 Funeral grants, widow's pensions and orphan's benefits were also paid when its members were killed at work.A spate of disasters in the late-1860s and early-1870s left authorities unable to cope with large numbers of widows and orphans whose main breadwinner had been killed in the pits.The Lancashire and Cheshire Miners Permanent Relief Society, championed by the Wigan miners' agent, William Pickard, was started in 1872 when Lancashire was the country's seventh largest coal producer and often had the highest accident figures.