'Try before you buy' with these extracts from various chapters of 'Tales of Old Dudley'.
If they're to your liking, you can buy the book from 'Saturday Books' on Tower Street in Dudley, or order on-line from the author's page at: lulu.com
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Copyright © Paul Robinson 2017
From Chapter 2 - Industrial Accidents:
An
illustration of how frequently collapses occurred is provided by
reviewing the newspapers for just one week in 1846. There were two
serious injuries - a man name Southall suffered head injuries at a
Brockmoor pit and a boy working in a pit near the Dock had his thigh
broken - and over a dozen men were entombed at Hawkes' Field, Cinder
Hill when the 'gate road' collapsed. In this latter case, a huge
number of helpers appeared at the pit and all the men were rescued
alive.
Twelve
year old Moses Round was killed when coal fell on him at the Wallows
Pit in 1852. The inquest held at the Kings Head, Holly Hall, returned
a verdict of accidental death. Young Moses, his father and 13 year
old brother were all miners of Low Town. In the same week, an inquest
at the Washington Inn, Netherton, returned an identical verdict on
nineteen-year-old John Mantle, who died when a piece of coal struck
him as he was loading a skip at the Bearmoor Colliery.i
In
1858, Joseph Walker was killed by a fall of around 5 tons of coal at
the Cobb's Pit, Windmill End. He was loading the skip when the
accident happened and when workmates finally extricated him from the
mound, they found that while he had suffered serious head injuries,
the rest of his body was completely unharmed
John
Peters was crushed to death by a fall of coal at Brettell Lane New
Colliery in 1862 and in 1865, six men were killed at number 10 pit at
Saltwells, when no less than sixty tons of coal fell on them. Their
bodies were so utterly compressed that the victims could only be
identified by their clothes
In
1866, George Roberts and James Doyle were crushed when 20 tons fell
upon them as they were loading a skip at the California Pits. Doyle,
who was leaning over the skip, was struck across the neck by a
falling iron support and decapitated.v
Two years later, Joseph Bull and Thomas Wright were killed when five
tons of coal fell on them at the Prince of Wales Colliery. Evidence
presented at the inquest led to a verdict of accidental death.
John
McLean and his son were working together at a Dudley pit one morning
in 1869. Mr McLean had examined a very large stone where they were
working and was of the opinion that it was rather loose. To minimise
the danger, he placed a prop beneath the boulder and the pair carried
on with their work. However, while they were sitting together eating
a little later, the prop suddenly gave way and the giant stone fell,
crushing Mr McLean but just missing his son. An inquest at the Dudley
Arms returned a verdict of accidental death.
Falling
coal was far from the only physical danger in collieries; falling,
drowning, dangerous machinery and other risks to life and limb were
ever present. A nine-year-old named Astley suffered a horrific injury
after stepping over a chain at Dixon's Green colliery. Somehow his
trouser leg became entangled and he was drawn onto the pulley where
his leg was crushed. Being 1844, the Guest Hospital did not exist so
there was no alternative but to carry the poor lad home on a
stretcher, with the affected limb held on by nothing more than a
single sinew. A surgeon was called and immediately amputated the leg
after which the boy was said to be recovering well!
In
1851, a boy accidentally killed himself and his uncle at a Dudley
pit. He was playing with an empty skip near the lip of a shaft when
it tumbled into the hole and he fell in after it. The skip struck and
killed his uncle who was ascending at that very moment and the boy
was dashed to pieces at the bottom of the hole. Another lad,
ten-year-old George Short, died after taking a packed lunch to his
father and sister who both worked at the New Pool Colliery in 1852.
While his sister was eating, George was playing on a rope near the
pit head when suddenly the capstan began to rotate very quickly, and
the poor boy was pitched into the shaft. Needless to say, he did not
survive the 80 yard fall. Eleven-year-old Thomas Pearsall was playing
on the bank of the British Colliery in 1855 when he met his end. The
unfortunate boy got tangled in the mechanism at the pit head and when
the engine started he was drawn up and crushed between the cables and
the drum onto which they were wound.
In
1857, a young man named Frederick Webley was crushed between coal
wagons on the incline at Holly Hall and in 1881, two boys died when
they were caught between loaded coal wagons that had also run down an
incline.ix
In 1895, eighteen-year-old David Lea met his end when sinking a pit
at Pear Tree Lane, although exactly what caused his death was never
discovered. It was not unusual for the bottom of vertical shafts to
be filled with water to a depth of several yards, necessitating the
use of pumps and sometimes a large water barrel either manually or
mechanically drawn to the surface. Lea and others were working in the
80 yard deep pit just before midnight when they decided to send up
the water barrel, but it had gone no more than eight yards when
something fell from the top of the shaft, bounced off the barrel and
struck Lea on the head causing a mortal wound. The Coroner's inquest,
held at the Town Hall, heard that the pit had been inspected on the
morning of the accident and no loose brickwork or stays had been
found. Witness John Dabbs told the inquest that whatever had hit the
barrel sounded metallic, but as it had fallen into the water below
they had not been able to recover it. The wound to Lea's head was a
couple of inches long and the skull had been penetrated but not
fractured – according to Inspector Hinde, the shape of the wound
matched the shape of the iron hoop around the bottom of the water
barrel. Whether there had been some accident and the men had decided
to cover it up was never determined; the jury simply returned a
verdict of 'death from a blow to the head'.
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From Chapter 5 - Suicide:
Of
all the ways of committing suicide, cutting the throat has to be the
most gruesome and extreme method and perhaps this says something
about the state of mind of the individual concerned. While someone
with intense emotional or financial worries might choose hanging or
poison, no-one “in their right mind” would take a knife or razor
to their own neck. However, in Dudley, this method of ending it all
seems to have been just as common as hanging, shooting or poisoning.
Hannah
Siviter of Eve Hill, the wife of a nailer, clearly suffered some form
of mental illness, as she made several attempts to destroy herself.
On the first occasion she jumped down a deep well but was
subsequently rescued. The second attempt was made at home, when she
discretely picked up a razor, went upstairs and cut her own throat.
Family members were startled when they heard the thump of a body
falling to the floor and when her daughter rushed upstairs, she found
the woman lying in a pool of blood. Medical help was summoned and
when a surgeon arrived, he was able to sew up the wound and staunch
the flow of blood. However, during the night the poor woman became
further deranged and tore open the wound which had to be stitched for
a second time, although she reportedly went on to recover from this
episode. Mr Siviter clearly had a lot on his plate as in addition to
his wife's suicidal tendencies, he had two wooden legs.
Fifty-six-year-old
Joshua Wilkinson of Queen's Cross had been quite depressed before he
committed suicide in May 1850 and his condition seems to have been
brought on by financial worries. He had recently had some very
expensive machinery installed at his vice and anvil works, but the
new equipment failed to work as expected and hindered, rather than
helped, production. Mr Wilkinson consulted several local doctors
about his depression, but the only advice he had been given was to
bathe his head in cold water! As he was doing this on one occasion in
his son's bedroom, he grabbed a razor and savagely cut his own
throat. While his wife rendered what help she could, their son dashed
off to summon Dr Houghton, but by the time help arrived Mr Wilkinson
was dead.
It
seems almost inconceivable that a person could cut their own throat
without attracting the attention of someone just a few feet away, but
that is exactly what happened in a bedroom at King Street in 1851.
Robert Williams told an inquest that he had gone to bed just after
8:30 in the evening, his room-mate 49-year-old William Beard having
preceded him by a few minutes. After about 10 minutes, Williams heard
Beard say something incomprehensible and asked him what was the
matter, but received no reply. He asked the same question several
more times but still no answer came until he finally got out of bed
and called out to other lodgers and the landlady. Arriving with a
candle, they were greeted with a most shocking sight: Beard was lying
half out of bed with his throat cut and a large pool of blood
glistening upon the floor. He had inflicted the wound with the
smallest blade from a penknife which lay nearby. Williams told the
inquest that he had seen Beard every day for almost a month and had
noticed nothing particularly odd about his behaviour, but a number
of other witnesses said that Beard had been somewhat depressed of
late and had taken to drink. “Temporary Insanity” was the verdict
of the inquest jury.
------
From Chapter 6 - Accidents on the Move:
In
the same month as the foregoing accident, Dudley Station was the
scene of good and bad news for Emma Cookson. Miss Cookson had been a
live-in domestic servant for a Wednesbury grocer but in a heavily
pregnant condition, she left her employer and endeavoured to travel
to her parent's home at Brettell Lane. She didn't complete the
journey as intended however, as she gave birth in the waiting room.
As she refused to give her name or parish of residence, no doubt
because of the shame heaped upon single mothers in that era, she was
taken to the workhouse to be cared for.
An
engine fireman was killed and several people injured on the day
before Christmas Eve 1859 at Dudley. A set of self-acting weighted
points had become frozen solid and as a result, a passenger train was
turned from the main line into a siding, with dire consequences for
crew and passengers.iiEarlier
in that year a Wolverhampton-bound passenger service had collided
with a goods train shortly after leaving the OWWR station. The lines
in the vicinity of Dudley station had many intersections and the
goods engine was shunting wagons across one of these when it was
struck by the passenger train. The collision was so heavy that one of
the buffers was completely torn off the passenger engine and a number
of wagons on the other train were badly damaged. In this accident,
there was just one injury; Maria Stevenson suffered a cut across her
scalp but after treatment by a local surgeon was able to go home.iiiA
similar accident occurred in August 1865 but in this instance a goods
engine ran into the back of a passenger train. The 10.15pm to
Birmingham had just received a clear signal and was getting under way
when it was struck in the rear and propelled some yards forward. The
driver of the goods engine, Charles Ryley, had temporarily left it
under the control of his fireman, William Branson. Ryley had
instructed his colleague not to leave the siding but for some
inexplicable reason, Branson decided to ignore his orders. Around
half a dozen local men were slightly injured in the collision and two
had more serious injuries, but none were life threatening. Many
people were also treated for shock at the station and afterwards at
the Castle Hotel.
Since
their inception, railways have been a source of fascination for young
boys, whether simply watching the coming and going of engines or
playing on the tracks or line-side structures. Until the mid-20th
century, much of the railway was not even fenced off and in
consequence, children often ended up playing on or near this
potentially dangerous place. Two little boys were brought up before
the magistrate in August 1877 after causing the runaway of thirteen
wagons which ran into a siding and crashed through some gates.
Fancying a ride on their own train, the pair had unscrewed the brakes
on three trucks, but as the brakes on the rest were insufficient to
hold the rake in place, the train set off along the main line without
its 'passengers', before veering off into the siding. The
consequences of stray wagons on the main line (or any line for that
matter) could be extremely serious and the pair were jailed for two
weeks. The peril of playing or riding on wagons was also illustrated
by the case of 8-year-old William Worton, who died in 1894. The boy
and his friends had been playing on a stationary train in a private
siding at Commonside, but when the train started, Worton, who had
been sitting on a buffer between two wagons, fell off and his body
was almost cut in two by a wheel of the following truck.
Children
were not the only people putting themselves at risk on the railway.
Many railway workers used the lines to get to and from their
workplace at stations, locomotive sheds and signal boxes and this
practice continued up until the 1960s. John Hatton of Dudley Port was
employed by the Midland Railway, at the Goods Station beside the
Tipton Road, and he habitually walked along the trackbed to get to
work. On a January morning in 1863 he was walking in the 'six foot'*
with his head down to protect himself from a strong headwind when he
was struck on the forehead by the buffer of an approaching engine,
and although the locomotive was travelling slowly, he suffered a
fractured skull. It was the third injury Mr Hatton had sustained
while working on the railway, his foot having been run over just a
few weeks beforehand!
The
lines around goods depots, where engines and wagons were constantly
being moved around, were notorious accident black-spots. For 'mixed
goods' trains, wagons needed to be arranged into the correct order to
allow a train to drop off the right wagons at the various stops on
its route, and this tedious shuffling was much easier to do with
horses, especially if space was limited. Despite the invention of
mechanical devices to do the job, horses continued to be used in this
role well into the 20th century. Fourteen-year-old James
Talbot was employed by the LNWR as a 'hooker on' at Dudley Goods
Station in 1865. A few days before Christmas he had unhooked his
horse from some trucks which continued to roll forward as planned but
he suddenly stumbled and fell in front of the wagons. His right leg
below the knee was completely crushed and had to be amputated at the
scene by Mr Horton, the surgeon called to the accident.
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