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Description: | A roughly-hewn boulder of white stone with a carved frieze of the heads of miners, their wives and children at its base. The stone surmounts a polished square pedestal and is surrounded by steel railings, the spikes of which bear a small moulded figurative head. There are 95 heads in all. Additional Information: The memorial commemorates 95 men and boys killed in an explosion at Haswell Colliery on 28th September 1844. A blast in the Little Pit killed 19 boys and 76 men; 4 miners survived. Most households in the nearby village lost a friend or relative in the explosion and many women were left widowed and without income.(1) The inquest's jury concluded that the explosion, the region's most devastating in twenty years, was an accident and found no-one culpable. However the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, was so alarmed by the disaster that he sent two scientists, one of them the eminent Michael Faraday, to Haswell to investigate further. They were unable to establish the cause of the blast(2) but a committee to investigate the subject of accidents in coal mines was formed as a result of the disaster.(3) | Subjects: | Sculpture | Source: | Vads | Creator: | Sculptor: Disley, Michael | Identifier: | http://www.vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=7519... | Go to resource |
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