In the mining village of Silkstone, near Barnsley, Wednesday 4 July 1838 began like any other working day. A few hours later one of the worst disasters in Victorian Britain unfolded as 26 child labourers drowned in the Huskar pit.

Children working in dangerous environments was one of the ugly realities of the Industrial Revolution. Demand for coal from the high quality Silkstone seam was insatiable and there were plenty of boys and girls, including some who were under ten years old, employed at Huskar Colliery. Some entrepreneurs argued that their business was only profitable if they could keep wages low. This meant using cheaper child labour in roles which did not need adult strength. As there was virtually no provision for social welfare, other than the already despised workhouse, poor children were frequently obliged to ‘get a living’, from an early age. Often this was parental pressure, but the middle-class men who oversaw the Poor Law were keen to keep their contribution to the poor rate as low as possible. They expected a child to maintain its parents and siblings if they were not capable of earning a wage themselves, even if the work was dangerous or harmful.

The carnage at Silkstone happened on a hot, sultry and oppressive day. Early in the afternoon a storm of extreme ferocity hit both sides of the Pennine hills, producing what is now called a flash flood. Several homes in Silkstone village were flooded, as fast-flowing streams burst their banks and tore up trees and railway sleepers, while hailstones cut cereal crops to shreds.

By the standards of the time, the Huskar Pit was run reasonably, and its owner and managers appeared competent. Several of them had children who worked underground. When water seeped into the engine house, the foreman ordered a precautionary evacuation of the pit, but only a few workers had been hauled to the surface when the steam engine which worked the lift lost its power, a consequence of flooding.

When the lift failed, panic set in underground. The workers had no idea about the severe weather, and thought that an explosion had occurred. Ignoring the wiser counsel of experienced miners, who told them to wait at the lift shaft, about 40 children decided to walk half a mile (800 metres) along darkened passages and through a ventilation door, to an exit which came out in a wood.

The children’s determination to walk along the sloping passage, which pit ponies used to enter and leave the mine, was not known by the colliery staff on the surface, who were busy trying to restore steam to the lift. Had they known, it seems likely that orders would have been given to stay, as help was coming.

Adjacent to the exit in the woods was a stream which was newly swollen with water. As the children were walking through the tunnel, the stream overflowed its banks and water poured into the passage. The natural downward flow meant that it raced towards the ventilation door. Almost as soon as the group had crowded through the door they were overwhelmed by a torrent which knocked most of them off balance. A few were swept to safety in side passages. Some of the older, sturdier, children managed to scramble onto ledges. Twenty-six, who were aged between seven and 17, fell to the ground on top of each other. It would have been impossible for those at the bottom of the heap to move at all. The torrent surged against the door, which held firm, stopping the water from dispersing into the mine workings. Instead it rose to a height of around two feet for a few critical minutes, drowning all those who were lying in the passage.

As soon as the water receded, some of the survivors ran to fetch help. Men were quickly on the scene, untangling the bodies and lifting them onto carts. As the dead were taken back to their homes, villagers looked on in shock, mothers were sobbing and tearing their hair out, the local priest tried to offer any comfort he could and an ugly rumour began to circulate that the pit banksman, William Batty, had refused to bring the children to safety.

Victorian justice was swift when a death had to be investigated. The following day an inquest jury was sworn in and taken to view all the bodies, an experience which they must have found harrowing. With a sensitivity which reflects the shock, the coroner went out of his way to make space for parents in the inquest room and see that their questions were heard as the jury decided whether anyone had been criminally negligent.

The testimonies were heard in three hours. It became clear that William Batty had been doing everything possible to get the lift working and one of the surviving children described how they had all pestered until the experienced miners underground allowed them to leave the lift shaft.

Many Victorian inquests returned a verdict of accident in situations where a modern mind sees culpability. For the children of Huskar there is no conclusion other than that they died by accident in freak, unforeseeable circumstances. It was of little comfort to the bereaved.

The young victims were buried together in a single ceremony on 7 July at the local church. There was a row of four graves for the boys and at their feet a row of three graves for the girls. Typifying the values of the age, Elizabeth Clarkson was buried at the feet of her brother, James.

Mining tragedies were often local news but Huskar was reported in most local and national papers, though not always in detail. It does not seem to have remained for long in an outsider’s memory. When the Children’s Employment Commission visited Silkstone in Spring 1841 to gather evidence about child labour in industries which were not covered by the existing factory legislation, the accident seems to have surprised to the investigators.

More unexpected was the attitude of some bereaved families. Child workers Matilda Carr, Hannah Clarkson and Ann Hollings were interviewed but did not mention the accident which had killed their siblings, probably reflecting that child death was not unusual. Matilda, aged ten, had mined for just a week. This was a late start, suggesting that Isaac Carr, who had been at work when his daughter Elizabeth drowned, had kept Matilda away from the pit for as long as he could afford. The family had also named their new daughter Elizabeth.

After the Children’s Employment Commission included Huskar as part of its shocking evidence, the tragedy slipped from public view. Mining disasters with greater loss of life were a regular occurrence in Barnsley’s collieries. For over a century, a stone monument in Silkstone churchyard, reflecting the religious sentiments of the early-Victorians, was the sole memorial.

The bereaved families kept the memory alive with a powerful oral testimony which passed information down the generations. Later accounts originating with these families contain detail which did not feature in contemporary reports, such as seven-year-old Joseph Birkinshaw being a mute. A poignant description speaks of fathers carrying their dead daughters home over their shoulders. The girls had long tresses of hair that were still wet and dripping.

How Huskar and its child victims came back into public consciousness is a story in itself. A tragedy in 1966, when a landslide from a local pit hill engulfed a school in Aberfan killing 116 children, was one stimulus. Another was the increased accessibility of records which enabled people of working class origins to research their family history. A third was a change in historical emphasis which placed the lives of the poor alongside the deeds of the rich or famous. A different strand was the wish of the local community to mark the tragedy in a more modern way.

Within the space of a generation, Huskar has formed the basis of several dramatic interpretations in print, performance and art. Two new memorials have been built, one by the entrance in the woods. The other, a commemorative window in the local church was designed by a local artist and crafted by a couple of hundred local people. The site of the pit is sometimes visited by schools and the tragedy used to study child labour. Important anniversaries are marked in the village with community events. Twenty-six youngsters who emerged from a dark pit and drowned in a flood, now have a sad but honoured role in history. Their brief lives show the often dark reality on which Victorian England’s industrial greatness was built.

Silkstone Village is running several events in July 2018 to mark the 180th anniversary of the disaster. Details at silkstoneparishcouncil.gov.uk