General

Tell us a bit about yourself

I am 69 years old and come from a Whitehaven coal mining family: my grandfather, father and brother were all miners.

This is just one of the stories I have relating to the history of coal mining in our area.

Rejection

I was 10 years old. It was a very hot day and I had been playing all afternoon on the Golden Sands, a little beach beside the north pier in Whitehaven. 

I’d left the beach in my bare feet, carrying my little black punts and my empty water bottle. I was filling the bottle from the tap near the Wellington Inn, when suddenly crowds of people came running and shouting. 

More and more people joined in and I could hear a loud siren blaring. I dropped the bottle and joined the crowd heading towards the pit. There had been a big disaster underground.

There were hundreds of people at the top waiting for news of the trapped men down below. 

Cathy Fitzsimmons

I knew many of them. I recognised our parish priest from Kells, Father Kervin, and then I saw our Headteacher, Sister Winefrede with a crowd of ladies. 

Lots of people were crying softly, but the silence seemed eerie. I sat on the hillside with the other children until it got so dark I had to go home.

My Dad had been on first shift at nearby Haig Pit but, on hearing the news, he left his bed to join the rescue teams.

I looked forward every day to him coming home from work, all black and dirty. I would run to meet him and hold his hand. He would tease me by rubbing my nose and my cheek with his black thumb, leaving a smudge. My Mother had died when I was an infant and he was my whole world.

Now I waited at the gate all the next day until it got dark – and the next day, and the next. In fact it seemed an eternity until at last I saw him coming up the road. I ran towards him – delighted to see him. He seemed weary and sad. I tried to hold his hand but he pushed me gently but firmly away. “Ga yam , lass,” he said. “I’m garn to see Mr and Mrs O’Fee.”

I was distraught. My Dad had rejected me. I couldn’t understand why he would go to a neighbour’s house when I hadn’t seen him for so long.

I later learned that Mrs O’Fee had lost her father and her three brothers in the explosion and that Mr O’Fee had lost his only brother. My Dad had been in the rescue team that helped locate the bodies. His first task was to call on this family.

To this day, I can remember the pain I felt when I thought my Dad had rejected me. Yet, looking back, I also feel a sense of guilt. My little heartache was nothing. For on this day, Friday 15th August 1947, 104 men were killed in the William Pit Disaster. Surely the families of these men have more reason to remember this terrible day than I have.