THE Northern Echo's campaign to mark the graves of the men and boys who died in the region's worst mining disaster has reached the other side of the world.

New Zealand woman Frances Simpson's great grandmother lost her husband and two sons in the 1909 Stanley Burns Pit explosion, which killed 168 men and boys.

She has sent £200 to reporter Chris Webber, who is to complete a 450-mile sponsored walk for The Northern Echo's campaign to mark the victims' mass graves.

Mrs Simpson said she did not know where her great grandfather, William Crozier, 53, and his two sons, William, 29, and Thomas, 18, were buried until The Northern Echo informed her they lie side-by-side in an unmarked grave behind St Andrew's Church, in Stanley, County Durham.

She said: "As I read the tragic details of my Crozier family, laid in an unmarked burial trench, the tears rolled down my face.

"Just five years after the pit disaster, John Crozier, one of their five sons, went off the Great War and was killed in action. In 1915, Thomasina Crozier, their eldest daughter, died in childbirth. So in the space of six years, my great grandmother, Alice Crozier, lost her husband, three sons and a daughter. It is like something from a Dickens novel. After 1909, Alice was a 47-year-old widow with nine remaining children to care for.

"I so respect what The Northern Echo is trying to achieve. I am proud of the paper, the Stanley Memorial Committee and everyone else who is doing so much to remember the victims of this disaster."

Read more about the Stanley Pit Memorial campaign here.