More than 200 men, boys and one woman died at Morfa during those years and a memorial to them has been erected, near to the original site of the mine, within the TATA Steel plant in Port Talbot.
The following poem, written for a memorial service held on site on 8th March, 2019, will appear in Remembering Morfa: Stories of Coal, Catastrophe & Courage by myself and Port Talbot family historian, Allen Blethyn, to be published at the end of 2020.
Mrs Peppin
John Peppin, b.1857, was one of 87 men killed in the Morfa Colliery
Explosion on 10th March 1890. His body was not found until December 1894,
one of the last to be recovered. Between five and nine men remain entombed in the old workings.
Mary Ann Peppin’s hat, shawl and jacket, which she wore to her
husband’s funeral on 15th December 1894, are held in a collection at the
National Museum of Wales.
It is an unearthly
thing to bury a man
almost five years
dead. You swing
from cold grief to
release, from the ache
you still carry in
your blood and bones
to the comfort of
the hymn you sing
in the Chapel of
Ease. It is cold today.
Your two youngest
girls, four and six,
have stayed at
home. The two boys
fidget next to you
on the wooden pew,
the memories of
their Dad as faint
as ghosts. Your
eldest stares ahead,
her face as pale
as your jacket’s lace trim.
And all the years
between then and now
spill their dread
and fear through
this vault of
stone and glass:
the first news of
the blast hammered
on your door in
Brick Row, the two miles
you ran in the
coal-black dark,
breath nettling in
your throat, to join
the other women
praying and crying
at the mouth of
the pit. You kept vigil
for as long as you
could until
your breasts ached
with so much milk
you ran home again
to feed the baby.
You remember the
candles in the windows:
West End, Chapel
Row, Inkerman,
the Constant,
flickers of hope and pain,
and Mrs Jenkins
weeping for days
through the Row’s
thin walls after
her boy was
brought up dead. And on
it went, weeks,
months, and then the years:
men recovered from
the seams and delivered
back to earth. The
mind has curious ways.
Even after they
flooded the pit,
some mornings
you’d wake sure
of seeing his
sweat-streaked face.
You never did
again.
Not after they
came on Tuesday
and told you he’d
been found tucked
in an air-pocket
in the Cribbwr seam.
‘In a wonderful
state of preservation,’
someone said and
someone else
kicked him in the
leg. And not
when Roderick’s
brought the coffin:
you told them to
be sure it was sealed.
The vicar’s
drawing to a close.
You stand and
watch the bearers take
your husband’s
weight upon their shoulders,
and draw your
children near. Poor dabs.
And not just
yours. How many was it?
200 one paper
said. And 69 widows.
Outside the chapel
a sudden gust
lifts the ribbons
on your hat, black
streams of silk in
the wounding winter air.
The ground is hard
beneath your feet.
You make yourself
smile
for your
children’s sake, look them
in their trembling
eyes and think
about the men
still waiting to be found.
‘Your Dad’s home,’
you say.
