BOLTON & DISTRICT HUMANE SOCIETY, HULTON COLLIERY DISASTER MEDAL & LANCS & CHESHIRE MINES RESCUE MEDAL

Bolton & District Humane Society Hulton Colliery disaster medal 21-12-1910 & the same recipients silver long service medal from the Lancashire & Cheshire coal owners rescue station
To- GEORGE.WALTER.WILSON.
The Hulton colliery medal is unnamed as issued & mounted from the original ribbon & pin. Its housed in its original fitted case of issue by Jenkins of Birmingham. (one of 165 of this medal issued)
The recipient was born in 1888 & was a coal miner from Atherton. He died in 1960 & was cremated locally. No doubt he lost many friends in the disaster.
The Pretoria Pit Disaster is the worst coal mining accident to have occurred in Lancashire, and the third-worst mining disaster in British history. The Pretoria Pit was a complex of coal mines owned by the Hulton Colliery Company and situated on the border of Westhoughton and Atherton. Pretoria Pit was the largest coal mine in the Westhoughton area, working five coal seams in the region. Each seam had its own mine: Trencherbone, Plodder, Yard, Three-Quarter, and Arley mine.

The Hulton Colliery Co. employed approximately 2,500 people locally. On the morning of December 21, 1910, a total of 898 men and boys clocked in for the day shift at the Hulton Colliery, and most had descended the shafts below ground before 8 AM. One of those arriving for work early that morning was a 16-year-old boy, Joseph Shearer Staveley of Westhoughton, on his very first day of employment in the Yard mine workshops. A total of 347 men, including Joseph, had descended down the No. 3 pit shaft to work in the Yard mine that morning, when suddenly, at 7:50 AM there was a tremendous underground explosion, about 300 yards deep below the earth’s surface, at the level of the Yard mine.

Mr. Alfred Tonge was the General Manager of Hulton Colliery at the time, and he lived almost two miles away from the pit head. He was home at the time of the blast and heard the explosion. He immediately left his home and arrived at the mine within about twenty minutes, leading a team of rescuers into the mine. He wrote an account of what he found upon his arrival, which was turned in to the inquiry as evidence during the investigation.

Only 4 men working the Yard mine that morning were fortunate enough to survive the initial blast. However, it is likely that if Mr. Tonge had not acted as swiftly as he did, that these young men may not have been as fortunate. The initial survivors of the blast were Fountain Byers, John Sharples, Joseph Staveley, and William Davenport. We know from the diary entries of Fountain’s brother, Ben Byers, that Fountain would survive less than 24 hours. He left behind a wife, and child, just three days before Christmas, and was laid to rest at Wingates Parish Church on Christmas Day.
The Mines rescue medal is named on the reverse to GEORGE.WALTER.WILSON & is on its original ribbon with its original silver top bar.
Both medals are N.E.F/E.F & have never before been on the open market or offered for public sale.

Code: 56584