The day shift would normally start at 7am, but the men were due to start work at 4am that January morning, so that they could finish their shift early. The miners, the136 men who worked on the day shift, wished to attend the funeral of the young wife of one of their colleagues. It was an especially sad occasion as the young couple had not long been married.
The cage made four successful journeys that morning, carrying a total of about thirty men down to the bottom of the shaft. On the fifth trip, the cage successfully delivered a man and a horse, the total weight of which would have exceeded the weight of eight men which was the designated maximum cargo. This is merely academic, as the rope, which was supposedly of the highest standard, was calculated to withstand a working strain of over 4 tons and a breaking strain of approximately 32 tons!
At about 3:40 am, on what was to be the sixth decent, ten men crowded into the lift. Two of the boys pulled an old man out of his place in order to crowd themselves in. Despite this extra weight, given the statistics provided by the rope manufacturers, the total pressure on the rope should still have been well within the parameters of the ropes capabilities.
Part of the morning safety routines at the mine included the checking of the rope by the fitter/mechanical engineer. He would do this by running the rope, which was 140 yards long, through his hand to check for any frays. This procedure was apparently carried out the previous morning. The rope, consisting of 12 steel wires wrapped around a hemp cord, was relatively new, having been installed on September 18th 1882, approximately 16 months previously.
The engine room man and the trained Banksman would work together. The Banksman would signal to the engine man to raise the cage off the keeps. He could then pull the lever to retract the fangs of the keeps, allowing the cage to descend into the shaft.
There was, however, a problem with the fangs on one side of the keeps which did not always open fully. A horse door had been fitted to one side of the cage and since then, it was not uncommon for one set of fangs to catch on the door hinge and scrape against the side of the door. This did not happen on every occasion, but would certainly occur if the lever was not pulled hard enough to open both sets of fangs fully.
This is something the men were said to regard as dangerous, but none of them ever refused to go down in the cage.
On this terrible morning, the trained banksman was elsewhere. He was lowering men down in a second cage, which was prohibited for the use of carrying men. The person operating the keeps of the main cage was not a trained banksman and although he was not officially authorised to carry out this duty, it was not uncommon for untrained miners to do this.
As the cage started its decent, it apparently stopped when the top became level with the ground. Within seconds of this happening, there was a noise as the rope broke and hit against a railing. Some of the men screamed and some reached upwards, as the cage plummeted to the bottom of the 225 feet (75 metres) deep pit and landed with an awful thud, killing all ten of the passengers outright.
It is possible to work out that the travelling speed of the cage just before impact, (disregarding air resistance and resistance from the metal guides) was approximately 85 mph (136 km/h). At this rate of acceleration, the time taken for the cage to fall 219 feet (assuming the cage was 6 feet / 2m tall), would be less than 4 seconds.