{"id":9003,"date":"2017-11-28T18:22:09","date_gmt":"2017-11-28T18:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/?p=9003"},"modified":"2017-11-29T18:50:44","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T18:50:44","slug":"barnett-and-his-brickworks-fatal-falls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/?p=9003","title":{"rendered":"Barnett and his brickworks- fatal falls"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are so many layers comprised within the Rattlechain site and its history, and just when I thought I had got to the bottom of one aspect, up surprisingly pops another piece of the jigsaw which reveals a new set of research.<\/p>\n

Samuel Barnett’s part in this sorry tale- digging the marl hole <\/a>that would become the lagoon was obviously not without its dangers. We of course know quite a bit about the 1899 canal breach, but little of what happened after this at the site in the following years. The excellent British Newspaper archive has again turned up something surprising which I have not read about before, which is very odd as it involved the deaths of some of his workforce at the site. Unlike the breach, these deaths claimed the lives of two men who were erecting a new brick chimney at the works.<\/p>\n

The following article was published in The Birmingham Daily Gazette<\/strong> on 23rd January 1906.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We learn here that this new structure was around 150 feet high when three workers\u00a0were involved\u00a0during \u00a0its collapse.<\/p>\n

Richard Millerchip<\/strong> of Chapel Street , and Benjamin Astle<\/strong> of Peartree Street, both West Bromwich paid with their lives and died in their trade by building for Barnett. Another man Harry Hunt was also seriously injured by the falling bricks.<\/p>\n

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Another article from the Wellington Journal on 27th January 1906 states that Millerchip was descending the stack when it gave way,<\/p>\n

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A further article from the Gloucestershire Echo reveals the ages of the two men, Millerchip 28 and Astle 22. There is gruesome detail about both men’s necks being broken and Astle being buried beneath ten tonnes of masonry.<\/p>\n

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Named in this article is the contractor working for Barnett- a Mr Hadlington<\/strong> also of West Bromwich.<\/p>\n

I have\u00a0also\u00a0now found\u00a0the coroners verdict on this “accident”,\u00a0<\/strong>with \u00a0Samuel Barnett and his endeavours appearing to conjure a myriad of them, including his own when he lost an arm. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hadlington blamed the dead. This 25th January article from the Birmingham Daily gazette blames Richard Millerchip for leaning over the edge and also frost thawing out the mortar when a fire was lit. It is unclear from this article and the first if Astle fell or was fallen upon.<\/p>\n

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Who needs Fred Dibnah?<\/p><\/div>\n

No doubt this setback at the works was soon remedied by someone else stepping into the dead men’s shoes. We have an idea of a scale of this finished article from a picture of the stack in 1950, overlooking the now watery lagoon that Albright and Wilson would have been dumping in.<\/p>\n

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A similar structure<\/span> – the J.N Lester Bradford Iron works chimney on The Walsall Canal dated from 1882, and still surviving would perhaps show what this deadly erection would have looked like up close, and the riveted column design. <\/span><\/div>\n
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Barnett’s trials and tribulations <\/a>I have looked into some<\/span> detail at before,\u00a0but two death notices about his own fatal fall also make an appearance some 12 years after this incident from The Birmingham Daily Post<\/strong> dated 9th May 1918. <\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
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This “accidental death” verdict at his inquest confirms the story about his horse and cart being startled by a traction engine.<\/span><\/div>\n
An earlier article from the same paper dated 7th May<\/strong> confirms he died in hospital after being thrown , but the fact that he was being driven by his son is the new surprising information here. I had always assumed he was riding himself, but the name “Bert Barnett”<\/strong> also appears to have sustained serious injuries from the collision with a lamppost. <\/span><\/div>\n
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Unlike Barnett, the names of Richard Millerchip and <\/strong>\u00a0Benjamin Astle<\/strong> have been lost to history and the dusts of the brickwork demise. There are no streets named after them and they have been long forgotten with the bricks that fell on their heads which made their boss a very rich man. Of course we have history to speculate on the exact circumstances of\u00a0Barnett’s own demise, but “pony and trap” is probably the best epitaph for the legacy of this man in the Tividale area. <\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are so many layers comprised within the Rattlechain site and its history, and just when I thought I had got to the bottom of one aspect, up surprisingly pops another piece of the jigsaw which reveals a new set … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9003"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9003"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9022,"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9003\/revisions\/9022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatliesbeneathrattlechainlagoon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}