Child Workers in Britain's Coal Mines

A child miner in 1842.

In 1842, a Children's Employment Commission was set up to discover the true facts about child labour in Britain's coal mines. 

We do not know precisely how many children worked underground in the middle of the nineteenth century. The commission only established the proportion of children and young people to adults, which varied according to district. For example, over one-third of the workforce was under eighteen in the Durham, Northumberland, Glamorgan and Derbyshire mines.

Wellcome Collection. Child workers 'hurrying'. 

The age when children first entered the pit depended on the thickness of the coal seams, family poverty, and local custom. Children as young as four were recorded. On average girls and boys began working underground when they were eight or nine years old. 

The youngest children were 'trappers'. They opened and closed the ‘trap-doors’ which regulated air-flow through the pit. The trappers sat alone for hours in the dark, unless they had a candle. Six-year-old Susan Reece, a trapper in a South Wales pit, said she ‘didn’t much like the work’.

Older children moved coal for the ‘getter’ or ‘hewer’ from the coal-face to the bottom of the mine-shaft. Thin seams (only twenty inches high) could only be worked by using children to drag or push the loads of coal, sometimes up a steep slope. This was called ‘hurrying’ or ‘putting’. 

Children hauled tubs of coal using a girdle or belt and chain, which they paid for out of their wages. The belt blistered and cut the children’s skin; their bodies became stunted from prolonged stooping.

Descending into the pit, 1870s.

In some pits, young boys were ‘engineers’;  they controlled the engine which wound parties of workers up and down the mine-shaft. They had to stop the basket or tub carrying the people at exactly the right moment. If not, the tub and its passengers continued up and over the overhead pulley, injuring them or dashing them into the mine-shaft below.  

In east Scotland, women and girls of all ages carried coal on their backs to the surface via a succession of steep, rickety ladders. The loads they carried were incredibly heavy. Some fathers ruptured themselves as they lifted a load onto their daughter’s back.

Women and children also worked above ground at the pit-brow in many areas. 

Coal mines were (and still are) very dangerous places to work in. Explosions from gases like fire-damp were commonplace; and there were thousands of run-of-the-mill accidents, like being run over by a coal waggon, or a roof collapse. In 1838, there were 349 fatalities in English collieries; over one-third of those killed were under eighteen. 

An explosion in a coal mine, 1870s.

The Mines Reform Act of 1842 banned all women and girls from the pits. The minimum age for boys entering the pit was lowered to ten, but they could be engine-men as young as fifteen. However, it proved difficult to enforce the Act. Boys under ten were found working below ground over ten years after the Mines Reform Act.

 

Oldest and youngest miners in a colliery, c.1906.

Children of the Pits Exhibition

Last week we visited the 'Children of the Pits' exhibition at Radstock Museum. I was particularly looking forward to seeing the exhibition because it was inspired by my book The Children History Forgot, and we were not disappointed.

We were given a tremendous welcome by exhibition organiser Wendy Walker, researcher Anny Northcote and chairman Clem Maidment.


A big 'thank you' to everyone who took the time to chat to us, and particularly Wendy, who showed us round the museum.
The exhibition was put together by a team of researchers, and illustrated with photos and artefacts from the museum collection, and artwork by Kilmersdon Art Group. It shows the conditions endured by the young child miners of the Somerset coalfield in the nineteen and twentieth centuries.

Somerset was once a busy mining area, and even in comparatively modern times, young lads pulled sledges (putts) loaded with coal underground using the notorious 'guss and crook' (below), a harness made of rope (which went around the waist) and a chain, which was attached to the putt. 

In 1907 at Dunkerton, the carting boys went on strike for higher wages. The boys were paid one penny a ton for the first 50 yards they dragged the coal, then halfpenny per ton for each succeeding 50 yards. The loads they dragged weighed 10-12 tons; this type of work was done by machinery or animals in other areas.  One can imagine what hard, exhausting work it was. 

This was a long, bitter dispute: strikers were fired on by the mine manager's son, and the boys did not win any extra money. The 'guss and crook' was used in the Somerset area until the late 1940s.

The 'Children of the Pits' exhibition runs until the end of August.  There are lots of interesting displays showing how people in the Radstock area lived and worked, and some Napoleonic era artefacts.  Do drop in and visit if you get the chance.

The Children History Forgot explores working conditions for children in many different industries in the nineteeth century, and reformers' battles to improve their lives and help them go to school.
And if you would like to research your own ancestors' working lives when they were children, my new book Tracing Your Ancestors' Childhood will be out soon: you can pre-order it from Amazon or direct from Pen and Sword.

All photos © Sue Wilkes. My photos of the Museum's displays and exhibits taken by kind permission of Wendy Walker. 
Images:
Model of a young miner pulling a sled with the guss and crook at Radstock Museum.
Wendy Walker and Anny Northcote pictured at the museum with the exhibition poster and some artwork by Kilmersdon Art Group.
Guss and crook exhibit.
Photo of child miners in the 1900s - Radstock Museum exhibit (above left).
Pit winding gear wheel from Kilmersdon Colliery.
Radstock Museum (below).


Miner's cap and candle exhibit (right).  Miners carried a candle pushed into their cap for light.

Sacrifice in the Trenches: WWI Ancestors

This blog post is a tribute to two relatives who died in the Great War long before I was born. They made the ultimate sacrifice for King and Country.

Two of my great-uncles, Herbert and Harry (Henry) Dickman from Pendlebury, were killed in France in 1916.

Herbert Dickman (service number 15647) born c.1899, served as a private in the 8th battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, and his date of death is given by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website as 7 March 1916, aged twenty-five. He was a POW, and died of his wounds.

His brother Harry Dickman (service number 15080), who was two years younger, was a private in the 16th battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers (2nd Salford Pals); his date of death is given as 30 July 1916, during the battle of the Somme. I believe that the battalion was at Haillicourt around that time. Both soldiers are commemorated on the Loos memorial.

Brothers Harry and Herbert worked at Agecroft Colliery before the Great War, and their names can be seen on its war memorial, along with the names of many others from the pit who died in the ‘war to end all wars’. 
If you have a Lancashire ancestor who served in the armed forces, some sources for military history are included in my new book Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors, which has just been released.
Update May 2014: If you have an ancestor who served in WW1, you may like to visit the Lives of the First World War website.

Images: Agecroft Colliery War Memorial. © Sue Wilkes.
Private Harry Dickman, from an undated, unattributed news cutting in the author’s collection.

Postcards in the author’s collection, date circa 1919:
Lens (near Loos) before and after the war, Boulevard des Ecoles.
Lens before and after the war, Pit No.5.
Ypres Cloth Hall before the Great War.

Win a free signed copy of The Children History Forgot!

For the next two weeks, I’m running a competition to win a copy of The Children History Forgot. The competition is free and open to all UK residents. All you need to do is answer the following:


Imagine you are a working-class child growing up in the 1830s. Your family needs your wages to make ends meet. Which of the following three jobs would you rather do, and why?

Choice A: Factory work

Choice B: Coal mining

Choice C: Chimney sweep

It’s very easy to enter: just type letter A, B or C, AND a very brief reason for your choice into the ‘comments’ section below. Or you can send me a direct message (DM) via Twitter @SueWilkesauthor.  The answer which I find most interesting will win a free signed copy of my book.
The competition ends at mid-day on Wednesday 14 March 2012. Good luck!

C is for Coal

In the early nineteenth century, children as young as four years old (boys and girls) worked underground in Britain’s coal mines.  The working conditions for children and adults depended on how high (‘thick’) the seam was. In the Northumberland pits, ponies were used to drag along the tubs of coal, but even so, the children worked a fourteen hour day.

In the ‘thin’ seams in Lancashire, the West Riding, Derbyshire and North Wales, children dragged heavy tubs of coal on their hands and knees, using a belt and chain. Perhaps the worst conditions were in Scotland, where children and young women (bearers) carried loads of coal to the surface in baskets on their backs.

It was not until the Mines Act of 1842, thanks to Lord Shaftesbury, that all females, and boys under ten years old were banned from underground work.

Images: Coal mining (1,2) using pit ponies in north-east England. The boy helpers were called ‘foals’. In the Durham and Northumberland pits, females did not work below ground after about 1780. Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts, Vol. I, c.1862.
Yorkshire children working in the mines, and Scottish coal bearers: 1842 Report on Mines.

Not long now!

It's less than a month to publication day for The Children History Forgot! Over the next few weeks I'll be discussing the many different jobs done by children in Georgian and Victorian times. Children worked in a huge variety of industries, not just in cotton factories or down coal mines.

Images: Lancashire child miners - 1842 Report on Mines.

A little girl working in a cotton factory. Engraving by G.P. Jacomb Hood. (1857-1929.) Grindon’s Lancashire.

The Price of Coal

Coal has long been valued as a fuel source. The industrial revolution greatly increased demand for coal. It was used to smelt iron and generate steam, and coal production in Britain rocketed from six million tons p.a. in 1770 to twenty-three million tons in 1830. By the mid-1850s production was over sixty million tons p.a. Mines were sunk ever deeper to meet the demand.

But coal’s success story had a terrific human cost: thousands of men, women and children were killed down the mines and at the pit brow. You can find out more about working conditions in the mines in my books The Children History Forgot and Narrow Windows, Narrow Lives. There are also some tips on how to trace your coal-mining ancestors, in my feature for this month’s Discover My Past England (now on Genes Reunited) and in my forthcoming book Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors.




Images from the author’s collection:
‘How are you off for coals?’ Satirical postcard from the miners’ strike of 1912.

The New Hartley Pit disaster in Northumberland on 16 January 1862 killed over two hundred men and boys. This Illustrated London News (8 February 1862) engraving shows the long, sad funeral procession at Earsdon.