Story
Joseph was born in Woodhouse, Leeds in 1837, but his parents Joseph and Mary brought him over to Aberford as a young boy. Money was always tight, and as a 14 years-old boy, Joseph was working as a servant for the Marshall family, and was lodging with the Wrightsons in 1861, working as an agricultural labourer. Joseph’s interest in lodging may be down to the Wrightsons’ next-door neighbours, John and Hannah Nettleton. On 4th May 1861 in Sherburn, Joseph married their daughter, Mary Nettleton (1840-1927), and the couple went on to have 9 children.
Their first child, William Wilson began working with his father at Peckfield Colliery, and had been in the Beeston Bed with his father for sixteen years by the time of the Colliery Disaster. William married in 1885, and had a family of his own, so did not live with his parents, but both families lived on Aberford Main Street, and usually William would have accompanied his father to work, but as it was a laik day, William had the day off, so his father walked the four miles from Aberford, over Hook Moor, and reached the Colliery before 7am, and made his way along the West Level. He turned up New North Road, and walked passed John Goodall’s Gate which, minutes later, was the scene of the explosion. He turned right and was 120 metres away from Goodall’s Gate when the explosion happened. The majority of the blast made its way back down New North Road and the West Level, but a section of the blast moved North, burning three miners, and killing four in roof falls. Joseph survived the blast, but as a result of the extensive roof falls, he had no means of escape. The blast had destroyed New North Road, and Old North Road, cutting off both ways out. At 59, Joseph was the most experienced miner, trapped alongside similarly experienced men in David Shillito, Samuel James, and George Daniel Edwin Taylor, but although the men had time to get together, they quickly succumbed to afterdamp poisoning.
On Saturday 2nd May, Joseph’s son William was part of Robert Routledge’s rescue party, which was heading towards his father’s place of work. They came to within 80 metres of finding Joseph, before the gas forced them to retreat, having recovered the body of Edward Goodall. After recuperating at the surface, they re-entered the mine. Another party was heading towards New North Road, so they headed in the opposite direction to the No.3 South Bord, where William discovered William Naylor Whitaker, who was still alive. Returning with Whitaker to the pit bottom, William then saw the dead body of his father, which had been recovered by the other rescue party. William formally identified his father’s body at the Inquest, and said his father’s appearance was quite natural.
Joseph’s widow, Mary did not remarry. She moved to Barwick-in-Elmet, and passed away in 1927, aged 87. On the 1911 Census, she is being visited by her daughter Mary Hannah Crosthwaite, who married Herbert Johnson Crosthwaite in Harrogate on 29th October 1892, and had come over to stay from Knaresborough.
30th April 1896. The Peckfield Colliery Disaster at Micklefield 