So far as relates to the extent of the calamity, the statement of facts with regard to the explosion which occurred at the
Renishaw Park Colliery near Eckington Derbyshire on Tuesday night, admits of neither denial nor mitigation. It is, indeed strictly true that 27 men have lost their lives, and that a number of others are with greater or less severity injured and this in a county which happily in the history of its mining enterprise is exceedingly free from catastroophes so overwhelming and least of all to catastrophes that owe their origin to the explosion of that deadly gas which is a source of so much perplexing difficulty to the engineer, and which has been the cause of striking down so many hundreds of our fellow men.
By an inundation at the Clay Cross Mines in Derbyshire 2 men perished in 1861 and four years subsequently another accident at Clay Cross carried off 5 men. Until the night of Tuesday these we believe were the most notable colliery disasters in the county recorded and in proof of this singular immunity, when contacted with Yorkshire, Northumberland and Staffordshire official return show tha Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire, and Leicestershire produced in 1869 8,100,000 tens of coal as compared with 10,893,500 in Yorkshire and yet in the four associated counties there were only five deaths from explosions throughout the year.
In 1868 only one death occurred. The sad event of the present week, however, illustrates how abruptly dangers may present themselves in terrible form, even where safety from the greatest peril in mining is apparently ensured.
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