The report's description distinguishes this event from later explosions attributed to firedamp and naked lights: it does not identify the gas, ignition source or mechanism. The fact that the two men reportedly had safety lamps is recorded, but it does not by itself establish what caused the explosion or whether their lamps were involved. No inquiry findings or official death-register entry have yet been located for this page.

The deaths occurred more than three years before the 22 October 1877 disaster at the same wider Priestfield colliery group. Their inclusion restores a smaller fatal event to the local chronology without suggesting that it was equivalent in scale or cause to the later catastrophe. The history of the mine also includes the separate August 1877 firedamp incident, 1878 overwinding accident, 1879 No. 1 Pit explosion and 1880 No. 4 Pit fire. See Blantyre Colliery for the workings and Blantyre mining disaster of 1877 for the evidence on the 1877 explosion.