The Sneyd Colliery Disaster was a coal mining accident on 1 January 1942 in Burslem in the English city of Stoke-on-Trent.
[9] The force of the explosion was powerful enough to blow men off their feet; one apprentice, Reg Grocott (16) was blown around a corner and his trajectory was stopped by a water drum.
[10] The bodies of 16 men were recovered on the first day, when rescue operations had to be abandoned due to the presence of afterdamp.
[7] A fund was set up in the immediate aftermath to which many members of the public submitted money to, including people as far away as serving soldiers in Iceland.
[15] The resultant inquiry headed by Sir Henry Walker found that tubs used to move the coal out of the mine had derailed from their runners and damaged an electric cable.
[12] This version of events has been disputed in recent times with historians laying the blame on a steel cable that snapped and sparked.
[16] Others have said that the descending empty tubs hit a compressed air pipe which caused dust to billow out and a spark ignited it.