Page 17 Advertisements Column 1

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XV, Issue 4, 20 May 1887, Page 17

qpHE T3ULLI rjISASTER AN URGENT APPEAL ON BKHALF OP WIDOWS AND 150 ORPHAN S._fii As the disaster that took place at the Bulli Colliery on the 23rd March last was the most appalling that has ever happened in Australia, it is to be hoped that a calamity so unparalleled in our colonial history, although occurring in New South Wales, will call forth a national response of practical sympathy for the widows and orphans deprived of their bread-winners by that terrible circumstance. Of upwards of eighty men and youths in the mine when the fearful explosion took place, not one was left to tell the awful tale of their terrible death. Most of the ill-fated men were married, and, therefore, leave sorrowing widows and many helpless children — numbering together about two hnndied. And painfully sad as it is to relate, that large total will be increased within the next few months by about thirty orphans yet unborn. Regarding the Etraitenni, as well as sad, circumstances in which these widows ami orphans a'e placed, it need only be mentioned that at the time of the disaster work had been resumed at the colliery only a few weeks after a six months' strike, by which the miners lost all and gained nothing. And married men only having been re-employed after the strike, causes the number of widows and orphans to be greater in propoi tion to the lost than under ordinary circumstances would be the case. In fact, the victims of the disaster were cut off under peculiarly distressing circumstances as well as in a terrible manner, all being men either whose means had become exhausted during the strike, or wboM want of means and inability to obtain any otbw employ-