If it wasn’t for a tragic mining disaster in Cumbria, music might never have found a home on London’s Denmark Street. At around 7.30pm on 11 May 1910 at the Wellington Pit in Whitehaven, a buildup of methane was set alight by a stray spark, possibly caused by a faulty safety lamp. The explosion and underground fire destroyed tunnels and blocked potential escape routes. At the time, 140 men and boys were working deep in the mine. Four escaped, but the rest remained unaccounted for. Although one of the survivors immediately went back into the mine to aid the rescue party, conditions proved impossible. The King sent a telegram to the mine owners to express his concern while families waited to hear of the fate of their relatives. “It was a night of wholesale human agony,” reported the Times & Express.
The mine wasn’t opened again until late September, at which time 136 bodies were slowly and painfully recovered from the earth. Among them were a father and his two sons, who had made themselves a bed and were found embracing each other. A message was written in chalk on a nearby wooden beam: “God is our refuge and our strength.”
