Story
Joseph was born around 1852 in West Cowick, near Goole and was one of several children born to Ann Johnson of Lincolnshire. Joseph’s father is not known, as he did not reside with Ann on any of the Censuses. In 1851, Ann was a pauper and did not marry. In 1879, Joseph married a widow, Martha Stanley, who lived in Rawcliffe, close to West Cowick. Martha’s first husband had been a widower before he married Martha: James Knight (1815-1877), with whom she had children before they married in 1865. On the 1881 Census, Joseph and Martha were living at 99 Duke Street, Castleford. Despite having married two years earlier, Martha retained her original married name of Knight on the census and claimed that Joseph was living with her as a boarder, as was one of her children from her first marriage, Ada Knight.
Joseph and Martha moved to 3 Station Row, Micklefield, and Martha’s daughter Ada married Edwin Charles Maggs in 1891, and moved to 35 Brick Row, Micklefield. On Wednesday 29th April 1896, Joseph dropped in to see Ada, his step-daughter, and her husband, Edwin, and went to work with Edwin as usual the following morning.
Joseph and Edwin Maggs were working alongside two brothers, Joseph and Walter Winfield in the No. 3 Dip. They were about ½ mile from the shaft bottom and a similar distance from John Goodall’s gate, where the explosion occurred. The four men chose to run 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. His body was brought out on 1st May. He was identified by his step-daughter, Ada Maggs, who also identified the body of her husband, Edwin Maggs.
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 who had been born in Micklefield. 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 