Vancouver Coal Company
As part of the Chinese Historical Wrongs Legacy Initiative, we’ve digitized a small selection of inquests and inquiries from 1872 to 1934, found in series GR-0431. These were chosen to reflect the experiences of early Chinese immigrants to B.C. – their living and working conditions, and their unfortunate accidental or unusual deaths. They range from a woman working in a brothel in Barkerville who died of natural causes to three sawmill workers who died from malnutrition. Learn more.
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42
James Knight Farmer and Miner being duly sworn saith: To Mr Eberts. I am a farmer at present but worked in the Vancouver Coal Company’s shaft on the morning shift on the day of the explosion. I was working in no 3 south level I think off the slope marked in the map 2 W. My partner Mr James Williams on the same shift and my partner on opposite shift Mr Danson and Burns. Williams worked in the morning shift with me. Had been working there about four or five months. Had worked at Wellington before this – about seven or eight years ago. That is all my experience in coal mining. The ventilation in that mine was very good and there was a good current of air. I have not [? much] much gas there to amount to anything. I had been working in that stall two months and a half prior to explosion. Hare never worked at the face of the diagonal slope. I have not heard of much gas in the vicinity of any stall to amount to anything. Never came across much gas. I {?truck] a small feeder once in a while but it wasn’t much. Do not know when Malpars or Bradley worked but I knew where Malcolm worked and that was the only one whose place I knew. I have heard that the men were taken not far for a part of a shift on one occasion in the new Slope. I heard that some of the men were sent home. I never had any complaint to make to the manager on account of [?] of ventilation in the mine. It was pretty dry at the face of my stall but the next level below or one hundred feet lower down it was not. I could get a shovel full of [?] [?down] whenever I wanted it. My stall was two or three hundred yards from number three level. It was twenty five or thirty yards from level to face of stall. I have never been down the diagonal slope. The diagonal is dry in some places and damp in others. It is damp I think in places from the [?charm] cast to the place where I turned off and in other places dry. Has I have noticed water in the sides and in the holes where the [?] worked. I never encountered