image matty halls class 1967

Young Jim Prime,has a very unusual name.

I wonder if he is the Son..[i'm trying ti work oot ages and years ,here,Tony,in me heed!]....or  other relative,of Jimmy Prime.,senior,who was really badly injured at the Choppington High Pit,[being crushed up against a newly installed Desford/Gullick ?.... hydraulic face chock,roof support,by his coalcutter machine].

It was a bizzarre accident,cos we were installing a newly-won-out coalface,

with these new-fangled hydraulic chocks,shaped like a giant mushroom,that pressurised the roof with about 20 tons of pressure,and

they were a few yards apart at first,so there was a big gap between them,with wood timbers covering the rest of the roof on the face.

Jimmy was running the cutter picks,I think to jib-in to turn the cutter,which was a very skilled manouvre,with the most vicious and dangerous machine ever invented by man...full stop,and no argument about that!

The picks on the cutter jib struck something hard,and it danced the three-and-a-half-ton machine around like a toy,on the very low coalface,[just over two-feet high],swung the cutter around and crushed Jimmy up agalnst the face chock,nearly killing him.....

He was apparently dying as we reached him on the face,with his lungs and all his internal organs being squashed.

He was very lucky that the picks didn't take him into the machine,or he wouldn't have survived at all.

We stretchered him with great difficulty,off the face,[just over two feet high-remember,]and all the way out of the pit,slipping and stumbling on the rough stony wet downward sloping roadways.

Poor Jimmy got tossed about so much,it was a miracle how he survived the trauma of it all,and after we got him into the Ambulance,we thought he was already gone,his eyes and general appearance said it.

Word came from the Hospital,after about two weeks,and being severely crushed....that he was playing hell with the doctor's cos he wanted to be out to go to the club for a pint with he's Marra's!!!!

Were we pleased to hear that!

After the Pit closed,I only used to see Jimmy up Bedlington main street,on he's way down ti the Market club!!...and you wouldn't have known how near he was,unless he told you,which,of course,he wouldn't!

Sorry for the long story,Tony,I got carried away,re-living it,cos this happened aroond 1963-4..ish...maybe even 1965..not exactly clear,but no later,and no earlier,and it was a very traumatic event for us all who were there.[in really bad mine conditions]

Tony,if you know Jimmy jr,on this pic,could you ask him if Jimmy sr is his

Relation,please.

Cheers.

Bill

@Tonyp - with the names, apart from No 4, added