Two factors in Marion Nash’s life prompted her to start her family tree – the birth of her grandson Tim, and the advent of the worldwide web: “Suddenly I felt a need to find out more about my family.”
“My grandmother Marion McCabe lived in the Stanrigg and Airdrie areas of North Lanarkshire in Scotland,” she continues. “I began researching the McCabes there, and found a book in Airdrie Library about a disaster at a coal mine that mentioned the surname.”
The book also revealed that Marion’s distant cousin John McCabe had performed an act of heroism. Naturally, she began researching him. He was born on 6 December 1901 at Longriggend, just a few miles from Stanrigg.
When John left school he became a miner, like his father Joseph. He worked at the Stanrigg and Arbuckle Pit with his brothers Thomas and Joseph junior.
On the morning of 9 July 1918, the weather was dreadful. It had rained heavily for two weeks and the mossy ground covering the pit was sodden, making it unstable.
John, Thomas and Joseph junior assembled for the 6.45am shift with 70 other men working the ‘Humph’ and ‘Virgin’ seams. John was a drawer, which involved pulling heavy carts of coal to collection points.
After 10am, there was a breach in the clay roof and black, heavy liquefied moss flooded in towards the Humph seam. At 10.30am, John had reached the bottom of Number 3 pit with a full load of coal. He would have heard the dreaded cry “Moss, moss, moss”, alerting him to danger. The three men and two boys with him escaped up the shaft.
Black, heavy liquefied moss flooded in towards the seam
“John, who was only 16, knew that other miners, including his brothers at the Virgin seam, had not been warned. They would be suffocated by the moss.
“He raced a quarter of a mile down the dark, low passages towards the coalface. He could have been killed at any moment.
“John managed to reach his brothers and the 48 men working alongside them, and they all escaped up another shaft.”
It was later confirmed that 19 men and boys at the Humph seam had been trapped and died.
“At the inquest John was asked, ‘Could you have gone up the pit, if you liked?’ John replied, ‘Yes, but I thought it better to go to the face to fetch the men out.’ The courtroom burst into applause.”
Marion was thrilled to discover that John received a citation to appear before George V to be presented with the Edward Medal, bestowed upon miners and quarrymen who endangered their lives to save others. John was among its youngest recipients.
“Later, John’s Edward Medal was replaced by the George Cross at his own request.”
Despite his experiences, John returned to work as a miner. “He married Annie Dowdalls and they had a family. I was delighted to discover that he lived until 1974.
“I read of John’s bravery with love and admiration in my heart for a boy who so treasured his family that he didn’t think of his own safety. His impulse saved many lives that day.”
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