apprentice electrician was employed in the cleaning of insulators in connection with a high tension overhead line. He was sitting on the girder frame work where a number of the overhead conductors are brought together for distribution purposes. The work was being supervised by an electrician, and it was expected that all the conductors had been made dead and would be kept dead by the switching off of the current at the Supply Station.

Owing to some misunderstanding as to instructions given by telephone from the man who was controlling the supply, the current was switched on and the apprentice unwittingly touched a live wire and was electrocuted."

"At Killochan Colliery, Ayr, a miner was working at the road-head in a longwall place which had been cut by machine on the previous shift. The road had been brushed, also on the previous shift, to within 2 feet of the front of the coal.

There was one prop with lid set under the middle of the brushing edge and one between each pack and the line of face.

The stripping of the rise side coal had been completed, and the miner, before beginning on the low side was preparing to put extra supports to the brushing between the centre prop and low side because of the presence of lypes when a fall took place from between the lypes and injured him so badly that he died four days later.

The roof at a longwall roadhead is, from the nature of things, a weak point, and because of the shot firing when brushing it is shaken and often broken as well.

This accident would not have happened had it been the practice to cause brushers to strap the brushing lip parallel to the faceline before leaving it. As the seam was 4ft. thick a stell prop to the brushing front was also advisable.

In any event the brushing had been taken too close to the face, a practice which has been found to be fatal to the miners on following shifts on many occasions."

"The third accident occurred at Motherwell Colliery, Lanark, when the attendant of a small electric haulage was struck on the abdomen by a flying piece of metal when the casing of the centrifugal coupling pulley burst.

The hauler was a very small Hugh Wood main and tail rope machine designed apparently for flat roads or roads of moderate gradient. In this case it was being used as a main or direct rope haulage to haul two empty tubs at a time up a short stone drift between one seam and another and to lower two loaded tubs by the drum brake, the motor being at rest and the centrifugal coupling automatically free.

When in gear pulling the tubs uphill the haulage speed was one mile per hour with a motor speed of 700 revolutions per minute, but when being lowered free of the motor the tubs ran at three to four miles per hour, which meant the centrifugal coupling casing ran at 2,000 to 3,000 revolutions per minute. After the accident happened one of the drum brake posts, which was of cast metal and was of light section, was found broken as was also the centrifugal coupling.

At the Fatal Accident Inquiry one witness said he saw the lad who was killed holding a sleeper or wooden strap against the coupling, as this was necessary to help to hold the load sometimes. Others said they had done the same when employed at the same work.

As the coupling was running very fast it may be that it burst owing to centrifugal action alone ; on the other hand the pressure applied by the sleeper or strap to the coupling casing may have pushed it sufficiently to engage the connection to the standing motor so causing the disastrous result.

In any event the hauler was being used for conditions for which it was not meant.

Apparently other machines of the same type had been used successfully for similar work without failure in Motherwell and in other Collieries, but this failure should be a warning to managers and engineers that a handy and convenient machine has its limits and men must not be asked to do the impossible with it."

"At Polmaise 1 and 2 Colliery, Stirling, a motorman was found electrocuted by the side of an oil immersed switch from which the oil tank had partly dropped away leaving live contacts exposed.

It is surmised that he had released one of the wing nuts which hold the oil tank in position, possibly when seeing it not quite screwed up, and that when the tank dropped he lost his balance and fell forward on the contacts."

"At Townhead Colliery, Lanark, a brusher was drilling a hole where a short cross measure drift had touched the bottom of a seam when he ignited gas with his naked light. He was not severely burned, but he died from complications following his injuries.

Until a month before this accident, when a miner had his arm scorched by lighting a small quantity of gas, there was no record of gas ever having been seen in this mine, which has been working for many years."