Mauricewood Colliery disaster
mining accident in Scotland
The Mauricewood Colliery Disaster, occurred at the Mauricewood pit, near Penicuik, Midlothian, Scotland on 5 September 1889. A total of 63 miners were killed. At the time the mine was owned by the Shotts Iron Company Ltd.
Fire and rescue operation
On 5 September 1889 at around noon sections of the wood lining of a ventilation shaft ignited and the ensuing fire spread to a nearby coal seam, making an escape on the 239m deep main shaft impossible. At that time 70 men and boys were working underground, of which 63 died and 7 survived. The underground fire took four days to extinguish. It was not until 16 March 1890 that all the bodies of the victims were recovered.
Aftermath
The cause of the fire was never determined although it led to the pit being closed which caused major losses to the two local railway lines, the Penicuik Railway and the Edinburgh, Loanhead and Roslin Railway.
A memorial to those lost their lives was erected on the centenary of the disaster in 1989 and stands just off Mauricewood Road.
In literature
Dorothy Alexander's novel The Mauricewood Devils (2016) deals with the responses of the women left behind by the men who died in the Mauricewood Pit.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Mauricewood Colliery disaster” as mining accident in Scotland. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 21, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6793574. Authority coordinates are 55.842, -3.225. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1889, 1890, 1989 and 2016.
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