This postcard was posted at Gilfach Goch on 18 July 1905, a few days after the tragic colliery disaster - 'The Wattstown Disaster' - that claimed 119 lives. The sender notes on the reverse that this is a card of 'that awfull [sic] disaster that occurred last week ..'. Sadly, this was just one of a series of disasters which took place in the South Wales Coalfield during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (the worst being the explosion at Universal Colliery, Senghennydd, in 1913, which killed 439 miners). Coal mining was a notoriously hazardous occupation. For instance, it has been estimated that approaching 3, 500 south Wales miners lost their lives in such disasters during the period 1837 to 1927. These disasters were often accompanied by an appalling indifference on the part of the coalowners to matters of safety underground. The human and economic repercussions of such events were also far reaching. At Wattstown in 1905 the explosion left 44 widows, 110 fatherless children under the age of 14, and a further 10 dependant adults who were forced to either fend for themselves or 'live off the parish'.

Sources: Roger Williams and David Jones, 'The Cruel Inheritance. Life and death in the coalfields of Glamorgan' (Pontypool: Village Publishing, 1990) and David Egan, 'Coal Society. A History of the South Wales Mining Valleys 1840-1980 (Llandysul: Gomer Press, 1987).