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Full Details

Surname
ANSTIS
Forename
Samuel
Day
21
Month
03
Year
1925
Age
15
Occupation
Pithead Worker
Mine/Quarry Name
Valleyfield
Mineral Worked
Coal
Owner
Fife Coal Co. Ltd
Location
Newmills
County
Fifeshire
Details of Event
21 March 1925: Fatal Accident at Fife Colliery - An accident resulting in the death of Samuel Anstis (15), pithead worker, a son of Alfred Anstis, 8 Main Road, Crombie, occurred at Valleyfield Colliery on Saturday. While at work at the pithead the lad fell through a fence at the side of a creeper road to the ground below, a distance of approximately 20 feet. He received severe injuries to the head, and succumbed while being conveyed to Dunfermline and West Fife Hospital. [The Scotsman 23 March 1925] Defective Pit Fencing – Young Collier's Death - The circumstances of a fatal accident at the Fife Coal Company's Valleyfield Colliery were investigated at Dunfermline Sheriff Court yesterday. The victim was a boy of 15, Samuel John Anstis, who was employed as a pithead worker, and who was fatally injured by falling from a scaffold at the screening plant. It was elicited that deceased slipped on the scaffold and fell through an aperture in the fencing from which the middle spar was amissing. Several boys who worked with deceased, declared that the spar had been amissing for three weeks, although they had not reported the matter. Colliery officials however, affirmed that all the pithead fencing was regularly inspected, and one of these, an engineer, declared that the scaffold fencing was intact at least two days before the accident. The jury added to a formal verdict an expression of opinion that the accident was due to a defect in the fencing, which ought to have been repaired. [The Scotsman 15 May 1925]