1. Life

Baptism

John Biscomb was baptised on 4 March 1832 at the parish church of St Mary the Virgin, Kippax. The register for 1832, page 143, entry no. 1137, records: John, son of William and Hannah Biscomb, abode Kippax, father’s quality labourer, ceremony performed by the Hon. and Rev. A. H. Cathcart, Vicar. West Yorkshire Archive Service reference P47/8.

Civil registration of births had not yet begun in 1832. A birth shortly before 4 March 1832 makes him about twenty-four years and ten months old on 9 January 1857. Charles Morton’s printed table does not give an age.

Parents and family

His father William Biscomb was a labourer living in Kippax. His mother was Hannah. The Biscombs were already numerous in the parish. William Biscomb of the Lord Nelson appears in Baines’s Directory of 1822; Henry Biscomb, carpenter, was father of Robert Biscomb, killed at the same company’s pit two years earlier. Thomas Biscomb, another Kippax carpenter, had a son Charles baptised in the same church in April 1832. Those are related households, not this baptism.

John must not be confused with Robert Biscomb (baptised 30 March 1823, son of Henry the carpenter), who died on 13 January 1855 when a pit rope broke at Locke and Co., Kippax.

Youth and work

Kippax in John’s boyhood was a growing coal parish east of Leeds. Locke and Co. were working Kippax and Kippax West Main by the mid-1850s. West Main is listed from 1854. The large Haigh Moor shafts at Owl Wood were not sunk until 1858, the year after John’s death.

No school record has been found. The son of a labourer in this parish commonly went to the pit as a boy. By January 1857 John was employed underground at Locke and Co.’s Kippax West Main. No printed 1841 or 1851 census extract has yet been tied to him with certainty.

Marriage — not proved

A John Biscomb married Mary Mosby at Leeds on 27 October 1851. That couple later appear in Kippax; Mary, widowed, married James Farrer in 1865. The dates would fit a man baptised in 1832, but the 1851 marriage register has not been seen for this note, so the identification is not treated as proved. Children attached to that household on later trees are therefore not listed here as his.

Death registration

The civil death of John Biscomb was registered at Pontefract. The national index entry reads: Biscomb, John; superintendent registrar’s district Pontefract; volume 9c, page 60. That is the January–March quarter of 1857, which contains 9 January. No burial register page for January 1857 has been supplied with this research; DMM marks the burial as not known.

2. The accident

On Friday 9 January 1857 John Biscomb was killed underground at Kippax West Main Colliery, the property of Locke and Co. The official cause is a fall of roof in the mine.

Charles Morton, H.M. Inspector of Mines, entered the case as accident no. 2 in his 1857 report, printed at page 165. The Durham Mining Museum abstract taken from that report reads: John Biscomb; died 9 January 1857; accident 9 January 1857; colliery Kippax West Main; company Locke and Co.; notes: fall of roof in the mine.

A fall of roof is the collapse of stone or coal from the roof of a working place or roadway. Morton printed a longer narrative for some Yorkshire roof-falls in those years; none has been reprinted against this particular entry. The case stands in the table as a single death. It is not grouped with the 1855 rope-break that killed Robert Biscomb and Joseph Pickard, and it is not the 1858 fall of coal that killed the boy Benjamin Pickard at the same West Main pit.

The commercial Coal Mining Accidents and Deaths Index gives the same date, employer and description (Fall of Roof in Mine), and places the accident at Leeds. Leeds is the nearest large town, not the pit. The pit was Kippax West Main, in the Pontefract registration district.

3. Coroner, newspaper and conclusion

No inquest transcript and no newspaper report naming John Biscomb have been found in the open indexes searched for this note. Inquests on pit deaths around Kippax were normally held by the coroner for the honour or borough of Pontefract, often sitting at a village inn within a day or two of the body being brought up. An example from the same year, printed in August 1857, shows Mr Taylor, coroner for the borough of Pontefract, sitting on a roof-fall at another West Riding pit; that sitting is not John’s.

What stands in official form is Morton’s classification: accidental death by a fall of roof at Kippax West Main, Locke and Co., 9 January 1857; one life lost — John Biscomb.

The civil registration at Pontefract (9c 60) is the legal record of that death.

4. Sources and citations

West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds: Kippax St Mary baptism register, 1832, p. 143, no. 1137. John, son of William and Hannah Biscomb, Kippax, labourer; 4 March 1832; A. H. Cathcart, Vicar. Reference P47/8.

Charles Morton, H.M. Inspector of Mines, 1857 Mines Inspectors Report, p. 165, accident no. 2.

Durham Mining Museum, individual page: John Biscomb, died 9 January 1857, Kippax West Main, Locke and Co., fall of roof in the mine.

UK, Coal Mining Accidents and Deaths Index: John Biscomb, 9 January 1857, Locke and Co., Fall of Roof in Mine.

Alan Beales, England, Mining Disaster Victims: John Biscomb, 9 January 1857, Kippax.

General Register Office death index: Biscomb, John; Pontefract; vol. 9c, p. 60.

Edward Baines, History, Directory and Gazetteer of the County of York, vol. I (1822), Kippax trades, for the earlier Biscomb and Locke entries.

5. Corrections

Identity. John Biscomb (1832–1857), son of William and Hannah, is not Robert Biscomb (1823–1855), son of Henry the carpenter. They died in different years, by different causes, at Locke pits in the same parish.

Place. The commercial index says Leeds. The inspector says Kippax West Main. Civil registration is Pontefract. Leeds is only the nearest city.

Age. No official age was printed by Morton. About 24 years 10 months follows from the baptism of 4 March 1832. Indexes that leave age blank are not wrong; they are incomplete.

Colliery name. Use Kippax West Main, Locke and Co. Do not substitute Owl Wood (sunk 1858), Medhurst Kippax, or Kippax Sand Co.

Marriage. A Leeds marriage of a John Biscomb to Mary Mosby in 1851 is not attached here until the register is seen.

Burial. DMM records burial as not known. No January 1857 Kippax burial page was among the documents supplied.

If a Pontefract or Leeds newspaper for mid-January 1857 is later abstracted, the coroner’s wording should be added to section 3.