Mexborough & Swinton Times – Saturday 20 July 1912
Sad Crop of Funerals
The dreadful aftermath of funerals opened on Friday and for a day or two Denaby and Conisboro’ seemed to live in an atmosphere of varnished coffins and black coated processions. It was dreary and depressing in the extreme, and a great sigh of relict went up when, by Wednesday, most of the victims who were to be buried locally had reverently disappeared into their last resting places.
Picture two mining villages with blinds drawn for a week, and you can imagine a good deal of the rest. The same unnatural stillness which has never lifted from the area since the disaster. Prevailed or Friday and Saturday, while the clergy were busy performing their office and, great though the grief and bitterness was, one simply longed for some diversion to relax the terrible tension of quiet, patient, and stony suffering.
Sextons Busy
There were sixteen funerals at Denaby and ten at Conisboro’ on Friday, while on Saturday there were eight at Couiabore’ and six at Denaby; and on Sunday five at Conisboro’ and one at Denaby.
Most of the funerals at Denaby were taken by the Established Church, but nine were interred with Roman Catholic rites, including the body of Mr. Charles Bury, the last, and probably the greatest and most deeply mourned victim of the disaster, who was the ninth.
At Consboro’ graves were made in the cemetery for the victims of the disaster, and they were dug by fourteen sextons, with Mr. A. Hodgson, the cemetery caretaker, in charge. The work all round in connection with the funerals was excellently and swiftly done. Eight sextons were kept busily at work in the Denaby cemetery, and, course, a large number of victims are being buried by their friends in different parts of the country. On Thursday and Friday and Saturday the railway company wore busily despatching the bodies, principally via Doncaster, and coaches were kept constantly in the sidings for the purpose.
The First Funeral
The first funeral to be taken at Conisboro was that of poor Cyrus Schofield, at ten o’clock in the morning, and the first at Denaby was that of Charles Fletcher at midday. From then onward the processions were continuous, and there was a following of comrades and workmen for each one. The big feature of Friday’s funerals was, of course, this obsequies of Mr. Douglas Chambers. whose loss in the second explosion is so deeply and widely deplored, and which creates a vacancy in the managership of the Denbay Main Colliery. He was a superintendent in the ambulance brigade, and all that that fine brigade could do, and all that the colliery officials and workmen and the general public could do, to make the funeral impressive and to surround it with a halo of respect, they did.
Terrible Storm
The Ladies of the family were not well enough to undergo the. ordeal attending the interment, though it must -be said that, terrible as the blow has been, they have sustained it with fortitude throughout.
A very dramatic features of the funeral day was the terrible thunderstorm which broke right over Denaby and Conisboro’ at the conclusion of Mr. Douglas Chambers’ funeral, and which would give any amount of scope to the imagination of the superstition. It was so fierce and prolonged as to cause considerable delay in carrying out the remaining interments, and one funeral peril was actually caught in the thick of the storm when standing beside the grave in the cemetery, so that they were soaked to the skin with a tremendously heavy downfall.
Ambulance Victims
The delay occasioned at Denaby was so considerable that the last funeral was not completed until half past eight o’clock, when the clergy of Denaby, who, during the day had been assisted by clergy from Mexboro’. wound up what is probably the saddest and heaviest day of their lives.
The Thompsons, who ware in the first batch of victims, were buried at Mexboro’, and Marrow at Swinton. I am told that the Ambulance Brigade has lost 18 of its best men, including a superintendent, a third officer, and several non-commissioned officers if the phrase can be applied to this semi-military form of organisation.
The cornets of the band played the “Last Post” over the graves of three of the victims on Friday.