Conisborough, South Yorkshire 1912.

Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Monday 15th July 1912.
Miners' Superstition.
Will not descend while corpses are in the pit.
Conisborough, Saturday.

The miners here seem very divided as to when they will resume work in the pit which was the scene of the disaster. It has been officially stated that the pit is now quite safe, and that there is no reason why it should not be re-opened on Monday, but many of the miners shrug their shoulders and mutter a gruff negative when asked if they will descend on that day.

"You don't catch me going down while there's dead men lying there," said one grey-headed hewer of coal. "It fetches your heart up into your throat to go down into a pit when there's dead men lying just a little way off you in the darkness."

This was the view of many men. The Yorkshire miner is not nearly so superstitious as his Welsh brother, but he has a rooted objection to entering a pit where corpses lie. There is another and more material consideration. If the men are out till Tuesday there will be a week's Union pay to draw, and this is a fact which will carry some weight with the Union men, who comprise about half the miners in the Cadeby district.

Mr. Chambers, the managing director, was down the pit again this morning, and found all the seals on the wall intact. Very little air has escaped, and what has come out is non-explosive, which matters point to the fact that the measures for dealing with the gob fire have been satisfactory. But the miners mean to take no risks. "We shall certainly not go down," said one man, "until we have it from the Government Inspector that all danger has disappeared. The mine has been hot for a long time, and until the gob fire has been completely put out we shall not run the risk attendant on resuming work."

All through the night men have been working at the huge fall of roof beneath which probably most of the rescue party lie, but as yet only one more body has been recovered. It is that of Charles Prince, assistant deputy, an unmarried man, who lived at the Glen, Mexborough. Prince was master of the Danaby and Cadeby Troop of Boy Scouts, which has only been in existence for a few weeks. He was taking part in the celebrations at Wentworth when the disaster happened, and he hurried to the pit still wearing his scoutmaster's uniform. The rescue party were crowding into the pit. There was no time to change into pit clothes. He left his jacket in the lamp-room, and went down to his death clad in the Baden-Powell clothing which he had worn under such happy circumstances only an hour or two before.

It is the general opinion that the other bodies lie under another part of the fall, which will not be accessible until the seals for the destruction of the gob fire have been removed, in which case a week or more may elapse before they can be reached. [...]