The Charleston Daily News

Perhaps none of the recent colliery disasters to which England is so subject has been more terrible than that which recently occurred at the Pelsall Hall Colliery. In this pit forty miners were working, when an adjacent and disused mine, full of water, which had not been operated since forgotten times, and whose existence was unknown, burst its partition and swept through in a resistless flood into this busy hive.

Several saved their lives by swimming, and one man had a remarkable escape, being carried for a quarter of a mile underground, clinging to a ladder. When taken out he was insensible. Seventeen others escaped, but there was no help for the other twenty-two.

The efforts to pump out the water continued for days, while around the edge of the pit the wives and children of the doomed men gathered, rending the air with their cries. The appearance of fire-damp left no hope, but the women hoped against it. There being a superstition in the mines that as long as the wife refrains from eating the husband will remain alive, for days tears was the only meat these poor women fed upon, until in imminent danger of their lives they consented to take bread, and then all hope departed from the village.