British Mine Safety Research on Coal Dust, Combustion, and Industrial Risk Assessments, 1926–1933

Safety in Mines Research Archive

Archive

Archive of ten official studies from London's Safety in Mines Research Board and Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Produced in the years after Britain’s 1926 coal crisis, these government booklets show the effort to make mining safer through laboratory research. Coal still powered factories, railways, homes, and heavy industry, while explosions, coal-dust fires, and dangerous underground gases remained constant threats to miners. The studies translate those workplace dangers into measurable problems: how coal dust catches fire, how gases ignite, how coal can heat on its own, how electrical charges form in dust clouds, and how accurately coal and coke could be tested.

The repeated names of R. V. Wheeler, A. L. Godbert, S. C. Blacktin, T. N. Mason amongst others, place the pamphlets within the interwar conversion of mine disasters into controlled tests of flame movement, dust fineness, chemical composition, oxidation, and analytical reliability. The set records an early state effort to make industrial danger measurable before the later consolidation of mine safety under the Mines Regulations 2014, which replaced previous mine-specific health and safety law in Great Britain.

Ten printed pamphlets, approximately 40 pages each. Godbert, A. L.; Wheeler, R. V.; Blacktin, S. C.; Macpherson, H.; Simpkin, N.; Wild, S. V.; Greig, E. F.; Mason, T. N.; Newall, H. E.; Sinnatt, F. S.; Briscoe, H. V. A.; Jones, J. H.; and Marson, C. B. Saftey in Mines Research Board and Fuel Research pamphlets. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1928-1933. The Safety in Mines Research Board papers include Paper No. 25, “Some Problems Connected with the Determination of the Fineness of Coal Dust”; Paper No. 26, “Pyritic Oxidation in Relation to the Spontaneous Combustion of Coal”; Paper No. 33, “The Inflammation of Coal Dusts: The Effect of the Chemical Composition of the Dust”; Paper No. 43, “Spontaneous Electrification in Dust Clouds (With Special Reference to Coal Dust Clouds)”; Paper No. 47, “Pyritic Oxidation with Special Reference to the Ravine Seam”; Paper No. 63, “The Propagation of Combustion in Powdered Coal”; two copies or related issues of Paper No. 73, “The Combustion of Coal Dust”; and Paper No. 71, “Spontaneous Electrification in Coal-Dust Clouds.” The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research Fuel Research pamphlet is Physical and Chemical Survey of the National Coal Resources No. 29, “An Investigation of the Accuracy of Routine Analytical Determinations on Coal and Coke,” published in 1933. The rear lists printed on several wrappers place these titles among a larger official sequence of interwar mine studies on firedamp ignition, flame-proof electrical apparatus, explosive pressure waves, winding ropes, pit props, mine rescue apparatus, haulage accidents, and flame safety lamps.

The pamphlets are products of an era in which British mine regulation had moved beyond inspection alone toward experimental prevention, building on nineteenth-century accident inquiries, the Coal Mines Act of 1911, and earlier requirements for certified management and worker inspection rights. Parliament’s account of nineteenth-century coal mining notes that more than 1,000 lives were still being lost in mining accidents each year by 1870, and that later legislation introduced certified pit managers, worker-appointed inspectors, and accident inquiries. These papers carry that regulatory history into chemical and physical testing: coal dust is treated as a combustible medium, not as a nuisance byproduct; pyrite in coal seams becomes a cause of heat and oxidation; and laboratory accuracy becomes part of national fuel policy. Wrappers show age toning, spine wear, staple wear, light creasing, handling marks, and two signed cover pages; the group remains overall in good condition. The ten pamphlets preserve the interwar moment when mine safety, labor conflict, industrial chemistry, and coal dependence converged in official printed research.

Item #23531

Price: $550.00