01/09/2026
On 1 September 1923 twenty-one men died as a result of an accident underground at Bellbird Colliery, a disaster described as ‘unparalleled in the history of the Coalfields’. Six pit horses also died. A coronial inquest found that the miners had been poisoned by carbon monoxide gas.
When the alarm was raised hundreds of miners, including many who had just finished their shift and were headed home, raced back to the mine desperate to help with the rescue. They walked into the darkness of the mine with only determination and courage to bring their work mates back.
Rescue efforts were hampered by continuous gas explosions, but despite this deadly hazard the miners recovered 15 bodies. A manager from a nearby mine came to help, he entered the mine with one of the rescue party but was killed shortly afterwards.
There were more volunteers than the rescue parties could accommodate. So police were called in to manage the crowd, keeping anxious miners at bay while a plan was formulated and an organised rescue system was arranged.
The miners risked their own lives to save the lives of their comrades, then, when it was determined that no-one was still alive, they did all they could to recover the bodies.
And their courage continued into 1924.
In June 1924, trained volunteer rescue teams, using new breathing apparatus, re-entered the mine to look for the six miner’s bodies still trapped underground.
For months they searched, eventually finding five bodies. It would take until 1965 for the final miner’s body to be found.
Those who died:
• George Malcolm Bailey (28)
• John Borland Brown (48)
• George Chapman (32)
• Alexander Corns (21)
• Frederick Fone (21)
• John Graber (43)
• William Albert Griffin (30)
• William Hartley (28)
• Alfred Thomas Hines (25)
• Maurice Henry William Hyams (28)
• George Robinson Kelly (22)
• Joseph Frederick Lambert (22)
• Gordon Cuba Locking (25)
• Jeremiah McLaughlin (36)
• Charles Augustus Mills (38)
• Hugh Frederick Moodie (53)
• John Morgan (50)
• Harold Richards (39)
• Philip Roberts (21)
• George Sneddon (33)
• John Stewart (38)
