Edmund Edwards

“ One of the best and sharpest men from our works is amongst those selected, and I often examine him on his return from work in the evening, as to the progress made. His story is generally horrible enough: the headless and unrecognisable trunks which he has come across, the limbs shattered and decayed, and the trunkless heads kicked against like blocks of coal, and taken up to be buried, all confused together, in the neighbouring village churchyard, and all his other such anecdotes of what he and his fellows have to do, make no pleasant recital ”

“ The shock has been too great for ordinary grief, and they are only now preparing to settle down into an intelligible sorrow which may weep and be consolable: at present they scarcely understand why they mourn, or why this great fair is being held round them. Poor things! they will know when they wake from their dream, and find their bread-earners dead. ”

“ The pit is on fire! It is uncertain whether the men who were in the distant parts of the workings were killed in the great blast of the gas; but it is certain that that blast has destroyed the ventilation, blown down the brattices, or partitions, and set the coal on fire, and that all must die soon, for no mortal hand can save them now. Human effort has done what was possible ”

“ The hammering and the din of work ceases in our yard, as little knots of workmen collect to compare information; and when the rumour has gathered substance, and passed from mouth to mouth amongst them, jackets are donned, hundreds of people are soon on their way across the fields to the Bungle Colliery, near Burnslay. And I find I may anticipate six o’clock, and go home, for there is not one man left in the place to work or to be looked after. ”

“ I do not ask this for the sake of the men themselves, for they are so accustomed to them—at least in this district—that they care little for them; but for the sake of society at large, and of the State, which is supposed to take some care of even the most insignificant of its subjects. ”

“ In most of these the blinds are drawn down, and the doors shut; for in almost all of them is a widowed wife, a childless mother, or a fatherless child; and fortunate is that family which has not lost more than one of its most valuable members: for these are the dwellings of the miners; and those drawn blinds conceal the anguish of wives, mothers, and children, whose dearest relations have within the last twenty-four hours been blown ruthlessly to destruction. ”

“ Inspectors ought to visit collieries a little before the danger becomes so great, and not, as usually happens, just after some awful explosion. No blame to them though, if, as is said, their work is so heavy that they cannot possibly visit each colliery, in their respective districts, more than once in several months, or even years. ”

“ And so we stand over one hundred and eighty-six human beings dead, or now perishing beneath us, and discuss the best means of killing those amongst them—if any—who are not dead outright,—for we must extinguish the flame ”

“ The widows of the slain are subscribed for by a sympathising public, and consequently very soon (with their dowries) find new husbands, and all goes on well again until some new catastrophe horrifies people’s minds for a few days, or till something else more exciting takes its place there. ”

“ Where this rumour originates no one knows; how it spreads, or how much truth it may contain, is alike uncertain; only one thing seems pretty clear, which is, that something has happened even worse than the daily accidents of colliery life ”

“ Some weeks elapse before it is sufficiently free from water to enable the workmen—picked men selected from the neighbouring collieries—to descend in search of the bodies of the lost, and for the purpose of clearing out the mine for reworking. What they see and do when they at length begin their work, it is not pleasant to describe. ”