Southern Wales, United Kingdom, Swansea Coal Mine.
In a mine shaft more than 170 meters underground, old David, on all fours, desperately pounded the air gate ahead while shouting, "Jamie! Open the door, Jamie!"
Air gates were partitions used in mines to prevent excessive accumulations of methane and Carbon Dioxide. A child would always wait behind the gate to open and close it for the Coal Pushers.
Yet there was no response from the other side.
In the pitch-black tunnel, old David turned back and encouraged the few coworkers behind him. "It's all right. The child is just asleep."
He had no idea that the few of them had already fallen into a hopeless dead end.
Jamie's family had gone a week without Sugar Cake or tea with sugar. Lacking sufficient sugar intake, he simply could not endure seventeen hours of grueling work every day.
He had fainted half an hour earlier.
His small, thin body had become wedged at a bend in the tunnel, pinning the air gate shut.
It was not until near the end of the shift, a little after eight in the evening, that the mine supervisor discovered during roll call that four people were missing and hurriedly sent men down to search. Two hours later, old David and Jamie were finally rescued.
But David's two coworkers had already become corpses—after David had curled up in the tunnel for over an hour, he finally ran out of strength. The coal cart he had been dragging, weighing over a hundred kilograms, slid backward and crushed the two men following behind him to death.
At Eves Textile Mill in Manchester, Julia hung the flying shuttle on its rack when she vaguely heard Thomas proposing to her.
She turned around in delighted surprise, only to see a vast swath