Great disasters have always moved men and women to put pen to paper and express the thoughts and feelings and those of others in verse. The Victorian mining disasters are rich sources of this verse. Much of is was anonymous and it expressed the feelings of the family for their loved one and much of it appeared on the remembrance cards that were fashionable at the time. Other poems appeared as the 'Penny Ballads' that were quickly written after a disaster and sold for one penny in aid of the dependants of the victims of the disaster.
All the poems record the sense of loss that the calamity brought on the loss of a community loosing many of it's menfolk, the plight of those left behind who now had no breadwinner and some record the heroic efforts that were made by their fellow workmen to rescue them or, in many cases, their bodies.
The verses are no great works of literature but they all reflect the feelings and thoughts of mining people, written from the heart and they stand as a true record of the folk heritage of the coal mining areas of Great Britain.
From a Victorian remembrance card for a dead miner.
Farewell! Farewell! My wife so dear,
I am at rest, you need not fear;
No anxious sorrow need you take,
But leave our children, for my sake.
- Haswell Explosion, Northumberland, 28th. September 1844.
- The Hartley Calamity, January 6th. 1862.
- Lines on the death of the men and boys at the New Hartley Pit, January 6th. 1862. Where did the miners die?
- Fearful explosion on the 30th. December 1868 at the Queen Pit, Haydock, Lancashire.
- Lines following the disaster at Ince Moss Colliery, Wigan, Lancashire. October 1871.
- Lines written after the Tynewydd Innundation, 11th. April 1877.
- The Wood Pit Explosion, Haydock Lancashire, 8th June 1878.
- From a Rememberance Card for Edward Pimblett, Wood Pit victim.
- From A Rememberance Card for Nathan Boon and his five sons, Wood Pit victims.
- The Explosion at Tunstall, Staffordshire at the Whitefield, Monday, 7th. February 1881.
- In Affectionate Memory of Jabez Redhall who was killed at the East Gawber Colliery and was interred at Barnsley Cemetary, 8th. September 1887.
- An Appeal on the Moorfield Explosion, 1890.
- Vanquished Heroes, Audley Mining Disaster, 1895.
- The Pit of Death. Morfa, Glamorganshire, 10th. March 1890.
- The Whitwick Colliery Disaster. 19th. April, 1898.
- Pretoria Pit Disaster, Lancashire, 21st. December 1901.
- Hoyland Silkstone Colliery, November 23rd. 1907.
- The Maypole Colliery Disaster, Lancashire, 18th. August 1908.
- The Senghenyyd Pit Disaster, Cardiff, 15th. October 1913.
- Thornhill Colliery Disaster, September 9th. 1947.