The Sneyd Colliery Disaster

The memorial to the men lost in the disaster.

At 7.50 am, on 1 January 1942,  a devastating explosion took place 800 yards below ground at No 4 pit of Sneyd Colliery, Smallthorne. In normal times the pit would not have been working on New Years Day, the miners considering it unlucky, but because of the demand for coal during the war, work had gone on as normal and a full shift was on duty at the mine when the explosion occurred. The blast was contained to one coalface in the 7-foot Banbury Seam of No. 4 pit. All other workings were unaffected by the explosion, but the thump was felt throughout the mine, some men in the pit noted that the flow of air changed direction, while on the surface people felt a bump and all the lights flickered. Everyone knew something major had happened and when a frantic telephone call from the pit bottom informed them that an explosion had occurred, for the safety of all, work was stopped and the miners were quickly evacuated from the unaffected parts of No. 4 pit as well as from the neighbouring No. 2 pit.

The Sneyd Mines Rescue Team sprang into action immediately after the blast and venturing down they rescued a handful of men from the pit bottom, but also found the first bodies. Teams were soon arriving from other local collieries including Chatterley Whitfield, Black Bull, Hanley Deep and Shelton; in total nine local mines rescue teams became involved in what soon turned from a rescue to a recovery effort. Beyond the mine, news of the explosion soon spread by word of mouth through the local community. Families and friends horrified by the reports they were hearing dashed up to the colliery to wait at the Hot Lane gate for news of their loved ones, but for many it would be the worst news. The bodies of 16 men were brought out that first day, but the rescue operations had to be postponed due to the presence of afterdamp and it was announced at that point that there was now no hope of finding anyone else alive. Up top, everyone came in to help, first aid staff were on duty at the ambulance room, the mine managers directed the rescue operation and the Inspectorate of Mines soon had staff on site to help out and assess the damage. Other staff did their bit too, the pit’s chief telephonist Mabel Caine was reported to have stayed at her post almost continuously for five days and nights, fielding thousands of phone calls and refusing all attempts to get her to take a long break.

On 5 January even before all the bodies had been recovered, nearly 80% of the workforce got back to work, but it was not until 10 January that the last bodies were recovered. The list of the dead was sobering, as of the 61 men and boys working on the face that morning, 57 had lost their lives in the blast, most being killed in the initial explosion, while two later died in hospital. The two youngest, David George Briggs from Stanfields and Albert James from Burslem were both aged 15, while the oldest Hamlett Gibson, from Cobridge was 65. There were many sad stories to be told of those who were lost. A Mrs Bennett of Moorland Road, Burslem, suffered a double bereavement, losing her 41 year old husband James and 17 year old son Robert, both of whom had been working on haulage; the family had only recently moved down from Scotland. Mr and Mrs W. F. Harrison of Cobridge lost two teenage sons, Frank aged 18 and Alexander Charles aged 17. Joseph Sherratt aged 38 from Porthill was one of two firemen who were missing. Married with two children and a third on the way, only hours before he had been enjoying a party with his children and some of their friends and had laid on a puppet show of ‘Sinbad the Sailor’ to amuse them. He had not been superstitious about working on New Year, but his wife had and handed him a silver three penny piece for luck. Another haulage worker from Burslem, William Docksey aged 27, had been at the pit for 10 years, He had a brother working elsewhere in the mine who immediately joined the rescue team in an effort to find William. And David Briggs one of the youngsters mentioned earlier, had enjoyed a brief moment of local fame only a short while before, when he was photographed with the Minister of Food, Lord Woolton, eating one of the first sandwiches to be served by the new central depot for providing sandwiches for the miners of North Staffordshire.

 

 Four survivors had been pulled out of the pit, who by sheer luck or their more sheltered position in the mine, had escaped serious injury or death. One was Ernest Stone of Burslem in charge of the telephone at the pit bottom, whose call had alerted those up top to what had happened. He had been seated in a recessed area off the main road when the explosion occurred and thus avoided the worst of the blast. When the first rescuers arrived, though very dazed, he stayed at his post for three hours refusing to go up until he was finally overcome with dizziness. Another equally lucky was George Read of Burslem, the chief hooker in charge of loading and unloading tubs into the cages at the pit bottom. Like Mr Stone he was in an area off the main roadway and likewise escaped the worst of the blast. After a day at home getting over the shock of what had happened, he returned to the pit to help in the recovery effort. Thomas Gibbons from Burslem aged 64, was not so lucky. He was working near to the pit bottom operating a compressed air machine that drew tubs from the Banbury seam when the explosion occurred. Hit by a tremendous blast of hot air, he was hurled against a wall and fainted. Coming to a short while later in complete darkness and covered in dust only his intimate knowledge of the mine saved him. Working out where he was, Thomas crawled along the passage to where it branched off from the Bambury seam to the return of the Holly Lane branch. After crawling along for another 200 yards he was discovered by some Holly Lane miners who gave him some water and got him transported to the surface, from where he went to hospital. The fourth ‘survivor’ had not actually been in that part of the pit, but had initially been listed with the missing. Mr J. Bailey from Hanley, had only started at the pit the day before and swapped his heavy hand lamp for a helmet lamp with another man that morning. This was later discovered by the rescue teams who presumed Mr Bailey was a victim, though he had already been evacuated from the mine with the other 600 men. The mix-up was only discovered when he later wandered into the Burslem Miner’s Hall to correct the mistake after finding that he had been listed as a victim.

In the immediate aftermath of the disaster a fund was set up to which many members of the public, collieries and companies gave money, while the proceeds of many local performances were also donated and money came in from abroad, even from as far away as soldiers serving in Iceland; over £17.000 was eventually collected and shared out amongst those who had lost a relative, the shares being determined by how many dependents the victims left behind. Families had been devastated by the disaster, many losing their main or only breadwinner. The disaster left 32 widows and 35 fatherless children, while of the 24 unmarried men 13 left grieving mothers and fathers and 8 left mothers who were already widowed. 

The question everyone wanted answered, was what had caused this appalling accident? The subsequent inquiry headed by Sir Henry Walker, concluded that the most likely cause was that tubs used to move the coal out of the mine had derailed and damaged an electric cable. Sparks from the cable had then ignited coal dust in the air and caused an explosion. Some writers have since disagreed with this explanation, and have advanced other perfectly valid theories, though after all this time any kind of definitive explanation of what happened is not possible as the mine is no more and all the witnesses are long dead.

Sneyd Colliery continued working through the war, but from the late 1950s onwards it was slowly swallowed up by a larger neighbour. Major reconstruction work at Wolstanton Colliery saw an underground connection made to Sneyd and from that point on coal gradually started being brought to the surface at Wolstanton. Coal ceased being raised at Sneyd in July 1962 and though for a time the shafts there were still used for sending miners down, eventually all the men were transferred to Wolstanton Colliery. The No. 4 shaft, however, remained open as a spare entry for the northern area of the expanded colliery until the final closure of Wolstanton in 1985. 

The Sneyd Colliery explosion has the dubious honour of being the last major pit disaster in the Potteries and it cast a long shadow in the city’s collective memory. A memorial comprising a pit wheel set in bricks was unveiled in Burslem town centre in 2007. It lists all 57 names of the dead on a plaque and carries another praising the mines rescue teams that worked so hard to bring out the bodies.

Reference: Evening Sentinel, 1 January 1942, p. 1; 2 January, p.1; 5 January, p.1; 10 January, p.1.