Samuel March Phillipps to Charles Lyell and Faraday   19 October 1844

Whitehall | 19th October 1844

Gentlemen,

Secretary Sir James Graham directs me to request you to consider, before you make your further report¹, whether, with reference to the important subject now under your examination (namely, the probability and the means of preventing or obviating explosions in mines and collieries), you think it would be advisable to institute an inquiry into the causes of the recent explosion in a colliery near Newcastle², which occasioned serious personal injury to some of the labourers, though not any death. If you should consider such an inquiry useful and advisable, Sir James Graham is very desirous that you should undertake it.

I am further to request you to consider and report to me your opinion, for Sir James Graham's information, whether an examination of all the principal Collieries in the Counties of Durham and Northumberland would be likely to lead to any important practical good.

I enclose a copy of the Report of the Committee of the Commons in 1835³, in case you should not already have a copy before you.

I am | Gentlemen | Your obedient Servant | S.M. Phillipps

C. Lyell Esq | M. Faraday Esq