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:

As time went by and Act succeeded Act, this provision was easily extended to mean that an owner, having appointed an agent or manager to supervise the operation of his mine, had by implication delegated all responsibility to the man or men in question, and was therefore to be exonerated from blame for any mishap or breach of regulations occurring in or about his property. In 1878 one of the General Rules had not been complied with in certain mines. The Home Office unsuccessfully instituted proceedings against the owner who, the defence claimed, had in fact taken no part in the management of the mine.