1. Life

Baptism

Robert Biscomb was baptised on 30 March 1823 at the parish church of St Mary the Virgin, Kippax. The register for that year, page 73, entry no. 579, records: Robert, son of Henry and Mary Biscomb, abode Kippax, father’s quality carpenter, ceremony performed by the Hon. and Rev. A. H. Cathcart, Vicar. West Yorkshire Archive Service reference P47/8.

No separate civil birth certificate exists. Civil registration of births began on 1 July 1837, fourteen years after this baptism. A birth shortly before 30 March 1823 agrees with the burial age of 32 in January 1855.

Parents and family

His father Henry Biscomb was a carpenter living in Kippax. The Biscombs (also written Biscombe, Biscam, Biscom) were already settled in the parish. In 1766 Henry Biscomb of Garforth married Sarah Dodgshon of Kippax; a later Henry Biscomb appears as a marriage witness. Baines’s Directory of 1822 lists William Biscomb as victualler of the Lord Nelson in Kippax. Thomas Biscomb, another Kippax carpenter, was raising a family in the same years, but Robert’s register names Henry and Mary, not Thomas and Abigail.

The Hon. and Rev. A. H. Cathcart, who baptised Robert, is the same vicar named in the 1822 directory. Kippax Park was the seat of T. D. Bland, Esq.; the later vicar E. D. Bland buried Robert in 1855.

Youth and work

Kippax in Robert’s boyhood was a small parish on the Yorkshire coalfield, eight miles east of Leeds. Coal was already being worked on a modest scale; John Locke appears in 1822 as a coal dealer. Locke and Co. were the owners of the Kippax pit by 1855. The large Haigh Moor shafts at Owl Wood were not sunk until 1858, three years after Robert’s death.

No school record has been found. The son of a village carpenter would commonly have been put to a trade or to the pit in his teens. By January 1855 he was employed at Locke and Co.’s Kippax colliery. No printed census extract for 1841 or 1851 has yet been tied to this Robert with certainty, and no marriage for him has been identified in the Kippax registers searched for this note. Later Kippax men named Robert Biscomb belong to other branches and later decades.

Death and burial

Robert was killed at work on Saturday 13 January 1855, the same hour as Joseph Pickard. He was buried at St Mary’s, Kippax, on Monday 15 January 1855. The burial register, page 17, entry no. 136, reads: Robert Biscomb, abode Kippax, 15 January, age 32, E. D. Bland, Vicar. Joseph Pickard, aged 42, was buried from the same church on the same day (entry no. 137). The two men therefore left the pit together and were laid in the same churchyard two days later.

2. The accident

On 13 January 1855 two men were killed at Kippax Colliery, Locke and Co. They were Robert Biscomb, aged 32, and Joseph Pickard, aged 42. Charles Morton, H.M. Inspector of Mines, recorded the cause as the breaking of a pit rope. The case is accident no. 53 in his half-year report for January–June 1855, printed at page 72.

A pit rope is the winding rope that raises and lowers men and coal in the shaft. When it parts, the cage or corf falls. Two deaths on one rope at one time almost always means the two men were riding together, either ascending or descending. Morton’s published table does not add the depth of the shaft, the type of rope (hemp or wire), or whether a splicing-plate or a “mark” on the rope was at fault. Those details appear in his narratives of other Yorkshire rope-breaks in the same decade, but not against this Kippax entry.

The pit of 1855 was Locke and Co.’s existing Kippax working, not the later Owl Wood sinking and not Medhurst or the Kippax Sand Co.

3. Coroner, newspaper and conclusion

No full inquest transcript and no newspaper report of the jury have been found in the open indexes searched for this note. Inquests on pit deaths in this district were normally held by the coroner for the honour of Pontefract, often sitting at a Kippax inn within a day of the bodies being brought up.

What stands in official form is Morton’s classification, which the coroner’s finding would have supported: accidental death by the breaking of a pit rope at Kippax Colliery, Locke and Co., 13 January 1855; two lives lost — Robert Biscomb and Joseph Pickard.

Burial of both men on 15 January is consistent with an inquest opened on the Sunday or Monday and the bodies then released to their families.

A later commercial index describes the same two deaths as “Bursting of an Underground Boiler.” That wording is not in Morton and is treated here as an error. A broken winding rope and a boiler explosion are different events.

4. Sources and citations

West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds: Kippax St Mary baptism register, 1823, p. 73, no. 579. Robert, son of Henry and Mary Biscomb, Kippax, carpenter; 30 March 1823; A. H. Cathcart, Vicar. Reference P47/8.

West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds: Kippax St Mary burial register, 1855, p. 17, no. 136. Robert Biscomb, Kippax, 15 January 1855, age 32; E. D. Bland, Vicar. Reference P47/26.

Charles Morton, H.M. Inspector of Mines, 1855 (January–June) Mines Inspectors Report, p. 72, accident no. 53.

Durham Mining Museum: Colliery disaster 13 January 1855, Kippax, Locke and Co.; cause, breaking of a pit rope; lives lost, 2 — Biscomb, Robert; Pickard, Joseph.

UK, Coal Mining Accidents and Deaths Index and Alan Beales, England, Mining Disaster Victims: Robert Biscomb, 13 January 1855 — used only with the correction in section 5.

Edward Baines, History, Directory and Gazetteer of the County of York, vol. I (1822), Kippax: William Biscomb, Lord Nelson; John Locke, coal dealer; Hon. and Rev. A. H. Cathcart, vicar.

George Denison Lumb (ed.), The Registers of the Parish Church of Kippax, 1539–1812 (YPRS vol. 10, 1901), for earlier Biscomb marriages in the parish.

5. Corrections

Cause. Commercial indexes attached to this research say “Bursting of an Underground Boiler. 2 Killed” or “Boiler burst underground.” The contemporary inspector, Charles Morton, recorded a broken pit rope. The inspector is followed.

Age. Burial age 32 in January 1855 matches a baptism of 30 March 1823. No correction is required.

Date of death versus burial. The accident was 13 January 1855. The burial was 15 January 1855. The two dates must not be collapsed.

Identity. John Biscomb, killed by a fall of roof at Kippax West Main on 9 January 1857, is a different man. Later Roberts in Kippax census and WikiTree profiles are later generations.

Marriage. No marriage for this Robert has been verified. It would be wrong to attach a wife or children from another Biscomb household.

If a Pontefract or Leeds newspaper for mid-January 1855 is later abstracted, the coroner’s wording should be added to section 3.