FORTY miners lost their lives when an inrush of water flooded number 23 pit at Redding colliery, near Polmont, Stirlingshire, in September 1923.

Their bodies were retrieved over the following days and weeks. The final body was brought to the surface in early December.

Five other miners had been rescued alive after being entombed for ten days.

The disaster, which remains one of the worst ever in the Scottish coalfield, happened on Tuesday, September 25, while the night-shift was at work in number 23 pit.

The rescue operation began immediately as families, already fearing the worst, gathered at the pit-head.

For several hours, this newspaper reported, “the relatives and friends of the entombed men held despairing vigil on the banks of the [Union] canal awaiting news from the rescue parties which had come with all possible haste from Larbert, Coatbridge, and other points.

“Five weary hours, indeed, had passed in an apparently hopeless attempt to get in touch with those below. Then the outlook underwent a dramatic change”.

News arrived that at disused shaft a half-mile away, known to miners as the “gutterhole”, rescuers had managed to communicate with some of the 66 trapped miners. All attention was now focused here.

Gradually, 21 miners were rescued via the disused shaft. Several bodies were also recovered.

“As the identity of rescued men became known”, the Glasgow Herald said, “there were touching scenes of greeting. But there was nevertheless studied restraint. Too many of those present, it was realised, would be deprived of the joy of reunion with those who had left them the previous evening”.

One miner, John Forrester, had sacrificed his life by turning back from a means of safety to warn his comrades.

Sir Adam Nimmo, chairman of the firm that owned the colliery, was interviewed by journalists at the scene. "He was obviously distressed by the terrible calamity", the Herald recorded.

Sir Adam said that the flooding of the pit was the last danger which anyone who knew it intimately would have apprehended. It was normally exceptionally free from water, he added.

* Continues tomorrow

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