Single Record

Full Details

Surname

ROBERTSON

Forename

Alexander

Day

15

Month

10

Year

1925

Age

Occupation

Machineman

Mine/Quarry Name

Bardykes

Mineral Worked

Coal

Owner

Summerlee Iron Co. Ltd

Location

Cambuslang

County

Lanarkshire

Details of Event

Came in contact with electric current of the coal cutting machine Information from the Inspectors of Mines - 1925: Electricity The only fatality due to the use of electricity happened at Bardykes Colliery, Lanark, to a coal cutter machineman who had been driving an Anderson and Boyes electrically operated chain machine, which had only been in use for three months. Coal cutting was completed and he instructed his assistant to go into the roadway and switch off the current. The assistant obeyed, and returned to find the machineman apparently dead. Assistance was obtained and artificial respiration was performed until a doctor arrived at the coal face and pronounced life to be extinct The system of supply was 3-phase, alternating-current, at 500 volts pressure with the neutral point insulated. After the accident examination disclosed that one of the three terminals, or bifurcated contact pins, in the socket of the machine had worked loose. The machineman had evidently been withdrawing the trailing cable plug before the current was switched off and had pulled forward the contact pin until a lug connector inside the machine touched the framework and made the machine alive. The earthing conductor was discovered to be fused inside the plug where it was connected to a lug. It is probable that the earth conductor had previously been partly severed by the mechanical stresses put upon it when the plug had been inserted or withdrawn. The remaining wires of the conductor failed to carry the leakage current safely to earth and were fused. The machine would then become alive and the machineman in contact with it was electrocuted. The accident was due to :- (a) the machineman attempting to withdraw the plug on the trailing cable from its socket before the current was interrupted ; (b) a defect in the machine, inasmuch as the slacking back of a nut permitted a contact pin to be pulled out so that the connector lug made electrical contact with the machine casing, and (c) the earth contact in the trailing cable being damaged in working operations so that it failed when it was most required.