CENTENARY OF A DISASTER

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 56, 3 September 1938, Page 11

CENTENARY OF A DISASTER

A hundred years ago, on July 4, 1938, a pit disaster occurred in Silkstone, near Barnsley, by which twentysix children lost their lives. The victims were boys aged seven to sixteen and girls aged eight to seventeen, says the "Manchester Guardian." Mr. McGhee, member for the Penistone Division, at the celebration of the centenary, said that they wanted especially to honour those then and women up and down the country who had made it impossible that such a disaster could happen in England again. Mr. A. G. Walkden, M.P., expresident of the Trades Union Congress, said that the disaster had created a movement which had made it impossible now for any child under 14 to be at work. A hundred years ago those children worked for 5d a day. It was slavery. Seventy years ago slavery was abolished, and people had now given up thinking about it. Mr. Joseph Jones, president of the Mineworkers' Federation of Great Britain, said that this disaster created such a revulsion of public feeling that enactments governing the conditions of labour in mines were passed. Much had been done, but miners were not satisfied with regulations which permitted a death-roll of 800 lives a year in mines.