Story
Edwin was born in Holcombe, Somerset on 18th November 1869, and was the son of Mark Maggs and Mary Collett who married on 7th August 1852. Mark moved up North, and married Ada Knight (1874-1943) in 1891. The couple lived with Ada’s mother, Martha Stanley (1833) and her second husband, Joseph Johnson, who worked with Edwin at Peckfield Colliery. Edwin and Ada had a son and daughter in Micklefield, who were named Mark and Mary Maggs, after Edwin’s parents. The family lived at 35 Brick Row, Micklefield, and were visited on Wednesday 29th April 1896 by Joseph Johnson, before the two men set off to work on the following morning.
Edwin Maggs and Joseph Johnson were working alongside two brothers, Joseph and Walter Winfield in the No. 3 Dip. There about ½ mile from the shaft bottom and a similar distance from John Goodall’s gate, where the explosion occurred. Two of the four men hadn’t started work, as they weren’t fully dressed, but nevertheless, they opted to leave their workplace, and made a dash towards the main shaft. They were fortunate that the No.3 Dip had three doors near the top, so the blast did not travel down their path. However, they did not reach those doors or the West Level, as they succumbed to after damp poisoning. Their bodies were found by Charles Houfton’s rescue party. They found Edwin Maggs had fallen closest to the West Level, then Walter Winfield, followed by his brother Joseph. The rescuers noticed from the footsteps in the dust, that the four men had been running towards the West Level, but that Joseph had suddenly stopped, and turned around and had just begun retracing his steps to look for another way out, when the afterdamp gas overtook him. They were known to the man who found them, Walter Toplis, who had walked over from Hemsworth to join the rescue efforts at his former workplace. He confirmed that Joseph and Edwin were father-in-law and son-in-law.
Edwin’s body was brought out on 1st May. He was identified by his widow, Ada Maggs, who also identified the body of her step-father, Joseph Johnson. She stated the the face of her husband seemed rather swollen, which was a common description of the miners who had died from afterdamp poisoning.
Ada left Micklefield after the death of her husband and step-father. On 17th July 1897, Ada re-married Robert Arthur Rose in Featherstone, and brought her mother to live with her in Castleford, along with her son and daughter, Mark and Mary Maggs. After the death of her second husband, Ada remarried John Gowland in Armley on 24th December 1926, and was living at 6 Greenock Terrace, Armley when she passed away in 1943.
30th April 1896. The Peckfield Colliery Disaster at Micklefield 