As you know, I have a bit of a thing for cemeteries, graveyards and burial grounds; I find them incredibly interesting places. Mooching around Saint Woolos Cemetery in Newport I spotted a monument that took my interest.

Monument

The detail from the plaque is shown below and tells of the Newport Dock Disaster in 1909.

Plaque

Well I didn't know anything about this, so I thought I'd look it up and this is what I found:

It was during the construction of the South Lock that one of the most celebrated events in the History of Newport occurred, the Newport Dock Disaster and the heroism of Tom ‘Toya’ Lewis. On 2nd July 1909 at 5:20 in the afternoon, just minutes before the workers were due to finish for the day, the timbers supporting the West Wall excavation trench collapsed. Under tremendous pressure, the timbers rose, were forced together and the sides of the trench fell in, instantaneously burying the 46 men working at the bottom of the trench. Over 500 men were soon at the scene attempting to reach the men trapped below.

Thomas Lewis was amongst the crowd of spectators when he answered a call for a volunteer to attempt to reach a man trapped below. Crawling through a small space Tom worked for two hours with a hammer and chisel to try to free the man before officials insisted he return to the surface. The trapped man was rescued the next day. The people of Newport expressed their gratitude to Tom by raising several hundred pounds through a public subscription, enough money for him to be sent to Scotland on an engineering scholarship. He was awarded the Albert Medal by the King in December 1909.

Good old 'Toya' Lewis, eh? One of life's Everyday Heroes. :)