Ancestors At Work
Brian Elliott takes a look at the lives of the men, women and children who dug for coal
We dig deep to explore the world of coal mining
Although coal has been extracted from surface and shallow workings since at least Roman times, it was not until the early 1800s that coal mining took shape as an industry. While domestic usage remained important, it was the increasing demand for coal to power and service a huge variety of crafts, trades and burgeoning industries that tipped the balance for landowners to lease their coal-bearing lands, providing opportunistic coal masters with the chance to exploit ‘black gold’.
By about 1850 the larger, deep mines employed upwards of 500 men and boys. The coal was reached via a warren of underground workings extending two, three or more miles from the pit bottom, with foul air and noxious gases extracted – in theory – via an upcast shaft. Pit workers and their families migrated to colliery districts in increasing numbers, bringing with them their own customs and vocabulary. Consequently, the new mining communities, whether integral to existing settlements or purpose-built by the colliery owners or companies, contained an eclectic mixture
of dialect and tradition that continued over several generations.
Life was certainly hard and hazardous for all concerned. In a report from 1812 engineer Robert Bold likened the employment of miners in Scotland, especially women and children, to slave labour. Mothers spent 8–10 hour shifts crawling along dark, low underground roadways with candles in their teeth and young children in their wake, then dragging and lifting ‘corves’ (baskets of coal) to pit bottoms for hauling to the surface. Conditions were similar elsewhere. This is how the Welsh sub-commissioner, Mr Franks, described just one of the many girl miners, Mary Davies, in 1842: “A very pretty girl, who was fast asleep under a piece of rock near the air-door below ground. Her lamp had gone out for want of oil; and upon waking her, she said the rats had run away with her bread and cheese…”
Mary was only seven years old but had already been working, probably alongside her mother and/or father, for 18 months; in total 2,350 females were recorded working underground in the 1841 census. A further 3,650 were employed on the pit tops, especially in Scotland, Cumberland and Lancashire. Text extracts and especially the illustrations from the mines section of the reports of the 1840– 1842 Children’s Employment Commission shocked Victorian society, and in March 1843 women and children aged under 10 years old were banned from labour underground, although early compliance was sketchy.
It took until 1881 for the minimum age of boys employed underground to be raised to 12 years. As from 30 July 1900, boy miners were supposed to be aged 13, but many exceptions occurred. The 1911 Coal Mines Act (effective from July 1912) prohibited boys under the age of 14 from working underground, although younger lads were still allowed to be employed on the surface.
Miners’ pay-rates were always complex and contentious. Local and regional disputes and wages strikes – often allied to working
‘She was only seven, but had already worked for 18 months’
conditions – were common. Before the nationalisation of the industry in 1947, remuneration was usually related to output and the market price of coal, albeit with many regional differences, exceptions and anomalies. In some areas experienced men paid a small team of mates on a subcontractural basis. My paternal grandfather got weekly cash in his hand this way, very temptingly in the yard of a pub near the pit where he worked. More formalised, though complicated, ‘price lists’ – rates of pay agreed between the unions and the colliery company or companies – were also published locally, a kind of pocket ready-reckoner for checking your earnings.
Note too that the word ‘miner’ is a generic term, for even in early mining a variety of specialised jobs were evident. The occupational title that most young miners aspired to, for both pay and status, was also one of the hardest: that of the hewer, who used great strength and skill to cut coal from the coalface with hand tools. ‘Officials’ – experienced miners known as ‘deputies’ and ‘overmen’ – were the vital links between workers and managers.
A Heavy Toll
Day-to-day accidents in mines were commonplace, by far exceeding injuries and deaths from disasters. But it was the big explosions and floods that attracted media attention and made the public, governments and politicians much more aware of the need for improved safety and better regulation.
For example, when the Lundhill and Oaks Collieries in the Barnsley area exploded in 1857 and 1866 respectively, almost an entire population of male pitworkers were lost in an instant; at least 157 men and boys died at Lundhill, and at least 361 at the Oaks Colliery. Legislation and reports associated with HM Inspectors of Mines and the development (from c1900) of the Mine Rescue Service were hugely important in improving the safety of miners, but terrible disasters continued to wreck lives and communities in the 20th century.
One infamous example took place at Senghenydd in South Wales, when 440 fatalities occurred in 1913 following an explosion. The pit’s owners were fined little more than £10 for ignoring the safety legislation in the 1911 Coal Mines Act, but the catastrophe blew an enormous hole in the composition of the local community. It’s no wonder that the plight of widows and orphans features in writer Barry Hines’ The Price of Coal, a twopart TV drama from 1977 that was directed by Ken Loach.
In addition, the terrible long- term effects on health of working in coal mines have only been fully recognised relatively recently, which is sadly far too late for many thousands of miners like my great grandfather and his cousins who died in their thirties and forties because of respiratory disease. Nevertheless, when the last deep mine in Britain, Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire, closed at the end of 2015 under the glare of TV crews’ outside-broadcast lighting, several burly men getting out of the cage at the surface for the final time shed tears. For them, as was the case for many of our hardworking ancestors, coal mining was more than just a job – it was a way of life.