The Nine Men Of Madeley

I want to take us back to St Michael’s churchyard in Madeley now, for there are still more stories to be told. Let us pause amongst the headstones and breathe deeply, for there is a lot to take in here. Notice the subtle changing hues of green, the moss and lichen clinging to the crumbling edifices, obscuring names and dates. Perhaps it is autumn, and a soft chill wraps around us as we listen to the robin or coal tit’s stalwart song. This place would have been grand one, a cemetery to rival Greyfriars or Kensal Green. However now, its beauty lies in its decay. Nature is reclaiming many of the monuments, blanketing the churchyard in a sense of quiet reflection. Far from looking forgotten or neglected, it feels fitting, as if the land is welcoming the dead home. Here the past feels tangible, we feel implored to remember.

Remembrance is a curious thing, isn’t it? The act of remembering allows us to breathe life into the lost, welcome them into our space and time, remind them that they still matter. It is amazing what we as humans can recall. We tell tales of our grandparent’s quirks and their follies, of their lives before they were called anything but their own names. We reflect on the sights and sounds and smells of childhood. We cherish the exciting and the simple and the mundane. We remember, and that’s what makes us human. I think one of the reasons why I love history is that at its most basic form, history is the art of remembering. It calls to mind the Terry Pratchett quote that ‘no one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away’. I have always endeavored to keep those ripples in motion. Even as a child I would walk past war memorials and gravestones and pause to take in their names. I would consider what that person would say if I asked them about their lives. What would they want me to know. I was always an inquisitive child but even as an adult this question continues, and I believe that you don’t lose your importance simply because you are dead. Your tale will always matter to someone. This is the very reason why we have returned to St Michael’s, to discuss a tragic episode in its history. In many ways the churchyard serves as a microcosm of the last three centuries of history. Here working men lie beside local dignitaries. Here death is the great equalizer.

We are here to visit the memorial to ‘The Nine Men of Madeley’ nine individuals who lost their lives in a mining disaster. I must confess that I am by no means an industrial historian, so my discussions of mining itself may be brief. However I am interested in the legacy of mining in Britain, the villages and communities that were defined by this industry. This tragedy also took place in my local community, where I grew up and where I have returned to work.  I want to discuss the tragedy in detail and explore the social impact of the disaster. The deaths of these nine people created their own ripples in the community, as we shall soon see and they were deeply missed. There is something so tragic about their nine uniform graves, bleached bone white, carved with their initials. They were united in their profession and are still united in death. Before we turn to their story though, we must first explore the role of industry in the East Shropshire Coalfield and how it came to shape the area.

Though the county is incredibly rural, my part of Shropshire was once awash with the throes of heavy industry. The area was known as the East Shropshire coalfield or 'Coalbrookdale Coalfield' and is thought in many ways to be the crucible of the industrial revolution. I have even seen references to it being called ‘The Salopian Black Country’, which links it to the wider area and emphasizes the impact of industrialization on the landscape. It’s such an evocative image, calling to mind the smog and fire and hardship of daily life. The historical significance of The East Shropshire Coalfield, or what we would now call Telford, is often underplayed significantly but many of the processes that were developed here had monumental impact on the country. One only must look at the Iron Bridge and the work of the Darby family to see this. The area was home to many industrials including foundries, lime kilns, brickworks as well as China and tile making. At one point during the 17^th century, the Coalbrookdale coalfield was second only to the Northeast Coalfield in terms of production and later in its history, it would come to produce 95% of the coal in Shropshire.

Mining has a lengthy history in the county, with it first being documented during the 13^th and early 14^th centuries when the monks of Buildwas Abbey were granted the right to coal and ironstone by Philip De Benthall. If we move forward into the 16^th century the industry had intensified, with outcrop coal being extracted and transported down the River Severn to more distant customers. Iron was also produced at several furnaces around the area. There is also some evidence of underground working, with ‘levels’ cut under the hillside. Madeley coal was being shipped to areas such as Worcester by the late 16^th century.  It is very plain to see that for centuries, mining would have been central to the lives of local people, and the various heavy industries that thrived in the locality would come to define Madeley Wood (as it was known then) as well as the wider area.

This whole area would have been alive with the hum of human activity, a busy, noisy morass of people. Industrialisation changed the course of Shropshire’s history, catapulting the population into an age of iron, furnace, and kiln. This was a changing world of opportunity, illuminated by furnace fires that never dimmed but also, it was a world of misery and misfortune. After all, there is more than one reason as to why the Gorge gained the epithet ‘hell on earth’. Due to the scale of mining in the local area, it became the main source of employment. Communities were strengthened by such ties, and it was not uncommon to see whole families working together in some form or another, or men working in the same pits their grandfather’s had.

Due to the dangers of working in foundries or pits, accidents would have been commonplace, and certainly one only has to look in the newspapers from the time to see these reported in harrowing detail, loss of limbs, maiming’s, scalding’s and explosions are but a few of the horrors that demonstrate how readily death haunted the coalfields. One example was listed as ‘The Dawley accident’ in April 1771 where an ‘unhappy accident’ saw a man and a horse who was working at the coalpit ‘blown out of the pit and burnt to ashes.’ This is such an awful image, and the impact of the article is amplified by the matter-of-fact tone of which it is reported. We are told that though the horse was ‘burnt to ashes’ the man was ‘drawn out by ropes alive but burnt in the most terrible manner and rendered a miserable spectacle’. One cannot imagine the impact of this accident on the life of the man in question, or indeed those who had to witness it and then go back to work afterwards.

The story of the Nine Men of Madeley begins at Brick Kiln Leasow Pit, which stood on top of the hill leading to Ironbridge from Madeley. You can still see one of the pit mounds to this day, which is near the local Aldi. How different the landscape is. This area would have been the axis of their world, where they worked and sadly, where they would lose their lives. It has always felt a bit strange referring to the group as ‘men’ because several of them were in the teens at the time of the tragedy, with the youngest being just twelve years old. I think about him a lot, through my job as a teacher I see teenagers every day, and feel lucky to be part of their journey, so it is hard to imagine someone so young losing their life in such an awful way.

The pit itself was an ironstone pit and around 220 metres deep. It was owned by the Madeley Wood company, who owned several mines in the local area and a massive source of employment to the local community. Of the nine men, most of them lived within a mile of the pit. By Victorian standards, they were relatively good and fair employers, which saw many miners migrate from further afield to work in the county. It was also a very well-established pit with its origins in the 1790s and was at the time in a period of growth in terms of production.

Tuesday 27th September 1864 would have started out like any other day, unremarkable in its events. But as the men’s shift ended, everything was about to change. They finished their work and began their ascent via a crude apparatus known as ‘the Doubles’.  

The Doubles comprised of a central chain about 3m long, attached to four chain circles, one above the other. This provided two seats on either side of the chain. At the top of the main chain was a hook with a safety catch and, between it and the topmost pair of ‘seats’ was an iron canopy, ‘the bonnet’, which was designed to protect the seated men from falling debris. The upper end of the central chain passed through the bonnet and its hook engaged with a ring attached to the end of the winding chain from the engine. Responsibility for ensuring a proper connection between hook and ring lay with the ‘Banksman’ on the surface for the descent and with the ‘hooker-on’ at the bottom of the shaft for the ascent.

The men began their ascent to the surface, when about halfway up, the accident took place. The coupling that held the towline snapped, and it sent the miners hurtling down to the bottom of the pit, smashing through six inches of solid oak, which lined the bottom of the pit, and landing in four feet of sump water in the bottom. The bonnet which was at the top of the doubles was made of iron and is described as weighing five cwt (A hundred weight, which is about 112 pounds per cwt) so would have caused a devastating blow if it landed on an already injured person.  It’s such a difficult image to conceive, knowing that it was a matter of seconds between life and death. The banksman on the surface would have felt the winding chain slacken, powerless in the knowledge that the miners had plunged to their deaths. One cannot begin to comprehend the tumult of emotions that William Wallet, the banksman on shift would have experienced. These feelings would have been amplified by the fact that his father, Edward was one of the men riding the doubles below ground.

William quickly stopped the engine and ran to the pithead, perhaps in a futile grasp at the hope that some of the men would have survived. However, With the scale of the accident, it was clear that there would be no survivors. The whole pit descended into shock and before the severity of the event could even really sink in, the painful task of recovering the bodies had to be undertaken.

The newspaper reports of the event make for extremely difficult reading. They describe a scene that was ‘heart- rendering in the extreme’ with news travelling fast and the ‘mouth of the pit being surrounded by anxious inquirers after friends and many had to be led from the scene of the disaster almost heartbroken’.

We are also told that despite the awful nature of the task, there was soon ‘hardy volunteers to bring up the mutilated bodies’ I think this emphasises the sense of comradeship and camaraderie often described by miners. Though traumatic, it was important to them to bring their friends bodies back up to the surface. Whilst the men ascended the pit to rescue the victims, ‘bags we called for in which to hide from public view the mangled forms of men and boys’ deeming the realities of the accident too tragic for their friends and loved ones to witness. It took the rescuers over three hours to bring the bodies back to the surface. I can’t quite find the words to articulate the bravery and strength of the men that returned to the depths to rescue their friends from the darkness. It seems so remarkable to me as I write this to imagine the lengths they went to for the nine men of Madeley, but I have a feeling that to them, they would have thought they were just doing what was right.

By the time that the bodies were rescued, it had grown dark, and we have a powerful account in the ‘Wolverhampton Chronicle’ that states in the time it took to undertake the rescue ‘hundreds of persons… had congregated on the bank many with candles, the dim dark of which added to the sombre aspect of the scene’. I cannot help but be profoundly moved by the image of the local community gathering at the site of the accident, their candles lit as a sign of respect, as a glimmer of hope amidst the darkness and grief. The quietness of this scene amplifies the tragedy. There would have scarcely been a person who didn’t know or wasn’t affected by this event and certainly it would have haunted the community like a spectre for a long time afterwards. It is also powerful to know that in such a time of great tragedy the community came together, and collectively paid their respect, as they would continue to do in the aftermath. We are told that ‘The sad occurrence cast a gloom over the entire neighbourhood’ which really emphasises the humanity of the tragedy.

The victims of the tragedy were:

·         Edward Wallett,

·         John Tranter,

·        Benjamin Davies,

·        William Jarratt,

·        Joseph Maiden,

·        John Farr,

·        John Jones,

·        Francis Cookson

·        William Onions.

Each of these men were people, with their own thoughts and feelings, joys and sorrows. They would have laughed with their mates and loved and quarreled. Each of them mattered, and they still matter.  Sadly, there is little known about each of their lives, though we do have some details which I would like to turn our attention to. For example, the Brighton Guardian states that ‘two of the men had very large families’ who would have had to maneuver their own grief as well as the financial instability that came with losing a breadwinner. I am still actively researching these men, in hope to breathe more life into their stories.

The oldest of the group was Edward Wallett, who was 52. He was father to five children, including William, the Banksman on the shift during the accident. My heart aches for William, as I cannot imagine the emotion pain that man must have felt, the trauma he harbored in the years after this accident. The family lived on Thieve Street (now Wesley Road) Edward (alongside John Tranter) was responsible for managing the underground work whilst mining.  He was an old hand at such work- likely having spent his whole working life underground.

John Tranter was also responsible for managing the work underground. He was 37 and the father of five young children. In the 1861 census, all five of his children were under ten years old. Another child, Benjamin was likely born after his father’s death. It is so sad to think of a family robbed of their father, and the economic instability their mother would have navigated.

Benjamin Davies was 35 years old and unmarried. He lived with his father, and several boarders. Benjamin was the ‘hooker-on’ for the team and, as such, would have been responsible for ensuring that the winding-gear was properly connected for the ascent to the surface. He was an experienced ‘hooker-on’ and highly trusted in his role, he had fulfilled it for over 20 years.

Though 22 years prior to the accident laws were passed to prevent children under 8 from working underground, many young people still worked in such environments. The remaining victims of the accident were all 18 or younger, and as we shall see, had been miners from a very young age.

William Jarrett was 18 years old. He still lived with his parents on Church Hill.
Joseph Maiden was also 18, and from a family full of miners, including his father and his brother.

It is not known how John Jones became a miner, as he was from a very agricultural family. Perhaps it was the result of the promise of a steady wage that saw him enter the coalfield. He was just 14 at the time of the accident, but he had been working as a miner for about three years, as on the 1861 census he is 11 years old and listed as a coalminer.

John Farr was also 14, and Francis Cookson was 13 years old and lived adjacent to the Park Inn in Madeley. His father, and two older brothers were miners.

And the youngest of the group was William Onions at just 12 years old.

It is so strange and humbling to imagine that a 12-year-old boy would have walked to work along the same roads I used to walk to school. How different our lives have been. Though we only have snippets of their lives, these people mattered. They had families, lives, hopes and dreams of the future. They would have been looking forward to the rest after a long day at work, seeing their wives and mothers but unfortunately this never came.

It is important when we look at the past to not trivialize the pain that loss inflicted. The inhabitants of the past are not different from us. Nine people were robbed of those who cared about them in an instant. There were nine empty spaces at the dinner table and a whole community in mourning. The accident was particularly difficult for the community due to the high number of young victims that passed away. Even if you were not directly involved with the tragedy, it would have been difficult not to think of it when watching your husband or son leave for work.

The funeral for the men took place on Saturday 1^st October 1864, at St Michael’s church, Madeley. The Madeley Wood Company covered the expenses for the occasion, as well as providing financial assistance to the dead miner’s families, including money for the individual coffins. It was also reported that they ‘sent them substantial proof of sympathy’ even visiting the families to express their sorrow at the tragedy. This would have been a relief for the families wondering where the next wage would come from.

The mines in the area also finished work early, at 12 o’clock as a sign of respect but also to allow any miners who wished to attend the chance to pay their respects. Over 400 miners chose to take them up on that offer. The funeral procession included five hearses that conveyed the bodies to the churchyard, over a 100 friends and relatives of the deceased and even prominent local men such as Captain W.R Anstice attended the service. In all it was estimated that around 2000 people attended the church service with many waiting outside the church and on the roads. If you know the area surrounding St Michael’s church, you will understand just how striking this scene would have been. As the coffins were being placed along the aisle the organist played the ‘Dead March’ from Saul and there were readings from Isaiah including

‘Seek the Lord while he may be found;
    call on him while he is near.’

It was after the funeral that the inquest began. It originally started on the day after the funeral in the George and Dragon Public house, but emotions were still raw, so it moved to the 3^rd of October and took place at Waterloo police station at Ironbridge. A government inspector of mines was present - Mr. Wynne. He said that he had inspected the pit and the apparatus, and he could come to no other conclusion than the doubles hadn’t properly been attached. He stated that if ‘the doubles had been securely hung on, there would not have been an accident’. Thus, there must have been some human error. To add to this, the Doubles had been overloaded, with them only being built to move eight people. Mr. Anstice noted in the inquest that the proper thing to do would have been to split the men and have them going up in two stages, not to overload the apparatus. Perhaps Edward and John made the call to bring the extra person, thinking it wouldn’t matter due to six of them being so young. Whatever the cause of the accident, the official verdict was accidental death, and the case was closed. The rector of Ironbridge preached a sermon on the following Sunday in honour of the victims and their families and there was £12 collected as a relief fund. It is touching to know that they were being looked after by their communities.

Though the verdict into the accident had been passed, it didn’t abate the impact of the tragedy. I think a lot about the aftermath of the event, and the way in which the community tried to heal. I grew up in a Madeley that though different from the world the nine men inhabited, still bore reminders of its industrial heritage. Their story has always made me profoundly sad, and I am so glad that we still have the memorial to the Nine men of Madeley, and their graves to remind the world of their story. It is a piece of history that is so important on a local level, but also, they serve as a symbol of the realities of the mining industry and represent the stories and experiences of men throughout the country, whose lives were shaped by black gold. Even more recent mining communities such as those who would have lived through the strikes in the 20^th century would have understood and shared experiences with their counterparts over a hundred years earlier. When you stand in front of the graves of these miners, they still feel so tangible, the grief seems to move between the iron railings.

There is another Terry Pratchett quote that I think of often, it says that ‘a man is not dead while his name is still spoken” and I think this is a good place to finish. Pause for a moment and say the names of Edward Wallet, John Tranter, Benjamin Davies, William Jarratt, Joseph Maiden, John Farr, John Jones, Francis Cookson, and William Onions. Think of them laughing as they worked, talking about their lives and their plans. Just by saying their names, we are breathing life back into the men again, we are allowing them space in our present. They may not be here, but I can promise you they will not be forgotten.