In a message dated 01/05/2004 14:35:21 GMT Daylight Time, tobycat@cwgsy.net writes: Forgot to say that the colliery where the disaster took place (in my previous message to the list) was Little Usworth near Washington. Now I am confused! First you say it was a South Shields Colliery disaster, then you say it was at Usworth, some nine miles from South Shields. Which is correct and, if it is Usworth, where, other than its being reported in a South Shields newspaper, does South Shields come into it? . Incidentally, the colliery in Little Usworth township was Usworth Colliery, which did not officially close until c1970, though for its last few years it was simply a man-access pit for the mining complex based on Wardley Colliery, where all the coal was raised. The site is now part of an industrial estate in Sulgrave Village of Washington. The disaster usually quoted in respect of Usworth was the explosion of 1885, though there was indeed a "lesser" (!) disaster in 1850, when the pit was only a few years old. For South Shields (St Hilda's) Colliery, the shaft tower of which still stands as an industrial monument, the usual disaster quoted is that of 1839, about which Doug Smith published a booklet a few years ago, called "Killed by Candle". . Usworth was probably unique in the NE coalfield in that it was financed with Jewish money. David Jonassohn, a Sunderland merchant, bought an estate in Usworth, which included Usworth House, later known as Usworth Hall, in the 1840s. He sunk Usworth Colliery more or less straight away, and ran it for several years before selling it to the Bowes/Palmers company. Officially owned by Bowes, at one time it had the brother of Sir Charles Mark Palmer as Colliery Manager. In its latter days it was owned by the Washington Coal Company and managed for them by an agent. In the nineteenth century Usworth had a reputation for militancy and men from it were prominent in the formation of the Durham Miners' Association. I have considerable information about Usworth Colliery, about its history and about the disaster of 1885, which I gathered for a talk I gave on the subject to Sunderland Antiquarians some five or six years ago. Not only that, but only last night I was talking, in Usworth Club (CIU, built n the site of the manager's house) with two ex-Usworth miners, one disabled from a roof fall there and the other a retired Deputy Overman! . Geoff Nicholson . 57 Manor Park, Concord, WASHINGTON, Tyne & Wear NE37 2BU Ask for details of NBL/DUR family history research in depth by THE local expert, working for YOU.