Charlie Mason - Winifred Foley - Photos (General)

by tuffers64, Cinderford, Thursday, April 27, 2017, 10:08 (2841 days ago) @ admin

Jim Hales verbal account to Dave Tuffley 13th January 1996:
The ground used to ‘puff-up’ in the roadways underground at Northern United, at about 1 inch in height per day, so it wasn’t long before the 9 to 10 feet high roadways were soon only high enough for the coal carts to pass under. Jim knew times when carts were left for a day or so it was impossible to push them out from the faces and back into the roadways.
Charles (Charlie) Mason and several others were trying to remove steel rings, set to support the roads. They dug down to expose all the steel work at the bottom. Then the sections of the rings were chained together before the bolts attaching the connecting plates were removed. This was done to prevent the heavy weight of the roof causing the ring sections to fly apart and striking the miners when the bolts were removed. The sections, if they did not fly apart them selves, were pulled apart with a ‘Sylvester’ chain puller. One end was attached to the ring section and the other end was attached to a steel or timber pole that was set into the ground and the other end was slanted towards the direction of pull and pushed up into the roof. The Sylvester was then used to pull the top end of the pole up into the roof and make it tight and solid and a thus a strong anchor to pull against.
Charles Mason and his workmates did not erect such a solid anchor and anchored the Sylvester against a roadway timber setting. In other words the two upright posts with a bracing post across the top. When the Sylvester was ratcheted to tighten up the slack in the hauling chain to pull out the ring, it pulled the timber setting anchor out instead and caused a roof fall of stone and earth to fall upon Charles Mason’s head and killed him.
Jim Hale said that he was waiting for empty coal carts to arrive and went to find out where they had gotten to. He went along the road to the haulage engine where other miners were stood around in a group. Jim asked ‘What’s up with the carts?’, and was told that Charles Mason was dead.
It was the practice that miners always left their work at a pit for the day when a man was killed, as a mark of respect. As the war had just finished and coal was at a premium, the miners worked on that day.
When Jim and others went to go to their workplace the next day they found the way on down the roadway blocked by cross pieces of timber, chalked with ‘No entry’. As no one was about they decided to carry on around rather than go back around a longer route. They soon came upon the scene of the fatality and Jim said it was obvious what had caused the accident as nothing had been removed or altered since the accident.