Wakefield Museums and Castles

This is a miner’s lamp, specially designed for use in a coal mine. There were dangerous gases in coal mines, known as 'damp'. Some of the gases were poisonous, like carbon monoxide. Others were explosive.

Fire damp contains methane and could explode if it came into contact with naked flames. This was a real risk, especially before electric lights when candle flames were the main source of light.

In the early 1810s many miners died in fire damp explosions.

There was a great need for 'safe' lights for coal mines. By 1816 there were two new kinds of lamp. This is a Davy lamp. It has a wire mesh around the flame to prevent contact with fire damp and absorb heat from the flame.

The lamps were also useful for protecting the miners from poisonous gases. The flame burnt with different colours and intensity depending on which gases were present. This meant the lamps could be used to monitor those gases. 

Unfortunately, these improvements didn’t stop all mining accidents. This lamp was used by David Tate, a miner at the Deep Drop. The Deep Drop was the Silkstone Shaft, part of the Victoria Colliery at Stanley. This shaft opened in 1835.

When the first seam was exhausted, the shaft was extended down below 400 metres to reach a new seam of coal. The Deep Drop was known to have a lot of gas. 

On Tuesday 4 March 1879, 55 miners went down at 9 pm for the night shift. At 10:05 pm a huge explosion rocked the ground. It blew a great storm of debris and smoke out of the ventilation shaft.

David Tate used this lamp went he went down afterwards with the rescuers to search for survivors and recover the bodies. An inquest concluded that a pocket of gas had been released and ignited by a naked flame.

21 miners died in this disaster. This included five boys, aged between 12 and 17.