TABLE VII. Comfort, Furniture, and Cleanliness of Dwellings. * Of these 33 were filthy. NOTE.-For TABLES VIII. and IX. see p. '221. TABLE X. Statement of the Number of Heads of Families belonging to Benefit Societies, exclusive of such as have funds in the Savings Bank. * Of this number 97 stated that they had subscribed to various clubs, which owing to want of funds, or other causes, had been broken up. TABLE XI. Showing the extent to which the Habitations were supplied with Books. * Of these 2,900 were among the higher class of dwellings, and may therefore be considered to possess books; but the question was not put, as it was found at the outset of the inquiry frequently to occasion offence. The greater part of the remaining 929 had one or more religious tracts, which they were in the habit of receiving from visitors, who called periodically to exchange them for others gratuitously. TABLE VIII.-Number of Sleeping Rooms as compared with the number of Inmates in each Dwelling. Among the superior classes no questions were asked in reference to the contents of this Table, and among the working classes many declined to give any information on the subject. TABLE IX-Number of Beds in each Dwelling compared with the number of Inmates. Many parties objected to give information on the contents of this Table, and the particulars here given were frequently elicited by leading the conversation indirectly to the subject; in several instances where parties were very poor, they declined to give information from a sense of shame. Abstract from a Register of Accidents in the Coal Mines of the Chamber and Werneth Company, at Oldham, during the Year ended October, 1841. By JOSEPH FLETCHER, Esq., Hon. Sec. [Read before the Statistical Society of London, February 25th, 1842.] A REGISTER of the injuries received in the course of their employment by the under-ground labourers of a single mining firm, for only one year, is scarcely a document to supply results in themselves worthy of serious examination by the Statistical Society of London. It is not for these results that it is now brought before its notice, but in the hope that the example of an accurate observation of the casualties to which mining labourers are subject will find imitators so numerous, as to afford data equally interesting to humanity and science, and useful to the miners themselves, if not in warning them against danger, at least in enabling them to form safe provident institutions, to mitigate the evils resulting from the accidents to which they are subject. This register, commenced without any express view to statistical purposes, applies to sixteen coal-pits in the vicinity of Oldham, in the east of Lancashire, where the inflammable gases seldom cause serious annoyance, and scarcely ever produce those dreadful explosions which, in some districts, destroy at one blast nearly every human being in a pit. Even of these worst disasters, the Commons' Committee on Accidents in Mines, in 1835, found no available record, the importance of supplying which will appear still greater than it did to that Committee, after a glance at the following statement of casualties in a district exempt from evils of this magnitude, and in mines worked on the most liberal scale, so as to reduce the danger of accident far below the average, even in this favoured district. This statement is derived from the record kept at Oldham, by the Chamber and Werneth Colliery Company, of all the accidents requiring surgical assistance, which have occurred in their sixteen pits, from the end of October, 1840, to the end of October, 1841; a record which they have been enabled to make in providing gratuitous surgical assistance for their people. The amount of casualty here presented is decidedly small for a concern of such extent; and the company's chief agent regards the accidents as of a nature which they could not by any means prevent. Indeed the endeavours made by this company, in instructing their people in the use of the safety-lamp; in laying down good regulations, and providing respectable underlookers; and in the outlay of money to make their works and gearing good and secure, are worthy of universal imitation. Although the number in each pit varied somewhat in the course of the year, the total number in the employment of the company underwent scarcely any change; but the period being one of slack trade, in which many of the colliers were not working full time, the exposure to casualty, it may be presumed, was proportionately less. A List of the Pits of the Chamber and Werneth Company, and a Return of the Number of Persons employed in them.-Friday, Dec, 11, 1840. Accidents demanding Surgical Assistance, which have occurred in the Pits of the Chamber and Werneth Colliery Company, Oldham, during the Year ending October 31, 1841. Accidents in the Pits of the Chamber and Werneth Colliery Company-continued. * The lad fell as he was taking the waggon to the shaft. In attempting to stop a waggon going down brow, he fell, and it went over his hand, The leg was taken off immediately below the knee by the surgeons the same day. Owing to the rail being broken, the waggon was thrown upwards. The waggon slipped off the rails, and was thrown upwards against the roof. Crushed between the waggon-wheel and rail while lifting up the waggon. ** The slipper got off the waggon that was following him, and crushed him. ++ Cleaning the waggon-road, when the shale from the roof fell. |