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Full Details

Surname
DOCHERTY
Forename
Edward
Day
23
Month
09
Year
1927
Age
Occupation
Miner
Mine/Quarry Name
Glencraig
Mineral Worked
Coal
Owner
Wilson's & Clyde Coal Co. Ltd
Location
Lochgelly
County
Fifeshire
Details of Event
23 September 1927: Lochgelly Miner Killed – Edward Docherty, a miner, residing at Minto Street, Lochgelly, was killed in Glencraig Colliery, yesterday morning. He had been engaged with another man named Mahon in drawing steel props on a machine-cut face with a prop drawer and had only 5 to draw to complete the job when a stone swung and fell on Docherty. His neck was broken and death was instantaneous. [Dunfermline Journal 24 September 1927] Inspector of Mines' Report - 1927: Falls of roof: At Glencraig Colliery, Fife, in a double unit longwall face in a seam 3 ft. 6 in. thick worked by coal cutting machine and conveyors feeding to a central gate conveyor, the roof was supported by steel props and steel straps. Each half or "unit" of the face was 90 yards long, and in each the waste was cleared of the props and straps nightly. On the night of 23rd September, two squads of men were withdrawing props and straps in the left-hand unit by means of Sylvester prop withdrawers. They had begun at each end of the face, and had only five props and straps to withdraw near the centre of the face when the roof in the waste collapsed over an area 40 ft. by 10 ft. and to a thickness of 18 in. to 2 ft. It rode forward, displacing 15 steel straps and 30 props, and killed one of the workmen by crushing him against the conveyor pans. The roof in this case was hard and the floor soft, which told against the efficiency of the steel propping where it was without bottom caps or lids, and it also made withdrawal difficult, but the method of beginning at each end of the face and working towards the centre was wrong : it should have been the other way about. The lesson here is that officials where these new methods are in operation should have the smallest details thoroughly worked out and should not leave it to the man, without experience or knowledge of what such changed systems mean, to decide how the props should be withdrawn.