Michael Foot was presumably speaking metaphorically of coal owners in general when he referred to Cripps having put them in the dock at Gresford, but observers may have wondered why the owners of Gresford succeeded in avoiding penalties of some kind in respect of breaches of the law revealed at the inquiry. One answer is that since no conclusion was ever reached as to the cause of the explosion, no charges could be brought on that account; but the question also overlooks the obstacles in the way of securing a conviction against an owner for anything found to have been amiss in his mine.

From the early nineteenth century the law had been so framed as in effect to protect owners from being successfully prosecuted. Ashley's Act of 1842, designed primarily ‘to prohibit the Employment of Women in Mines and Collieries [and] to regulate the Employment of Boys …’, also made ‘other Provisions relating to Persons working therein’, the last of which stipulated that: