Six children left without father after joiner was accidentally shot

On the third Tuesday of April 1895 local tradesmen were busy carrying out joinery work and decorating the home of Mr. Bamber on Stephenson Terrace, Deepdale.

- with Keith Johnson

During the afternoon a joiner named John Miller of Geoffrey Street, Preston, was busy outside in the yard at the rear of the premises fixing a door. Among those working in the house was his assistant, a youth named Thomas Bellwood Clarke, aged 17, and a painter named James Smith.

In the course of preparing the kitchen for painting Smith found an old revolver on a shelf, and on taking it into the yard Clarke took it off him and commenced playing with it, unaware it was loaded. Unfortunately, as he examined it he pulled the trigger accidentally and the weapon was discharged in the direction of Miller with the bullet lodging in his neck.

As Miller, who was securing a hinge on the door at the time, slumped to the floor the other workmen rushed to his aid and as they removed his scarf and collar blood was seeping from a wound on the left side of his neck.