Sheffield Independent – Tuesday 15 January 1889
Colliery Offences at Denaby.
Henry Malam, a youth, had a warrant issued against him, he not answering to a summons, for a breach of Special Rule 99 at Denaby Main Colliery, on December 12th, by taking a tobacco pipe down the pit.
James Humphreys and Henry Allott were each fined 20s. each, including costs, for a breach of Special Rule 4 at Denaby Main Colliery, by doing an act in the mine which was likely to endanger the safety of some person in the mine, on December 19th.
Defendants were going down Montagu Plain, and they mischievously placed a “dirt tram ” on the rails, and it ran down an incline of 1 in 12 a distance of 300 yards, to the danger of about 50 men, who in the ordinary coarse were changing shifts at the time. The “dirt tram ” caught the gearing of a pony, and was knocked off the rails. The gearing was stripped off the pony, bat the animal was not hurt.
The Chairman said it was a shameful thing for the defendants to do, to injure their masters’ property in that way. He wished they could give the defendants a flogging as well as fine them.
William Flinders and Patrick Dillon were charged with a breach of Special Rule 90, by riding on an underground road without permission of the manager, and Dillon was farther charged with a breach of a special rule for neglecting to place a backstay behind a train of corves travelling up an incline on December 19th. The defendants rode on the corves a distance of about 1000 yards in a new drift, the gradients being 1 in 4 to 1 in 18, there being upon them at the same time no backstay, which ought to have been placed there by Dillon, as the pony driver.
They were fined, Flinders 5s. and costs. , and Dillon 5s. and costs for riding on the corf, and Ss. and costs for the other offence.