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Full Details

Surname
HOLT
Forename
John Henry
Day
11
Month
03
Year
1909
Age
22
Occupation
Sinker
Mine/Quarry Name
Cannop
Mineral Worked
Coal
Owner
Cannop Coal Co. Ltd
Location
Speech House Road
County
Gloucestershire
Details of Event
He was a skip rider i.e. he rode up the shaft with a hoppet or kibble, in order to guide it past the pumps which occupy a large space in the shaft leaving very little room for the hoppet. His duties may be compared with those of a journey rider on an engine plane. He had followed this work nearly a year and was therefore no novice. At the time of the accident he was ascending the shaft and had got within 17 or 20 yards of the top when something occurred to cause him to stop the hoppet and have it moved up and down two or three times. It then appears to have tilted and thrown him down the pit. At this part of the pit, and 30 or 40 yards below there is nothing within three feet of the edge of the hoppet, and what he stopped for is a mystery. When the hoppet was afterwards drawn up to the surface it was upside down and the signal wire which hung four feet clear of it was caught in the D link of the spring hook. One can only imagine that one of the catches for keeping it from tilting was open when he left the bottom, and that his clothes or waterproof disturbed and opened the other on the opposite side. How it really occurred will never be known, but strangely enough another skip rider fell out of the same skip in the No.2 Shaft about five weeks before and was killed.