Cadder Colliery fire

Fire broke out underground in No. 15 pit while the Sunday back shift was working. Twenty-two of the twenty-six men below died, most of them from smoke and gas. Four got out through the connection to No. 17, one of them found alive after nineteen hours.

Cause

An underground fire, attributed at the time to the accidental ignition of clothes, lamp wick or timber by open lights or matches

Contributing factors

Open lights underground. A fire in the main road between the shaft and the working places, which cut the men off from the way they had come in. A shaft too deep for the county fire brigade's hose to reach the bottom of.

What happened

Twenty-six men of the back shift went down No. 15 at three o'clock on the afternoon of Sunday 3 August 1913, expecting to come up at eleven. Eight went to the number 2 machine section on the west, two to the pumps at the far north of the workings, and the rest to number 1 machine section on the east. About eight in the evening the fireman William Brown went down to make his customary inspection before the next shift and found the workings a few yards from the shaft bottom full of thick smoke and flame. He went straight back up and raised the alarm; the enginemen telephoned No. 17 pit, which reversed its air current, and John Marshall switched off the electric current feeding the pumps and the lights below. The other fireman, Charles Reilly, had smelt smoke around six. He warned the men nearest him — Robert Daly, Michael Keenan and Felix O'Neill — and started them along the communication road to No. 17, then took a lamp and went north through the workings towards the men at the pumps, waving it as a warning. He was not seen alive again, and his body was in the first group the rescuers found.

Rescue & recovery

The county fire brigade came from Cambuslang and found their hose could not reach the bottom of the shaft. Two attempts at rescue failed before a third, shortly after two in the morning, brought back the news the crowd at the pithead had been dreading: five bodies found, and twenty-two men certainly dead. By noon on the Monday all had been accounted for, fifteen of them lying close together. The last man found, the brusher Michael McDonald, had been in the burning pit for nineteen hours and was still alive.

Investigation & inquiry

The cause was recorded as the accidental ignition of clothes, lamp wick or timber by open lights or matches. The formal report has not been read for this record.

Memorials & commemoration

The men were buried on Wednesday 6 August 1913, the funeral procession crossing the Forth and Clyde Canal at Lambhill Bridge on the way to Lambhill Cemetery with some fifty thousand people gathered in Glasgow. A printed souvenir card issued in memory of the twenty-two, found generations later in a family Bible, is in the Scottish Mining Museum at Newtongrange.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• The dead were mostly young men and boys from Mavis Valley, Lambhill, Possilpark and Bishopbriggs. Three of them — Alexander, John and William Brown of Mavis Valley — were brothers, and two more, Robert and William Ramsay, were brothers of the same rows. James Flynn of Drummond Street, Lambhill, left ten children and Hugh McCann of Lochfauld Road left nine; the fireman Charles Reilly of Park Place, Maryhill, left seven. The youngest recorded is Hugh Anderson, a bencher of seventeen. ^1,2
• Michael McDonald, a brusher of Barclay Street in Possilpark, was the last of the missing to be found, at about eleven on the Monday morning. He had been in the burning pit for nineteen hours and was alive, though gravely exhausted. ²
• The county fire brigade was called from Cambuslang. When the firemen arrived they saw there was nothing they could do: their hose was not long enough to reach the bottom of the shaft. ²

Related terminology

Mining terms this disaster is structurally linked to, with the nature of the relationship.

• Fireman (contextual relationship)
  Both firemen are central to the story. William Brown found the fire on his inspection and raised the alarm; Charles Reilly warned three men out and went north to warn the men at the pumps, and did not come back.
• Naked Light (contextual relationship)
  The cause as recorded: open lights or matches accidentally igniting clothes, lamp wick or timber underground.
• Shaft (contextual relationship)
  The fire was between the shaft bottom and the working places, cutting the men off from the way they came in; the shaft was also too deep for the fire brigade's hose.

Photographs & further reading

This page doesn't try to reproduce everything — these are the best original sources found for this disaster.

Sources

1. (secondary) Cadder Colliery — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Cadder 3 August 1913 — Scottish Mining Website
3. (primary) Souvenir in affectionate memory of twenty two miners — Durham Mining Museum (Pitwork)

Record created: 10 September 2026 · Last researched: 10 September 2026