New Hartley mine disaster
A coal mining accident took like the lives of 204 miners in New Hartley, north of Newcastle, in 1862. The massive cast iron beam of a steam engine used to pump water out of the depths of the mine (which extended out under the North Sea) snapped and fell into the open shaft of the Hester Pit, entombing the workers within. The men survived some time in the earth but succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning before rescuers reached them nearly a week later.
A record of the event, taken some years later, puts the aftermath in some admittedly florid but touching language:
On the 26th the last sad phase of this fearful tragedy was completed by the bodies being solemnly interred in the silent grave; and so great was the number of persons and vehicles composing the procession, that although Earsdon Church is four miles from New Hartley, the first rough hearse had arrived at the church before the last had left the colliery. The burial ground attached to the parish church at Earsdon was totally inadequate to the extraordinary requirements made upon it, and provision had consequently to be made outside the church-yard for nearly the whole of the bodies. The ground for the purpose was given by His Grace the Duke of Northumberland. After the bodies had been laid in the graves, there were sorrowing friends anxiously inquiring the exact spot at which were laid those for whom they mourned; and the tender flower and gloomy cypress, planted by the hand and watered with the tear of affection, will bloom there when the memory of those who sleep peacefully beneath shall have passed away from the earth.
