Three men die in accidents at work

Three local men were killed in separate industrial accidents, the Observer of August 1939 reported.

Labourer John Swan, 30, Ontario Place, Cowie, was fatally injured following an explosion which occurred when he and three other men were laying electrical cable at Inverkeithing.

William Farrish, 32, a linesman, also succumbed to his injuries, but the other two involved in the tragedy were expected to recover .

Fifteen men were engaged in laying the cable from Inverkeithing to Aberlour but only the four involved were in the immediate vicinity of the blast.

The Observer said: `In digging the trench for the cable, the workmen met an obstacle in the shape of solid rock. To remove the obstruction the rock had to be blasted. About 6pm the blasting charge was set off but this misfired. Swan and Farrish went back to the place several hours later and while Swan was drilling another hole, the charge went off.’

Mr Swan was living in lodgings in Dunfermline having only commenced employment with the cable-laying firm a few months earlier.

He had previously been employed at Burnhead Farm, Throsk, and was, said the paper, a well known and popular young man in Cowie. A member of the committee of the Bannockburn Colliery Band, Cowie, he was as football enthusiast. Mr Swan was unmarried.

Meanwhile, an inquiry was held at Stirling

Sheriff Court into the deaths of a Stirling miner and Dunipace Mill worker.

Peter Hunt, 40, miner, Duff Crescent, Raploch, was killed instantly when a large stone fell on him at the coal face in Millhall Colliery on June 21, 1939.

James Hendry, coal stripper, Main Street, St Ninians, was working about 27ft from Mr Hunt on the day of the accident.

He heard a rumbling noise and shone his lamp in the direction of Mr Hunt and saw the stone fall. Mr Hunt was in a sitting position at the time. Mr Hendry and others rushed to the aid of their workmate and when, after half an hour’s work, they managed to free him, he was dead. Witnesses said the roof was `not good’ but had been `properly wooded’. The jury returned a formal verdict.

The other inquiry probed the death of Mr William Sharp Bowie Bayne, 64, paper mill worker, Stirling Street, Dunipace. On the morning of June 8, 1939, he fell from a ladder into a pit in the soda recovery department of Carrongrove Paper Mill, Denny, and died from his injuries two days later in Falkirk Royal Infirmary.

Peter Munro, panman, Grove Street, Denny, told how on the morning of the accident a belt, which connected the driving wheel on an overhead pulley to an agitator in the soda mixing pan, had become detached. The pan was level with the floor and beside it was a pit about four feet deep and eight feet wide, with a channel of water in it.

Mr Bayne placed a ladder against the pulley, which was eight feet above the floor, and climbed up to fix the belt but when he put his hand on the driving wheel, it moved.

Mr Munro said his workmate lost his balance and grabbed the wheel, adding: `The wheel moved back again with the weight of his body and left his legs dangling free of the ladder. I shouted to him to hold on till I could get hold of him, but I was only halfway up the ladder when he fell into the pit.’

Mr Bayne was unconscious when colleagues lifted his head from the water. He died from head injuries and lacerations to the brain. A formal verdict was returned by the jury.