The story by Amz of the tragic death of his Grandfather who was gored by a bull prompts the following:
I recently turned my attentions to my mother’s side of the family , she lived at The Meetings Avoca and a visit there last weekend stirred many old memories. My Grandfather died in 1949, the year after I was born and my Grandmother passed away in 1954, so my visits after that date were few and far between,, although my older siblings remember long Summer holidays down there with my Grandparents.
There were ten children born to Sarah Anne and Moses Hatton, five boys and five girls. All the girls left home, three, including my mother, came to live in Dun Laoghaire and the two younger girls went to England and served in some capacity during WW11, all five married. The boys stayed local and all but one married and three of them worked in the Mines.
A visit to Castlemacadam Cemetery, which contains the graves of those who stayed on, filled in a lot of the details that I needed. One headstone in particular caught my attention as it was erected to the memory of my uncle Moses by the workers of Avoca Mines. I was three at the time of his death and although I knew he had died tragically I was not aware of the details. In the hope of finding out more I paid a subscription to the Irish newspaper archives and within seconds had found details of the tragedy.
On the 5th of February 1952 Moses was working the night shift and he and three others were returning to the surface for a mid shift break when catastrophe struck. The mine was 900 feet deep; the lift system used for bringing the workers to and from the workface consisted of two skips which were connected by a wire rope to a mechanically operated revolving drum or wheel. Apparently the system allowed for one skip to ascend as the other descended, no doubt passing each other on countless occasions in the pitch darkness over the years without incident. This particular night, unknown to the operator, the descending skip became snarled on some staging, the rope continued to unwind as the ascending skip continued to climb. Normally the rope would be held taut by the counter balance action but this time, fixed prematurely at one point with the wheel still engaged, it encroached into the space of the ascending skip. As it and the lift containing the four miners passed it snagged my uncle and dragged him from the skip and he plunged 150 feet to his death.
Moses was 35 years old when he died; he left a widow and two young children.
