Levant Mine Disaster

Levant Mine Disaster

Rosemary Aitken

13 February 2019

St. Gerrans and Porthscatho Old Cornwall Society’s February meeting was addressed by Mrs. Rosemary Aitken, nee Rosemary Rowe, born in Penzance during the Second World War. Under her married name she has written eleven novels set in turn of the 20th Century Cornwall examining the social conditions in the Penwith area before the 1st World War. She has also written a series of Crime novels set in second-century Roman Britain featuring the Celtic sleuth and mosaic-maker Libertus.  Rosemary Aitken’s subject was the Levant Mine Disaster and the loss of 31 miners. Rosemary informed us of the back ground to the disaster and her connection to it. During the First World War, miners who had joined the Cornish Artillery Regiment in 1918 to dig tunnels under the German front lines and set charges to blow up the German defences, earned 3 times the wages of the other soldiers. On returning home from the war to poor wages, the miners went on strike for two months. The strike was to end the practice of having to give part of their wages as credit at the shops owned by the mine-owners where they had to pay over the odds. This strike took place just three months before the Levant disaster and it had taken two months to make the mine dry again at the lower levels. 

At this time, the miners working at the lower levels were raised by a Man Engine, which involved the men being carried up and down at 12 foot levels at a time, up to 17 levels from the bottom of the mine to the top. Two days before the disaster two workmen complained of a funny noise coming from the lifting gear. The management looked into the complaint and recorded that the two ‘trouble maker’s’ complaint was unjustified. They both died two days later when the Man Engine lifting arm broke and the other arm fell to the bottom of the mine taking the lift levels and the platforms on the up side to the bottom of the shaft. Men were killed, crushed and injured. Rosemary’s grandfather had lost his wife three months earlier. Heavily pregnant she was startled by the mine hooter, which caused her to fall while handing out her washing on the gorse, and go into labour. She and one of her twins died, leaving Rosemary’s grandfather with 11 children. Rosemary’s grandfather was then killed in the Levant Disaster and the family was brought up by the eldest daughter in Penzance. 31 miners lost their lives but no one was found guilty of any crime; it was thought rust on the Man Engine was to blame. The company paid no compensation to the workers or their families; most workers did pay a small amount to a Benefit Society which helped some families after the disaster. Although a fund was set up by Public Subscription to help the families of the dead and injured, it was very difficult to get any help from the fund. When the fund was closed decades later, it still had thousands of pounds in it.

This tragic story was told in great detail and passion by Rosemary Aitken and everyone greatly appreciated the time and effort put into her presentation.