Mineworkers in the Hunter
(Northern District)
Blood on the Coal
You’ve learned to know the miner — the “black” man, the “slack” man,
But come with me below ground amid the sweat and stress,
And watch him at his hard work, his drill work, his skilled work,
See for yourself his true life before you read your press.
Come down and breathe the dank air, the foul air, the rank air,
Fill up your lungs with coal dust, disease dust, for proof;
Come down and see the slave man, the cave man, the brave man
Risk life to save his mate’s life beneath a falling roof
Jock Graham
In the Northern District mines over 1695 mineworkers were seriously injured , many of them fatally, as a result of accidents between 1847 and 1938. This index contains names, age occupation, date of accident, and name of mine, mine location, details of the accident, and references for the data. The data has been sourced from newspapers, Department of Mine reports, the records of the United Mineworkers Northern Division, Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly of NSW, personal correspondence from contributors and selected secondary sources.
To the best of my knowledge there is no on line index available of the names of miners injured or killed.
If the name is not listed it will be because I have not yet entered the data – however it is likely that I have the information, so let me know and I will check and enter for you.
If you would like to contribute information to the data base references e. g names ,colliery etc, dates of newspaper reports etc please send to me ( txcallaghan@gmail.com) and I will add your data to the database. I am particularly interested in information as to the age of persons injured or killed as a result of a accident. This data will allow me to construct an age based profile of fatalities and injuries.
Whilst I have some data post 1900 and will do ‘look ups’ it is intended to focus on the period pre 1900 at this stage. Note however that the listings do contain names of miners after 1899 ( up to 1938 at this stage) and some details but are not complete. Note that data provided by the United Mineworkers Northern Division provides names of those killed up to 2002. This data will be entered as time permits.
Work in progress – Southern District Accidents and fatalities.
For references used in this work follow this link.
All pictures unless noted otherwise are from Ralph Snowball’s images, part of the Norm Barney Collection of the University of Newcastle whose permission to reproduce is much appreciated.
You are free to download and copy the material but a donation would be appreciated to defray expenses incurred. Donors will be automatically registered to be advised of new pages and updates to existing pages. Contact me at txcallaghan@gmail.com for bank details
Note that as research continues more details and in particular references are being added, so it is very much an ongoing project. You will need to check back from time to time to check whether new entries have been made since your last visit.If you are a registered donor you will be automatically notified.
For an example of the data see here and here
NAMES
Note! If you find a broken link in the list of names let me know and I will fix
This page was last updated on March 20, 2013
This material has been produced in good faith. No responsibility is accepted for errors or omissions which may exist in the data. In most cases the source(s) of the information is provided to enable your own research Please read copyright notes