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CALEDONIA TRUSTS THIS STONE TO HER COLLIER SONS IN MIDLOTHIAN, THOMAS FOSTER AGED 17 YEARS, MITCHELL HAMILTON AGED 16 YEARS AND ROBERT HOOK TOLMIE AGED 14 YEARS, DIED ON FIRE DANGER DUTY BY GOING TO WARN THE MEN IN MAURICEWOOD PIT, 5TH SEPTEMBER, 1889. In the windswept graveyard of Kirkhill, high above Penicuik, you will find the modest stone bearing that inscription. The story behind it is now half-forgotten, yet it commemorates remarkable bravery on the part of these young pony boys in a disaster which claimed 63 lives. The Shotts Iron Company, driving the industrial age to the foothills of the Pentlands, had originally sunk Mauricewood Pit to mine ironstone, which they calcined [ -a process to drive off impurities such as water, carbon dioxide, arsenic and sulphur- ] in open hearth furnaces at the pit-head. About a mile away, at Fieldsend on the Edinburgh side of the little paper-making town of Penicuik, they built a Company suburb, Shottstown, its streets all proudly named after Company Directors. There is now a modern shopping centre on the site, but the name still survives in the Miners' Welfare Club. --- After the Company had begun operations, John Inglis the Lord President of the Court of Session was dismayed to find that something was gravely amiss with the young trees on his Glencorse estate. He noted that noxious fumes from the furnaces were blowing into his woodlands, and he put two and two together. Several court actions later, the health of the young trees prevailed, for the Company was forced to remove its calcining operations to another of its pits at Loanhead, where it was sued again, this time by a market gardener. It was all very vexatious and expensive, and there was talk of closing the pit. The health of the young boys who worked the ironstone, was, of course, no business of the Lord President. The local manager, Mr Love, was more concerned with keeping the pit open by persuading his superiors to bring out coal as well, than advocating expenditure on working conditions. In the circumstances, this was not a topic many others thought it tactful to bring up. The one exception was John Davidson. Davidson was one of the engineers, and if he worried about poor ventilation and the foul air at the face, he worried much more about escape routes. The law of the land was specific and stated that there must be two exits from each working seam. From the foot of the shaft at Mauricewood there was a connecting road to Greenlaw Pit, the required alternative exit, said the Company. However, the working faces had long penetrated far deeper than the foot of the shaft and, to reach them, it was necessary to travel down the dook, an incline of 1 in 5 fitted with a waggonway for transporting men and coal. In an emergency, the wood-lined dook was the only escape route. John Davidson made it a rule never to go down the pit without a map of the workings in his pocket. He frequently spoke out on behalf of his workmates, even challenging the bosses in the tradition of his radical Seceder Kirk, but he found little support. To men like his fellow engineer Mr Walker, a highly respected figure in the local community and Chairman of the Co-operative Society, a job in Mauricewood was irreplaceable. Davidson eventually lost heart and decided to get out and take his young family to the developing colony of Australia. Their passage was booked on a ship which was due to sail the week after the disaster. Their furniture was disposed of by subscription sale and Davidson gave up his job from the preceding Saturday. However, he had taken the chance of an extra shift, to make a bit more money for the new start. Thus, on that ordinary September Thursday he went down the pit for the last time with the rest of the shift, under the direction of George Muir the oversman - and was checked in by the bottomer, Bill Robb. At the end of the shift, Robb's duty would be to check them all out again, and be the last to leave. Now that the time had come, it would be a wrench for John Davidson to part with his old comrades, among them the leader, conductor, and nearly all the members of the Shottstown Silver Band, whose instruments gleamed so bravely in the summer Procession of the Free Gardeners. There were the Porterfield boys, clearly still suffering from their parents' silver wedding celebrations the night before. Doubtless old Mrs Porterfield had harried them up and out to their work against all protests, but there was no sign of the married brother, Bob. Probably he was still snoring in his bed in Shottstown. Like a mirror of himself 20 years before, there, too, was John Sennit, starting his third day down the pit as a fan boy. As a wee chap he had stood out from the others, cocky in his uniform of the recently-formed Boys' Brigade. They said he was a bright lad, but it was the old story, father a farm labourer on a pittance, an ailing mother, and Johnnie the oldest of a big family. They would be needing his wages. A less happy reminder, there was MacKinlay who had been last man out in a fire two years previously involving the wooden linings of the dook. Everybody, in the end, had got out safely, but for a while they thought they had seen the last of MacKinlay. The uneventful morning wore on in the hot fetid air of the workings at the 160-fathom level. Half-past ten was corning time, when the boys fed their beloved blind ponies. Around midday Mr Walker, with another engineer called Gall, and the engine-keeper, Hugh MacPherson, started to get ready to do a repair job on the 80-fathom engine. Through this engine-house ran the upcast airway which carried foul air to the surface and housed the steam-pipes which provided power for the pumping engines. In the constant fierce heat, the wooden linings were tinder dry. About 12.20, young Mitchell Hamilton went to Robb the bottomer and asked, "Bill, is there onybody workin the upset ?" [air shaft] "No," replied Robb, "unless George Muir's up there." "Well," said young Mitch, "there's somethin adae, 1 can see smoke an flames comin doon." The bottomer went at once to the foot of the upset, looked up, and cried, "Boys! The pit is on fire!" -words that miners everywhere dread to hear. Close by was the waggonway climbing up towards the shaft and the blessed fresh air. There were, however, two men working quite near, driving a new road, and Bobby Tolmie thought he should warn them. Mitchell had a rather different idea, he proposed to get out the men who were working at the east face. His father and brother were among them. As he set off, the bottomer called after him that he should find and alert George Muir. If there was an emergency, the oversman should take control. Tom Foster went off with Tolmie, and Bill Robb was left alone. A sound shrilled into the tense silence, the bell to send the men's waggon to the upper levels. Bill Robb, who later found himself very unpopular in Penicuik, said at various times that his intention was to alert the surface, or that he hoped to reach the 80-fathom engine and save the whole pit by playing water down the shaft to extinguish the blaze. Perhaps, on the other hand, the temptation, on a split second decision, was, quite simply, irresistable. At the last moment, as the waggon was leaving, he got in, and was on his way up. Around the 120-fathom level, the smoke became so dense that it seemed he must suffocate, and when he reached 80 fathoms, he could see or hear nobody. With the last of his strength he yelled, "For God's sake, boys, bell away!" Fortunately they beard him at the top, and he was drawn up to safety, choking and exhausted, but alive. Only then did he realise that over 60 men were still trapped in the pit - men whose safety was his responsibility. He went back down with the rescue party. Meanwhile, another survivor staggered out of the smoke, the engineer, Bill Gall. When the fire was discovered, he had groped his way out of the engine-houe along with Walker and MacPherson, and belled for a waggon which did not come. Walker was not young and MacPherson was lame, but Gall was young and strong and decided to trust his own feet. Holding his head high to clear the worst of' the smoke, he clambered up the dook until, sick and dazed and scarcely able to believe his good fortune, he reached the shaft and was sent up to the surface. Within living memory there was an old man in Penicuik who used to claim that as a schoolboy he was sent for the doctor on the day of the Mauricewood disaster, with strict instructions not to tell anybody else what had happened. However, an uneasy whisper spread round the houses that, in Mitchell's phrase, there was "somethin adae". Little knots of women gathered at the street corners, rumours multiplied, and eventually some of the bolder, or more nervous, set off for the pit seeking first-hand information. The rescue party was not having much success. They had gone only a few yards down the dook when they were driven back by heat described as "sufficient to melt lead" and smoke "like soot". Only one possible communication with the men below remained. They sent a waggon through the smoke, and waited. When it emerged from the swirling smoke, they could see, dimly, people lying in it. They proved to be Bobby Tolmie and Tom Foster with the old man Hunter whom they had gone to warn, and another 15-year-old, Robert Pennycook. Dr Riddell was at hand, but everybody knew in their hearts that there was little chance that he could save them. 1ndeed. only the man Hunter was still alive, and despite all that the doctor could do he died soon after. There was no question of concealment now. The bodies were laid on carts and taken down the road to Shottstown through the crowds of people already hurrying towards the pit. When they reached it, there was nothing but clouds of smoke billowing from the shaft, and the pungent smell of burning wood. The frustrated rescuers were below, out of sight. Time after time they tried to penetrate farther down the dook, but always the heat and smoke drove them back, except once, when two men, fresh and determined, managed an extra three feet and, retreating, swore they could see the bodies of Walker and MacPherson just ahead. For more than an hour they went on sending the cage up and down, though they knew no-one could travel through those fumes and live. On the surface, night began to draw in, and with the darkness came a dank, chill mist. Braziers were set out round the pit-head, their flames flickering on the faces of the waiting crowd. There were many strangers now. Some were merely curious, some had a job to do, like the bowler-hatted Inspector of Mines and his assistant, who were conducted down the pit, and the Edinburgh reporters, who were not. Information was hard to get, even the exact number of men entombed was unknown. The only list was in George Mulr's pocket, on the other side of the smoke.
A story went round of a shoemaker from Penicuik, who had never been down a pit in his life, but had joined a rescue party and was down there searching for his friends and local acquaintances. There was less need now for amateur help, as trains were bringing in skilled volunteers, miners from miles away, including the rescue team from Niddrie. As the crowd swelled to proportions far beyond anything the tiny Penicuik Police Force had ever seen, a detachment of the Royal Scots was summoned from Glencorse Barracks. They formed a cordon round the engine-house, keeping back the relatives who waited, some weeping, but most standing with set faces. When they spoke to each other at all, it was in undertones. From time to time, the silence broken by the sound of three sharp knocks, the signal to send down a cage, and then they would press forward in a vain hope for news. Brattices [partitions ---canvas in ths instance] were erected, to make a tunnel through which fresh air could be driven down the dook, but as exhausted members of the rescue teams came out of the pit there was little they could say on the one question that mattered, the chances of the men being got out alive. The manager of a neighbouring colliery did his best to maintain hope. There were men down there who would not lose their heads, he said, the oversman was there, and knew the workings. There was still a chance. When Mr Love finally came up about eleven o'clock, however, he was much less optimistic. The crowds of the merely curious had thinned, and now the women began to take their weary children home to Shottstown. Once there, they could not settle and were soon out again, huddled together in the street or taking the road back to the pit. Perhaps this time there would be some news. In the early hours of Friday morning, the cage brought two bundles wrapped in canvas. The rescue teams had reached the bodies of Walker and MacPherson. Dawn came in the same clammy mist, and the feet of the paper workers echoed in the silent streets with none of the usual morning calls of greeting. But as daylight strengthened, Shottstown looked much as usual, except that there were no children playing. At the pit-head they waited. Then, about one o'clock, 24 hours after the first alarm, the three knocks for the cage heralded another rescuer carrying a canvas-covered bundle, this time pitifully small. The crowd surged forward and a cry went up, "Wha is't? " "It's Johnnie Sennit," came the reply, and from somewhere in the crowd there was an agonised scream. For no very practical or logical reason, it seemed that was the moment when the people finally gave up hope. Later on Friday afternoon, the rescuers reached the foot of the dock and found the squad from the west face, a tangled mass of bodies, broken waggons and dead ponies. Of the 36 men and boys who had been working at the east face, of George Muir the oversman and of young Mitchell Hamilton who had gone to warn them, there was no trace. On Saturday they buried Johnnie Sennit, with his Boys' Brigade cap and belt laid on top of his coffin, and those of' his comrades whose bodies had been recovered. Thousands poured into the town to attend the funerals and the great men of the neighbourhood made suitable orations. A relief fund was set up, headed by a handsome donation from the Shotts Iron Company. Yet already, here and there, discordant voices were raised, especially when, also on Saturday, a decision was taken to seal the pit and let the fire burn itself out. A delegate to the Trades Council, meeting in Dundee, made a widely-publicised attack on the Company saying that "there were two shafts in Mauricewood Pit, but one of them might have been placed at the Rock of Gilbraltar for all the good it did the men". From his pulpit in the South Church, the Rev. S. R. Crockett hoped "some good might come of their suffering if the law were changed so that never again would nearly half a hundred men be left without a chance of escape". Perhaps he half-recalled the lines of the poem which Robert Louis Stevenson had dedicated to him, "where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying, my heart remembers how". There were calls for an enquiry, the men appealing eventually to their M.P., the great Mr Gladstone, who found time to intervene on their behalf. Meantime, dark rumours circulated round the sealed pit. It was said it had been opened secretly, and the Company's men had been down there, tampering with the evidence. The women of Shottstown, too, marched to demonstrate, but their main concern was the delay in bringing out the bodies of the entombed men. Most prominent among them were mothers calling for the bodies of their children. The enquiry, in December 1889, had come and gone, and the Company, for once in favour with the law, had been completely exonerated, before their demands were met. It was late March, 1890, and the whaups were crying a new spring over the braes of Mauricewood, when they brought out the men from the east face. They found George Muir, the oversman, a little ahead of the others, where he'd been leading them through the thickening smoke in a vain bid for escape. They found, too, John Davidson, whose ship had long since sailed for Australia without him, and Mitchell Hamilton, known as wee Mitch, to distinguish him from his father of the same name. He had gone all the way to the face. [included in The Tartan Chameleon: Selected writings of Athole Cameron, Midlothian District Library Service 1995: ISBN9002 15 004 -"The Pit is On Fire!" also appeared previously in The Scots Magazine]
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