Talk:Pretoria Pit disaster

A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on December 21, 2012 and December 21, 2015.

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Renaming?[edit]

See Category talk:Mining disasters for a discussion on whether to rename this and similar articles to remove the capitalisation. Ziggurat 21:37, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Moved text from [[Category:Mining disasters in England]][edit]

An anon editor had placed some nice text in the category instead of the article. Please look there for the edit history per GFDL. I moved it here, but it needs work.

Death toll[edit]

The numbers are a bit odd here, a fact the source acknowledges. At the moment it states

"That day 345 workers descended the No 3 pit shaft to work in the Plodder, Yard and Three Quarters mines. Of those, only four survived to be brought to the surface. One died immediately and one next day. The two survivors were Joseph Staveley and William Davenport. In addition one man died in the Arley Mine of No. 4 Pit and one rescuer died in No. 3 pit, giving a total of 344 fatalities. The men who were working the other mines in the pit worked from No.4 shaft were unharmed."

The quoted source somewhat quixotically states 'Of the 145 persons who wen down the mine only two survive and the total death toll was 344.' Even allowing for a typographical error on 145, the maths is clearly suspect.

So out of 345 in the Plodder Mine, 341 died more or less right away. Two died shortly afterwards, making a death toll of 343. Another man died in the Arley Mine, in Number 4 Pit and technically not part of Number 3 Pit, but both Numbers 3 and 4 Pits were called 'Pretoria Pit'. Another man, William Turton, died while fighting a fire as part of the rescue operation. Thus bringing the total number of men and boys who died that day at the Pretoria Pit to 345. It's a little odd that the official sources and memorials settled on 344 for the total death toll, ommitting Turton, but I suppose the rationale was those killed in the explosion or gas, who had been in the mine at the time, and not those who were part of the rescue efforts. I'll edit this to show the discrepancy, though since the sources agree on a death toll from the accident of 344, we'll have to stick with that. Benea (talk) 18:47, 21 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Prosecutions, penalties?[edit]

I know it's a bit late, but were any of the managers or owners held responsible for this tragedy? Was there an investigation, allocation of blame or prosecutions? I can guess the answer to the last, but it would be worth explicitly including any such info. Baska436 (talk) 10:52, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]