I would like to locate the coroner's report for William Holland. William Holland died on the 20th June 1865 in the Bradley Green Colliery owned by W. Bradbury as a result of a rock fall. The accident was investigated by the Coroner - Registration District Congleton in the counties of Cheshire and Staffordshire. The mine itself would have been located near Gillow Heath or Biddulph in Staffordshire. Thank you Also any information about the colliery and it's exact location.
There are details of Bradley Green Colliery at the page below. Scroll down the page till you find "Bradley Green". They are not all in alphabetical order. http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/coalface/Mouldspits/bpits.htm Below is the link which will take you to the recorded details of the death of W. Holland www. cmhrc.co.uk/site/database/result/26665.html My experience of searching for coroners reports has not been good. I have only been able to find newspaper reports and have not found that actual coroner's reports have survived. I hope this helps, Malcolm Webb Lincoln UK
Google it if you haven't already. I was checking something for somebody on a mine recently -putting in the mine's name. Some may have museums and there are websites that deal with other mine info that may have something. A lot of Coroner's reports haven't survived but a newspaper report may be available.
Hi Stafford, Just to let you know that I have moved this over to the Court Records sub-forum. Now, as to the location, I have had a look on GENUKI, starting with Biddulph, and just 3.6 miles away is Bradley (or Bradeley, as it is also known). However, there is no mention of any colliery being there . But......I have found that there is a recently opened museum in Staffordshire, which has a lot of information about mining that may help. You could try contacting them and see if they are able to pinpoint the location for you. (apedale.co.uk/). Also, if you have not done so already, a check of the newspapers of the time might provide more information than a Coroner's report. But stil, have a read of this TNA Research Guide to Coroners' Inquests.
Dee Dee, Malcolm and Jan thank you for the links and advice. I have William's death certificate. He was my Gt Gt grandfather. I've searched the online newspaper collections. So far I haven't found a reference to his death. I am hoping he would have been acknowledged at the time and the relevant edition will eventually be published. It would be sad to think his death was ignored. We visited Biddulph last year and photographed a plaque on the side of a pub in the centre of Biddulph. The plaque mentioned Bradley Green and I was wondering whether the mine was located close by. Unfortunately the photo was lost when my camera died. Malcolm, I really appreciate the link to 'Mould Pits D'. Hopefully it will help me locate it. I shall definitely contact the museum Jan, especially since I'm trying to find information about William's father, also William, who was reported to have died in a mining accident in Crabtree Green in 1843. There is no mention of William's death on the cmhrc site.
As others have already mentioned, many coroners' records have not survived. Jeremy Gibson and Colin Rogers have compiled a useful guide to what records exist, and where they are: Coroners' Records in England & Wales (3rd edn., 2009; Family History Partnership). For advice on holdings in a particular area, try contacting the relevant county record office. As you know the exact date of William's death, you could commission someone locally to look for reports in undigitised newspapers. I don't know how wide the scope of the British Newspaper Archive project is: it may be a very long time before the smaller provincial newspapers are digitised.
Apologies to the mods for posting a commercial link in my post#2. I hadn't realised that the CMHRC (Coal Mining History Resource Centre) is a commercial site -- I realise now it has a commercial sponsor. Apologies, Malcolm Webb Lincoln UK
The Staffordshire Encyclopaedia says "Bradley green, 1m. SSW of Biddulph parish church, had become the commercial centre of Biddulph parish by least the 1890s and was to take the name of Biddulph". The name Bradley Green does not appear on the modern large scale maps or street maps of the area. Does the death certificate show the street he lived in ? If so, I could pinpoint that more closely. There were very many coal mines around there and had been since at least 1066. I remember the last surviving one, Victoria Colliery, at the south end of Biddulph, and that probably closed in about 1990. Keith
Hi Keith, William's death certificate contains no personal information. The address given was Bradley Green, Biddulph. The only other information was cause of death and the name of the coroner who was the informant. I had assumed the address referred to the location of the mine since it was the same as the details given on the Coal Mining History site. William was living in Gillow Heath in 1862 when his son Thomas was born. The family were still there in 1871. From memory the Bradley Green plaque I mentioned was about 1 mile south of the church of St Lawrence. It was such a whirlwind trip I may have misremembered. I haven't had a chance to look closely at Malcolm's link in #2 which might help pinpoint the location on a modern map. Judging from some of the houses and buildings I saw I assumed the mine wouldn't have been located in the centre of what is now Biddulph. But again now that I think of it quite a few of the buildings would have been built after the 1860s. Thank you
