BRIEF HISTORY OF JOHN CHANDLER SPILSBURY 1890 - 1923

John Chandler Spilsbury was born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1890. He worked in the potteries until the outbreak of WW1 when he enlisted in the army. He survived the horrors of the war and was demobbed in 1919.

On returning to Stoke he met and married a widow called Margaret Hall who had 4 children from her first marriage. In 1920 she gave birth to another child, Jonathan Gordon, who was subsequently to lose his life in 1942 whilst serving as a member of the parachute regiment in North Africa during Operation Torch.

In the early 1920's it was becoming increasingly difficult to find work in the potteries so, in 1921, John Chandler, along with many others, decided to try his luck elsewhere. He had heard about the requirement for miners in the rapidly expanding coal fields in South Yorkshire and he chose to walk there to seek employment. He was taken on by Maltby Colliery as a collier and was soon offered a house at No 4 Cavendish Place. He then arranged for his family to move from Stoke to their new home in Maltby.

In December 1922 my father, Arthur Ernest (AKA NIP) was born. Life was progressing quite happily until that fateful day in July 1923. John Chandler was one of 122 volunteers who descended into the mine at 6am on the morning of Saturday 28th July in a bid to extinguish the 'gob' fires which were burning and threatening the future of the colliery. Just before 9am on that morning the methane levels rose from 3% to 6%. This resulted in a violent explosion which claimed the lives of 27 men, including my grandfather. This meant that his 2 young sons, my father and uncle Jonathan, grew up without ever knowing their dad.

His body remains in the mine to this day.