The three married men — Frederick Luscombe, aged 37, of Ralph's Court, Frederick William Dodd, 35, of 22 King Street, and Mr R McClure, 52, of West Bridge — died while excavating a 20ft mound at Pixon Lane.
They were removing earth to be used for construction works of a Great Western Railway siding for coal trucks — employed as casual labourers by the Tavistock Lighting, Coal and Coke Company.
The men had been taken on by the company since April 1, 1934, in an endeavour to reduce local unemployment.
Shortly after 4pm on Wednesday, August 1, and amid an afternoon of torrential rain, the three were working when without warning, the top of the mound collapsed, and tons of earth and boulders swept down burying them alive.
A fourth man, Wilfred Kerswill, who was fetching tools yards away, had what was reported a 'miraculous' escape after he was buried up to his neck.
Mr Kerswill shouted an alarm and many rushed to the scene in a bid to extricate the trapped men. Indeed the injured Kerswill, who was taken to Tavistock Hospital with concussion and badly bruised leg, had to be dissuaded in joining in the attempts to rescue his colleagues.
The men were eventually dug out but were already dead.
However, as the Gazette reported in its Friday, August 3 edition: 'The one small ray of comfort in this dark tragedy is that death must have been mercifully sudden.'
All three men had served their country in the First World War — Mr Luscombe was a former member of the Devonshire Regiment, with which he had served in India, Gallipoli Peninsula and France.
He left a widow, Doris, aged 34, and two sons, Cyril, aged six, and Kenneth, then aged just three and a half months.
Services for the deceased were held at Tavistock Parish Church and messages of sympathy were 'authorised' to be reported in the Gazette — including those from the directors of the Tavistock Lighting, Coal and Coke Company, Mr A E Ingerson, the chairman of Tavistock Urban Council and the Vicar of Tavistock, the Rev H L Bickersteth.
A public subscription was started and a relief fund of £29.3s was announced by the time the Gazette went to press — including £21 (20 guineas) from the Tavistock Lighting, Coal and Coke Company.
Now, 74 years on and Kenny Luscombe, who lives in Edmund Park, Tavistock, and obviously was just a baby at the time of the accident, still keeps a copy of the Tavistock Gazette that recorded the tragic events and serves as a link to his lost father.
He said: 'When my father died things were tough for my mum bringing up two boys — at the time mum worked in Tavistock as a cleaner and I remember she had to take me with her to work.
'She had rent to pay and all the other bills and it was a bit of a struggle — but she did a good job bringing us up.'
Kenny himself went into the forces, doing his National Service in the Royal Army Service Corps. Later in life he went to Brighton and worked for American Express before returning to Tavistock for his retirement years.
His partner, Enid Gill, who was well known in West Devon as a writer and poet, died last year.
In fact the original article in the Gazette was handed to Enid but was left unread in a wicker basket by Kenny for 16 years.
By coincidence Kenny was talking to a friend of his recently, fellow Tavistock Royal British Legion member Johnnie Johnson, who said that his Bettaware agent in Plymouth was a chap called Dodds who happened to be the son of Frederick William Dodd.
'It's a small world and I shall definitely be trying to meet up with Mr Dodds and show him the report in the Tavistock Gazette,' said Kenny.