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Mining has been carried on in England since the Bronze age. Somerset was an important source of tin during the Bronze Age. We have no idea about mining during ancient times or evem the medieval era. More information is available with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Mining becme inportant as a source of both coal and iron ore. Women and children were among those employed in mines during the 18th century. We do not know what portion of the mining work force they represent. Miners are generally seen as big burly men and nost were. Many mining jobs required strong powefully built men. But there were many mining jobs that did not require braun and other where small-sized individuals were useful. This was especially true in early mines. In the 19th century laws were passed which banned cthe use of women and younger bots. Many teenagers worked in the mines through the late-19th and early-20th century. Boys usually started as door-tenders or trappers until they graduated to other jobs. They opened air-doors to make way for wagons and closing them again once they had passed. It was a lonely existence being on your own in the dark for 12 hours per day, waiting to open the door when requested. “Wagoners” pulled or pushed trucks filled with coal whilst “Giggers” applied the wagon’s brakes. “Drawers” dragged coal underground in baskets from the coalface to the shafts. Because colliers were paid on the basis of the quantity of coal delivered from the coal face to the shaft they tended to employ their own sons to act as “drawers” and thereby keep the entirety of their wages in their own families. The age of the boys depended on the size of the mineshafts: wide ones enabled boys aged 14–18 to work but thinner ones necessitated using boys as young as 7 until the 1842 Mines and Collieries Act banned the use of boys aged under 10 below ground.
Mining has been carried on in England since the Bronze age. Somerset was an important source of tin. Tin was needed to produce bronze and rarer than copper. The small addition of tin to copper produced bronze which was bioth esier to work and harder than copper. Thus it became sought after to produce arms. The oldest known production of tin-bronze occurred in Turkey (about 3500 BC). At the tine technology did not exist to produce iron weapons because iron which is much more common had a higher melting point. The rarity of tin caused mercgants to seek it out. It took more than a millenium to find the English tin resources. Until this, England was outside of the Mediterranean economic area. Tin thus became the earliest mnetal to be exploitedin quantity by English miners. Tin mining in Englnd began (About 2000 BC). Despite the costs of trahsporting tin long distances, the military importance resulted in the develoment of athriving sea-born train. The Pheoned\cians are believed to have played a major role.
The medieval English economy was was fundamentally an agricultural country. Wool was especially important and much of it was shipped raw to the Continent for weaving. There was some limited mining, including iron, tin, lead and silver, and later coal.
More information on minining is available with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Although the Industrial Revolution began in the textile industry involving largely wooden equipment and water power. Only slowly did coal and metal become a central aspect of the IndustrialnRevolution. Mining gradually became inportant as a source of both coal and iron ore. There are a number of reasonw why the Industrial Revolution occured first in England. Among those reasons was the fact that there was abundant resources of coal and iron ore that could be mined. Coal resources were especially abundant and eventually became the life blood of the Industrial Revolution.
Women and children, especially boys, were commonly employed in British mines throughout thr 18th and 19th centuries. Some miner earer loked to hire women and children because they werre willing to work for so little. There were no restructions on this or efforts to protect the children until the 1842 Mining Act. This act prohibited children under 10 from working under ground. The industry continued to employ children well into the 20th century. Tasks existed for even young children above ground and the law permitted children over 10 to be employed below ground. We do not yet have detailed informstion on when further legislstion was passed protecting children, butvwe note boys being used in the mines during the early 20th century.
Photography appeared about 1840. All images from the mines would be drawings before 1840. Photography was very epensive and cumbersome, thus it is unlikely that images exist of the childrem in the minds before the development of the moderately expensive carte de viste about 1860. Even so few children working in the mines had money for photography aat sny price and few photographers seem to think them an interesting subject. This did not change until the turn of the 20th century when a number of socially conscious photographers in Europe and America began to document child labor in an effort to inform the public of the conditions under which children labored.
Coal had been used as a fuel in England for centuries. The demand for fuel was, however, fairly limited until the Industrial Revolution. Two developments changed this. The invention of the steam engine created a bneed for fuel. And coal was the perfect fuel. And there was a growing need for iron and steel. And large quantities of coaking coal was needed to produce these metals. Coal became the principal emergy source for the Industrial Revolution (1840s). England's expanding railway was a major factor. Coal was used to power the engines and iron/steel was needed for rail lines and bridges. To meet the demand for coal, English mining engineers began developing improved mining techniques. Coal until the Industrial Revolution was only mined if found near the surface in easy to get at seams. As demand increased, the easy to get at coal was exausted and techniques had to be develped to get at the coal below the surace. This process began in the 18th century and over time the tecniques for deep pit mining were developed.
Women and children were among those employed in mines during the 18th century. It should not be thought that child labor in mine began with the industrial revolution. Almost certainly this was thge case in English mines from early times. But as mining, espdcilly coal mining was significantly expanded with the industrial Revolution as well as the English population, it is also true that the number of women abnd children involved with mining increased. We do not know precisely what portion of the mining work force was composed of women and children. Historians report a fairly substantial portion of the metal and coal mine work force was composed of children in the early 19th century, including pre-teen children. Children abnd youth were nosrt common underground in coal mines and om the surface in metal mines. The surface jobs were primarily dressing the ores, separaing the ore from rick and dirt. Here small hands were more dexterous than adult hands and the children cheaper to employ. We are not yet sure why there was a difference. A House of Commons paper found that children and teenagers constituted about 20-40 percent of the mine workforce (1842). A staggering one-third of the underground work force of coal mines was under 18 years of age. The proprtion in metal mines was one-fourth.
Miners are generally seen as big burly men and most were. Many mining jobs required strong powefully built men. But there were many mining jobs that did not require braun and other where small-sized individuals were useful. This was especially true in early mines until the passage of the Mining Act of 1842.
In the 19th century laws were passed which banned the use of women and younger boys. Many of the worst abuses wwre addressed in the Mining act of 1842. Women and children (under the age of 10) were not allowed to work underground. But teenagers continued tork in the mines below ground during the late-19th and early-20 centuries.
Many teenagers worked in the mines through the late-19th and early-20th century. Boys usually started as door-tenders or trappers until they graduated to other jobs. They opened air-doors to make way for wagons and closing them again once they had passed. It was a lonely existence being on your own in the dark for 12 hours per day, waiting to open the door when requested. “Wagoners” pulled or pushed trucks filled with coal whilst “Giggers” applied the wagon’s brakes. “Drawers” dragged coal underground in baskets from the coalface to the shafts. Because colliers were paid on the basis of the quantity of coal delivered from the coal face to the shaft they tended to employ their own sons to act as “drawers” and thereby keep the entirety of their wages in their own families. The age of the boys depended on the size of the mineshafts: wide ones enabled boys aged 14–18 to work but thinner ones necessitated using boys as young as 7 until the 1842 Mines and Collieries Act banned the use of boys aged under 10 below ground. Books often contain illustrated line drawings depicting these jobs. Thus it is difficult to seoarate documentary evidence from propaganda pieces. We believe that an illustrator for the 1842 Government report into working conditions of mines originally did these drawings. The first image is from the Mary Evens Picture library. It shows a boy hauling a coal truck through a tunnel. Two other images of boys working in the mines are taken from the book Wicked Wigan and would also seem to be 1841 illustrations.
A British mine inspector spoke several of the boys. We do not know what his name was.
One of the boys ho told his story was Henry Gibson. He was a drawer at Lord Balcarres’s pit at Haigh, Wigan, Lancashire, U.k. The date of the deposition was May 13, 1842. Harry was 14 and his parents were dead. He lived with a master who did not give him any clothes but sold a good jacket Harry had. He left this lodging to live with his aunt. He worked for one of his cousins who collected his wages and kept it. They gave Harry shelter and provide him with food. He felt comfortable with this arrangement. None-the-less his aunt did not clothe him and it had been a year since clothes had been given to him. He was once beaten
with a thick stick and kicked by his cousin for leaving home. The reason was that Harry needed a new pair of clogs and they would not provide them. Harry worked from 5 am to 30 after 8 pm each working day. Harry gave an account of regular beatings of other boys by the ‘masters’. I think these are other miners who have employed a boy to work as their
assistant. Harry saw a boy called Jonathan Dicks, who was from the St. Helen’s Workhouse, get beaten regularly. He saw his master beat him with a pick handle on his legs and arms. The boy had cuts to his head because of the beatings. Harry also told of 8-year-old Andrew who comes from Liverpool. He lives with his master. This person did not feed the boy properly and that the other boys share their food with him.
homas Parr was 12 and worked at the same pit. He could only go to Sunday
school if his brother allowed him to wear his clothes other wise he had to
stay at home.
John Charnock was believed to be between the ages of 10 – 12. He worked as a
waggoner at Mr. Thickness’s Kirkless Pit near Wigan. He did not know how old
he was. He worked from 5 am until 5 or 6 pm. The boy ate breakfast of thick
porridge before he started work. He ate his potato lunch as he worked in the
pit. His lunch period was an hour but he carried on working. He had potatoes
for his supper on many occasions. He wore ragged clothes for work and it seems they were all the clothes he had. He lived with his parents and he had 3 sisters. At night they slept in the same bed in the same room.
It was not only young boys who did these tasks in the Wigan coalfields but young girls. They were called ‘Pit Brow Lasses.’ They were unusual because they wore trousers. The picture of them is from the Wigan Heritage Service. Their story is told in a book called ‘Lancashire Lasses’ by Steve Jones. In the 1840’s a British government committee was appointed to investigate the industrial working conditions. The mining sub-committee reported what they saw in the Wigan mines. It was very distressing for the officials to see young women dressed as boys in trousers. They had belts around their waists and chains passing between their legs so that they could pull loaded coal trucks through the mine passages. The book contains an account of the long hours of work. Jane Harrison who tells that the normal working day for ‘pit brow girls’ was a 12-hour period recalls one occasion when she worked three shifts consecutively. This involved working over two days and through a night. This totalled 36 hours. It started at 6 am on the first day through the night to finish the following day at 6 pm. She said that this work schedule was done because a ship was leaving Liverpool sooner than expected and needed immediate coaling.
The Pit Brow Lasses worked on the surface. A diarist named called A.J. Munby recorded in text, photographs and drawings the working lives of these women. They loaded 20 wagons a day with coal they called slack (pieces of loose coal) they then pushed coal wagons along the
embankment.
One story he tells is of a woman who dressed as a man so she could
work underground. She crawled through the muddy tunnels for between 200 to 300
yards pulling the coal truck she was harnessed to. There were no rails along
which the wagon travelled. Her underground work was short lived once it was
realised she was female. Why did she want to work underground was simply
answered. ‘I liked it’ was her answer.
Munby describes their working clothes.
The girls wore a padded cotton hooded bonnet. It was of pink, blue or black in
colour. They wore a blue striped shirt. Over it was a double-breasted
waistcoat. It was ragged and patched throughout. Fustian or corduroy was the
material their trouser was made from but they were often patched. They wore
clogs which were fastened with brassclasps.
Once Munby was in the home of a Wigan mining family. The date was 1860. It was
towards evening when into the house burst the two daughters aged 15 and 16.
They were called Ellen and Jane who were ‘Pit Brow Lasses.’ They came into
their home shouting and laughing as if they were lads at the fair. They were
dressed in their pit clothes and were as black as the ace of spades. Their
black faces were covered in sweat because they had been racing each other
home. It seems they were late for their meal of supper of Irish stew. It is a
tasty meal made of potatoes, vegetables and meat. Their mother scolded them
for being late but the girls explained that they had done extra work and had
to wait for their wages.
Mine work could could be very hazardous on a normal day. And from time to time there were mine accidents in which there were fatalities which included boy miners. One of Britiain's worst mining disasters occured at the Pretoria pit in Lancashire (December 21, 1910). There were 344 miners killed that morning. Some of these were boys. There were three survivors. An adult miners and two boys. The boys were called William Davenport who was 13 years old and 16 year old Joseph Staveley. The accident happened at 7:50 in the morning. It is believed that there had been a build up of gas after the previous day's roof collapse. The gas was possiblely ignited when the mechanism for hauling full trucks of coal was switched on. Many of the boys working in haulage died in the explosion and others died from carbon monoxide fumes. The jobs the boy's did were as follows:
Haulage.= 24 boys were so employed.
This is a job done by a boy who works on the haulage system
Lasher-on =17
Boys attach a chain to tubs and then to the haulage rope.
Datallier = 3
A day worker who does not work with coal.
Drawer = 1
A job imvolving pushing full tubs of coal to the haulage system and bringing back the empty tubs
It was the first day of work for one I3 year old boy who perished in accident. The boys were aged from 13 to 19
Afterwards, a cause of discontent was the mine owner's decision to put the compensation money into a trust fund to provide long term income for the bereaved families rather than making one lump sum compensation payments.
There is a memorial service each year to remember this terrible mining disaster.
Jones, Steve. Lancashire Lasses: Their Lives and Crimes (Wicked Press: Nottingham, 2001).
House of Commons Papers (HOCP). 1842 [380] XV Children's employment (mines). R. Com. 1st rep.
Steele, Philip. The Age of Empire (Miles Kelly Publishing Ltd, Great Bardfield, Essex UK, 2002).
Shryhane, Geoffrey. Wicked Wigan (Book Clearance Centre, Wigan UK, 2002). The author sourced the files of the local newspaper, the Wigan Observer.
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