Story
Fielding was the youngest of ten children born to John Pickard (1823-1901) and Phoebe Green (1832-1872) who had married in Leeds on 6th September 1851, but were from Kippax. Fielding was born on 2nd December 1869 (birth certificate below).
Fielding’s first cousin was Benjamin Pickard (1842-1904) who had been Leader of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain since 1881, and who in 1893, had led the miners in the biggest industrial dispute the country had hitherto seen. Over the three years that followed, the coal mining industry had declined and coal miners were suffering. In September 1893, the workforce had to lobby the Micklefield Coal & Lime Company to withdraw funds from the Sick, Accident and Widows and Orphans fund, just to tide them over.
Fielding’s brother Louis Pickard died at the age of 18 on 4th March 1876, and later the same year his elder sister Emily Pickard (1856-1919) named her first son Louis Pickard to remember her brother. Louis was born illegitimately, and on 28th June 1878, Emily gave birth to another illegitimate son. Believing this child to have died in child-birth, she disposed of the body in a nearby pond, which came to light, and she was charged with child murder, though escaped with a lesser charge of concealing the birth and was jailed for a month. Despite this, Fielding let Emily and her son Louis live with him at 27 Robinson Lane Kippax.
Both Fielding and his nephew Louis worked at Peckfield Colliery, and set off walking to work at 6am as usual on the 30th April 1896, joining up with 6 other miners from Kippax who were doing likewise. Due to the state of the industry, miners had only been doing 3 paid days a week for the past few weeks, and today was a ‘laik’ or play day. No coal was to be removed, and consequently no miners would be paid. Fielding and Louis intended to gather the coal during Thursday, keep it in the mine overnight, and then return on Friday morning to remove it and get paid.
After taking the lift 185 feet down to the Beeston Bed, Fielding and Louis split up. Louis was working to the North with Fred Bellerby, aged 21, also from Kippax. Louis and Fred were the last two men to be killed directly by the explosions. Fielding was working to the South of the pit, close to the No.1 Dip, and was fortunate to survive. On 1st May 1896 the Manager of the Garforth Colliery, Robert Routledge was leading a rescue party, and wrote in his diary:
In fact the man they thought to be Fielding is likely to have been Richard Shepherd, and the boy with the pony would have been George Edwin Dunnington. Fielding joined a group of around 15 miners, which included John Hardwick, Lot Mosby, Dan Warwick, William Atack, Reuben Winfield and Joseph Day, and was able to leave the pit around noon. Having done so, Fielding volunteered to go straight back down and join one of the rescue parties. Of the 8 miners from Kippax who were at Peckfield, only Fielding, who was 27 years-old, and 19 years-old Sidney Revis made it back. Fielding was interviewed the same day by a reporter from the Yorkshire Evening Post, who wrote:
As Louis Pickard and Fred Bellerby had been working at the extreme North of the pit, they were among the last four bodies to be recovered, almost 2 weeks later. Fielding identified his nephew at the inquest on 12th May, and must have been horrified, as he could only identify the nephew with whom he lived by the boots he was wearing and the general shape of the body, as the rest of Louis’s clothes had burnt away, and the features were unrecognisable.
Unwilling to return to coal mining, Fielding left Kippax, and moved away to Cheetham Hill, Manchester, to work as a Brewer’s Drayman. However, he returned to Kippax and married Pauline Appleyard on 24th September 1898.
Fielding and Pauline had one child, a son who was born on the 30th April 1902, six years to the day after Fielding’s nephew Louis had been killed at Peckfield. They named him John Louis Pickard, and although he was born in Wigan, he was baptised in Kippax. The family then moved away to Broughton, Salford. On the 5th August 1914, England declared war on Germany. The following day, Fielding Pickard, now aged 44 and 5 months, enlisted with the army. The next day, 7th August 1914, Lord Kitchener appealed for volunteers. Fielding’s enlistment papers show he was 5 ft 5″, a motor driver by trade, and he left for France on the 16th August 1914, and stayed in the Army Service Corp, until 1919. His Service number was 1051. On the 3rd April 1918, his only child, John Louis Pickard died at Ladywell Sanatorium, Pendleton, Salford from meningitis aged 15, for which Fielding was granted leave. After he returned to France, Fielding was docked 7 days’ pay as a driver on the 20th April 1918 when his lorry clipped a curb, twisting the axle. He was also confined to Barracks for a further seven days as punishment. Fielding returned to Kippax after the war and lived at 29 New Street. He worked as a labourer for the well-known house builder, William Green, who constructed many of the houses in Kippax. Fielding died on the 21st January 1933, aged 63, and was buried with his son in Kippax, yards away from his first home on Robinson Lane. His wife Pauline passed away on 1st May 1970 at the age of 96.
30th April 1896. The Peckfield Colliery Disaster at Micklefield 