Maypole Disaster Memorial, St John the Evangelist's Parish Church

Image: © David Dixon Taken: 23 Feb 2012

Just after 5pm on 18 August 1908, an explosion, deep underground at the Number 1, Cannell Mine of the Maypole Coal Pit, caused a massive fireball to rip through the pit killing 75 men and boys. Only a small minority of the bodies were recovered at the time as the pit had to be flooded to quell the underground fire started by the explosion and because of that, It was not until November of the following year that most of the victims were brought to the surface and the last body was not recovered until 1917. It was Wigan's biggest mining disaster. There were only three survivors who had been working in a part of the pit shielded from the main blast and were brought out hours after the explosion. The inquest closed, on July 8th, 1909. On dismissing the jury, the coroner recalled the tragic stories brought out by witnesses. “Boys found clinging to fathers’ legs, men with cloth over their faces and open tea cans as they vainly tried to combat the sulphurous fumes. Families in which all the men folk had been wiped out”. Unfortunately, there is no memorial at the site of the actual explosion, but this specially commissioned monument was erected in the churchyard of Abram Parish Churchyard, St John the Evangelist’s Church which can be seen in the background The inscription on the memorial reads: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me To the honoured and loving memory of the seventy five men and boys who lost their lives in the explosion which occurred at the Maypole Collier Abram of the Pearson & Kinowles Coal and Iron Company Ltd. on the 18th August 1908 Underneath are the everlasting arms” (Image]) The memorial also carries the names of the victims. http://www.wiganworld.co.uk/stuff/past3.php?opt=past – Wigan World http://www.old-merseytimes.co.uk/Mining.html - contemporary account from the Liverpool Mercury http://www.communigate.co.uk/lancs/acl/page3.phtml - This is Lancashire, Communigate

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