PIT CHILDREN
Child labour in Britain’s mines
- I am …
- I am … years old.
- I am a Trapper.
- I have….
- My mother …, my father…
- I have… Sisters and … brothers.
- They have been…
- I have been…
- The mine owner does not pay me enough.
The Husker Pit disaster, 1838 - why 26 children died
Listener's query
"I saw a monument in Silkstone churchyard near Barnsley to the people who died in the
Husker mining disaster. They were all children. Why was this? What happened?"
Brief summary
The 4th of July 1838 was a dreadful day in Silkstone's history. It was when 26 children
between the ages of 7 and 17, working as 'hurriers' and 'trappers', were drowned after the
dayhole through which they were attempting to escape from the Husker (or Huskar) Pit at
Moorend was flooded. This happened during a summer thunderstorm when a clap of
thunder was mistaken for an explosion. Forty-four children were working below ground
and, ignoring instructions to stay where they were, they decided that, if there had been an
explosion, the dayhole was a quick and safe way out.
A dayhole is an old mine seam which has been dug out and the hole left. No one had
thought to shut down this potentially dangerous old working. Rather, as it zigzagged its
way down three-quarters of a mile to the coalface, it was used as an alternative route.
However, as the children neared the surface, a nearby ditch flooded and the water poured
into the dayhole. Twenty-six children died, their mangled bodies thrown together. Later, the
bodies were brought back into the village in carts.
Silkstone was devastated, and the accident shocked the country. A report was published in
The Times, and the wider British public learned for the first time that women and children
worked in the mines. There was a public outcry, led by politician and reformer Anthony
Ashley Cooper, later Lord Shaftesbury. He called for a Royal Commission inquiry into the
working conditions of children and women in Britain's mines