Bedminster coal: Blood, sweat and tears

Speaker Garry Atterton is proud of his Bedminster upbringing, though he no longer resides in the area. While we listened to former miners singing of ‘black gold’ the screen showed a list of eight mining-related incidents.

Garry began his talk by saying the incidents were all newspaper headlines about a death of a Bedminster miner. There were gasps from the audience when he added that they were all from the same family. Garry explained how his research started to uncover their story. His wife’s grandfather George Fox they knew was a Bedminster coal miner but no other family members were known to be miners. Talking over family matters one day, they looked at George’s marriage certificate to Elizabeth Garland where her father Thomas Garland’s occupation was entered as coal miner. This was new and spurred Garry to research on Ancestry. ‘Within an hour’ he had uncovered five generations of coal miners in the Garland family – the one alluded to at the start of the talk.

2. Five generations of Garland family miners.jpg

Naturally the research expanded into the collieries themselves and their history. There were five in the Bedminster area of Bristol Coalfield. (see below)

The Smyth family, well-known as one-time owners of Ashton Court also owned land where coal was mined and benefited financially. The industry was dangerous and the miners perhaps behind the rest of the country in fighting for better conditions including stricter safety procedures. Support for families affected by colliery accidents was organised within the community itself on an ad hoc basis.

An article appeared in the Western Daily Press in November 1882 describing support being raised for Sarah, widow of Isaac Garland killed at Dean Lane colliery; she had four children under nine.

William Whitfield was the figurehead in setting up the Miners Association in 1889. There were 156 deaths recorded from 1776 to 1945. Nearly one-third were at Ashton Vale Colliery. The worst incidents involving 10 deaths occurred twice – at Dean Lane in 1886 and Malago Vale in 1891. The Dean Lane accident was an explosion heard miles away. The danger of gas had been considered low in the Bristol coalfield at least in the early days when Bristol miners even preferred to work underground by candlelight which was superior to that from a Davy Safety Lamp.

The last death in the area was another member of the Garland family -- William Thomas Garland at South Liberty Colliery in 1922.