Grange Colliery 12 July 1810

Dreadful Accident:- About six o'clock in the evening of Thursday last, the inflammable air in a coal pit at Grange colliery, near Borrowstounnessness, exploded, and, out of twenty-three persons, who were in it at the time, awful to relate, the lives of only six were saved, seventeen having suffered, namely eight men and nine women! This most melancholy event, which was altogether unexpected and undreaded, (accidents, the effects of inflammable air, having been long unknown in that part of the country), is understood to have been occasioned by one of the suffering women having placed a light in a part of the pit, where, from the late uncommon closeness of the atmosphere, that air had collected in strength, and of which she had been warned by one of the survivors, and there to have set fire to it. The fatal effects were not produced by burning, as is common in cases of the explosion of inflammable air, but by its suffocating quality; and although Dr. Stewart, from Borrowstouness with two assistants, gave immediate attendance, and used every means for restoring suspended animation, his endeavours were successful in reviving only four out of twenty-one who were brought up in a state of insensibility, the other two having got out without receiving any injury. Besides the other calamities attending this dreadful accident, ten children, all under nine years of age, have been left orphans, and quite destitute, and eight have been bereft of their fathers, and therefore are as nearly unprovided for. A subscription has been set on foot for their relief, and the distress is so extended, that we think it is a subject worthy the aid of the humane in general. [Edinburgh Advertiser 17 July 1810]

The jury, on the trial of James Inglis, very generously disposed of their allowances for entertainments as follows:
To the Destitute Sick of Edinburgh L2 2 0
To the Destitute Sick of Leith L1 11 6
To the Magdalene Asylum L1 11 6
To the families of 17 unfortunate persons lately killed at Grange Colliery L1 11 6
To the widow and family of a servant of Mr Paterson, who was lately killed at Prestonpans, by a fall from a cart L1 11 0
Total L7 17 6 [Edinburgh Advertiser 4 September 1910]