Thomas Moore's death in mining accident 1878 (General)

by tuffers64, Cinderford, Tuesday, February 27, 2018, 16:42 (2535 days ago) @ Jean Herbert

I have done a lot of research on mining accidents in the F o D, and Philip Smith was found guilty of manslaughter and was ordered to appear in the court when called - he was never called and so just had the back of his legs slapped but did not get fined or jailed. A very luck chap methinks. It was Smith's job to put the winding gearing in and out of gear, but he failed to do this correctly and the gearing fell apart during the winding of the miners.
Seven other miners were badly injured as well as the two that were killed. About 2 or 3 tons of steel rope fell onto the skip at the bottom of the shaft. The manager, Henry Phillips, was criticized at the inquest, as there was no way of braking the winding drum once it got out of gear. The drum just kept unwinding until completely down and then it snapped off from the drum.

The cage was originally working up and down from level No 4. It was then decided to wind up and down from Level No 3. This meant that the rope on one side of the winding drum had to be shorted to allow the up-skip to reach the surface and the down-skip to land on Level No 3, other wise the skip would reach the surface and forcing the down-skip to go to Level No 4 to achieve this - all very complicated!