3-047-074 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Pelsall Hall Colliery, near Walsall, the scene of the flooding, 1872. Disaster which '...cost twenty-two lives, those of nineteen men and three boys...The pit is full of choke-damp, or carbonic acid gas, by which the unfortunate workpeople must have been suffocated in a very short time. The colliery...is worked by Messrs. Morgan and Starkey...an immense volume of water suddenly burst into the mine and poured with great force through the workings...Without a moment's loss of time the cage was let down with an exploring party, who found that the water was already ascending the shaft, and...nine men and boys were with extreme difficulty keeping themselves afloat. They clutched with great eagerness at the cage as it neared the water, and all of them were rescued...the cage was let down a second time. But the explorers found to their dismay that the water in the shaft had risen to such a height as to render the rescue of the men possible by no other means than the prodigiously difficult task of pumping the whole volume of water out of the mine...the whole of the pumping apparatus available was strained to the utmost...but after the pumps had been working a short time it was ascertained that the water still continued to rise'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.