Saturday, June 21, 2008

Durham Mining Museum

The Durham Mining Museum is fascinating and aptly named: you can mine so many historical facts about our coalmines, officials, coal production, accidents and much more. If that interests you the site can be accessed via www.dmm.org.uk. I have come up with some statistics concerning the Ushaw Moor and New Brancepeth mines by use of a little of the museum resources – as follows:

Fatality Statistics

Ushaw Moor Pit

Currently there are 42 fatalities [spread over many years] recorded on site but the list is not exhaustive. I sought to establish whether the numbers of deaths were in any way linked to the seasons of the month. In the case of Ushaw Moor I calculated that:

Fatalities during the months of March to May inclusive = 10

June to August = 4

September to November = 14

December to February = 14

So two thirds of the fatalities happened in autumn and winter.

Average age at death = 38 approx

Youngest = Robert Mould occurred on 10.03..1883 aged 11

Oldest = Samuel Fitches occurred 03.03.1914 aged 65

J Nicholson died on New Years Eve 1888 at the age of 43.

New Brancepeth Pit

Currently there are 62 recorded and using the same seasonal format as above i.e. starting at March to May the figures are 18,14,20,10. That is not a similar pattern to Ushaw Moor.

Average age at death = 38 approx – the same as Ushaw Moor.

Youngest = Ralph Canavan occurred 21.03.1889 aged 13

Oldest = Nichol Cummings occurred 26.05.1906 aged 64 and Thomas Winter occurred 13.04.1877 aged 64.

Several workers at these pits died in the month of December - and each one was of course tragic – but I cannot help but feel sad for the family of New Brancepeth worker Jonathan Pickles; he died on Christmas Eve 1906 at the age of 17.

Wilf Bell

Posted by cloughy at 11:11:04 | Permalink | Comments (8)