One or two members may have attended our 'Morfa Colliery & Aberafan' talk at Port Talbot Library on 18th September where I spoke about the 1850 explosion that reportedly killed two men and injured 30 others. It was later reported that a total of 16 men had died as a result of that explosion.
We knew that James SQUIRE and William PASCOE had lost their lives and had both been buried at St Mary's on 12th December 1850. But we couldn't find sources that named any other men.
Burial registers at the middle of the 19th century are full of boys and men between 12 and 40 who 'could have' been working underground, but could equally have died from the century's prolific diseases, like TB and cholera. So it was a difficult, nigh impossible, task to identify Morfa's victims. But I had to do something.
So I decided to search St Mary’s parish burial register, in the first instance, between December 1850 and December 1851, which allowed for a year after the explosion. And I marked nine names that, according to their ages, could possibly be among the anonymous victims.
None of those nine had gravestones that may have had helpful information on them. So the only thing I could do, to be sure, was to get their death certificates from the GRO. And, out of those nine I was able to confirm that five of them had died from injuries received at Morfa. Here are their names and burial dates at St Mary's:
December 14th - Michael Callaghan, 22
December 18th- William Penberthy, 24
December 24th - Evan Joseph, 22
December 26th - John Thomas, 27
January 1st 1851 - Thomas Warlow, 23

Men of Coal, we remember you.
The Death Roll for lives lost at Morfa Colliery now stands in excess of 255.
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