Lives in Cricket No 6 - Bill Copson

employment as a coalminer at Morton Colliery a few miles from Stretton. Bill was the second eldest son of the seven children of William Henry senior and Hannah Stevens who had married in 1900. His other siblings were Minnie, born and died in 1901, Constance Mary (1902-1973), Robert Alfred (1904-1913), Gwennie May (1906-1943), Horace (1910-1926), and Clarence (1916-1984). Robert, three years older than Bill, was killed very tragically in a gunpowder accident on 1 February, 1913. The details of this unfortunate event are worth recording. He and a few young friends had been helping his father to clear out the cellar of the general grocer’s shop, whose proprietor was a Mr John Rayworth, which adjoined their home in the High Street. An unused ‘bobbin’ of gunpowder, which was frequently used in mines to dislodge hard-forming seams of coal, had been left in a tin canister and had probably lain there untouched and forgotten about for some fifteen years. A number of candles were being used by the group as there was no other form of illumination. The boys thought that the canister resembled a toffee tin and went to examine it more closely by holding the candle close to the bobbin. There was a huge explosion and Robert was very severely burned. The father, WilliamHenry senior, was also badly injured, but recovered later in hospital. Robert was rushed to hospital but unfortunately did not recover and died early the following morning. In a small mining settlement like Stonebroom, with a strong sense of the danger of explosives, the tragedy would have affected the whole community. At the subsequent inquest, reported in great detail in the local Press, the Coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death. Bill, who was only four years old at the time, was not in the cellar with the other boys, but no doubt he would have retained a vivid childhood memory of the loss of his older brother. Stonebroom 2 lies in an area of the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire coalfield with a strong cricket tradition. Many of the industrial villages and small towns are the birthplaces of Early Days and Family Origins 9 2 The name derives from proximity to a local stone quarry and from a once locally prolific yellow-flowering shrub, rather than from any sweeping implement.