Free Brilliant by Jane Brox Page B

the injured. As one account attests, "Everything in the way of the blast was thrown out at the mouth to the estimated height of 200 yards in the air. Most of the pitmen, having just in time discovered the danger, were drawn up, and escaped unhurt; but some boys, and one man, who were left behind, lost their lives." Another account tells of four men who
were about three hundred yards from the shaft, when the foul air took fire. In a moment it tore the wall from end to end; and burning on till it came to the shaft, it then burst and went off like a large cannon. The men instantly fell on their faces, or they would have been burned to death in a few moments. One of them, who once knew the love of God (Andrew English), began crying aloud for mercy; but in a very short time his breath was stopped. The other three crept on their hands and knees, till two got to the shaft and were drawn up; but one of them died in a few minutes. John M'Combe was drawn up next, burned from head to foot but rejoicing and praising God. They then went down for Andrew; whom they found senseless: the very circumstance which saved his life. For losing his senses, he lay flat on the ground, and the greatest part of the fire went over him.
    Miners and mine owners were always looking for alternatives to candles. Although miners' candles were exceedingly small—up to sixty to the pound, for it was believed a small candle might prevent the ignition of firedamp—everything thought of as a substitute for them provided less light than even those slim solitary tapers. It's almost inconceivable now to imagine how slight and shifting was the illumination miners worked by so far below the earth's surface. One device, a flint mill, required boys to accompany the miners down the shafts. Each boy worked a mill, which might be strapped to his leg or hung from his neck. It was made of a steel disk set in a small steel frame and a handle attached to a spur wheel, which turned the disk. The boy held a piece of flint against the disk as he rotated it so as to produce streams of sparks for the miner to work by. The sparks were usually too cool to set off the gas, but not always.
    And if miners couldn't use even a mill, they had little else to rely on for illumination. When a flint mill at the Wallsend Colliery caused an explosion that killed nine miners, "work was continued in the shaft without it and with the greatest difficulty. For some time it was performed in total darkness, aided only by light reflected from the surface by means of a mirror during periods of sunshine." Perhaps the strangest form of light was used in the Tyne mines, known to be "gassy" or "fiery." There colliers "sometimes tried to carry on their work by the feeble light of phosphorous and putrescent fish."
    The first practical miners' safety lamps were developed around 1815, and the one devised by Sir Humphry Davy, later head of the Royal Society in London, proved to be the most popular. Davy enclosed a flame within a wire mesh cylinder, which distributed the fire's heat and prevented the air beyond the lamp from reaching the ignition temperature of firedamp. Although his lamp was quickly put into wide use, it didn't slow the number of mine deaths. Because of the mesh, the Davy lamp shed only about one-sixth the light of a common taper, so miners often continued to work by candlelight as well. The use of safety lamps also encouraged men to work deeper in the mines and open up more fiery seams. As a result, the mines became even more dangerous. The inventors of safety lamps, one mining historian suggests, "had provided the miner with a weapon of defense: armed with it he was led forward to meet fresh perils. They had sought to bring security of life: they achieved an increase in the output of coal."

    By the time Davy developed his safety lamp, an increase in the output of coal had become essential. Not only was the Industrial Revolution speeding up, but coal gas possessed an increasing value. In