§ MR. MACDONALDasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If he has had information that an explosion took place in the Eddlewood Colliery, near Hamilton, on Friday the 10th inst., by which two men were seriously injured, and that the explosion was caused by the use of naked lights; and, since the colliery in question is in the same coal field as that of the Blantyre Colliery, where the fearful loss of life took place in 1877, whether he will prohibit, if possible, the use of naked lights in all the collieries in that coal field?
MR. ASSHETON CROSS,in reply, said, he had not as yet received full information on the subject, though inquiries had been made to which he hoped he would soon have an answer. Inspector Dickinson, and the lawyer who held the inquiry into the cause of the serious explosion at Blantyre, having made a recommendation as to the danger of that particular coalfield, he (Mr. Assheton Cross) thought it right that the Inspector should be instructed to call a meeting of the coal-owners together, and submit the Report to them, with that paragraph marked out for their special consideration. The matter would not be lost sight of; but at the present moment he was unable to say more.