THE SOUTH YORKSHIRE COALMINERS 1870 - 19-4 I a STUDY of SOCIAL and OCCUPATIONAL COHESION by CELIA MARY WOLFE B.A
THE SOUTH YORKSHIRE COALMINERS 1870 - 19-4 i A STUDY OF SOCIAL AND OCCUPATIONAL COHESION by CELIA MARY WOLFE B.A. (Hons.), University College of Bangor, 1971 Dip. Ed., University of Sheffield, 1972
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The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada ii ABSTRACT The coalminers as a social and occupational group have always been referred to by historians as a "race apart," living in communities which were both physically and cultur• ally isolated from other working-class groups. In order to distinguish and examine the special circumstances and charac• teristics which set them apart from the rest of the working class, the present thesis stresses a number of problems: male and female roles? the family? the special place of women in the family? working and living conditions? and the special attitudes and outlooks that these conditions fostered. Although the sources examined are drawn from all coal• fields, the study focuses on the relatively new South Yorkshire coalfield which has not yet been studied in a systematic fashion. During the last three decades of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century, the South Yorkshire coalfield underwent its period of most rapid expansion. While this coalfield was newer than the others, its miners exhibited similar features to those of the older coalfields, and it is not my aim to prove that they were dif• ferent. Rather, the South Yorkshire coalfield is used as a model to identify some social aspects of life in a coal• mining community. In addition, the study attempts to contrast the envi• ronment of the coalminers with that of other working-class groups. Demographic material is derived from the Census Reports, and studies of living and working conditions from Government reports, eye-witness accounts of social investi• gators, autobiographies of coalminers and personal memoirs, iii contemporary newspaper reports, and relevant secondary works. Despite the influx of new immigrants into the new or expanding coalmining towns and villages, they rapidly came to exhibit patterns to be found in older coalmining communi• ties. The most impressive mark of a coalmining town was its distinctive social solidarity and cohesion. These strong social bonds were engendered and maintained by a common identity produced by occupational dependency upon the pit, and by the camaraderie fostered by shared living and working exper• iences. The need for cooperation under dangerous working conditions, the communal struggle against an unfavourable environment, the economic insecurity of pit-life, the limi• tations enforced upon women by the lack of employment oppor• tunities, the traditional commitment to large families! These factors ensured a common pool of experiences and a common set of expectations. The coalmining communities were marked by a unique culture and outlook on life.
These features of coalmining served to isolate its populations even more from other working-class groups and offer an explanation for the view which has been advanced by labour historians that the radicalism of the coalminers was restricted to their particular needs and interests, and eschewed a total working-class solidarity, which was the goal of the organized.,working-class movement in Britain. iv
PREFACE
The coalminers have always been known for their turbulent political activities and for their foremost posi• tion in the history of trade unionism. During the period of the "new unionism," the Yorkshire coalfield was the most strongly unionized of all coalfields, and the Yorkshire
Miners'- Association was the most powerful constituent of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain. Despite their im• portance in the history of labour struggles, I have not dis• cussed the role of the coalminers in politics or unionism, or the unique industrial relations in mining. These topics have been dealt with by R. P. Arnot, Roy Gregory, H. A.
Clegg, A. Fox, and A,,F. Thompson, and more particularly in the case of the Yorkshire miners, by Frank Machin. My purpose is quite different. I have sought to gain some insights into the personal living and working situation of the coal• miners and their families. Only when they suit the purposes of this thesis, do I refer to the political and unionizing activities of the coalminers.
To strengthen the qualitative aspects of the study,
I have relied heavily upon descriptions from the coalminers themselves and upon those from social investigators. So that these descriptions do not lose any of their Value or meaning,
I have to a great extent let the words of the coalminers
and contemporary observers speak for themselves. Some of
this illustrative material is taken from outside the time
period covered in my study, but it is used only when it can V throw light on the period under consideration, and is there•
fore of special interest or significance. Similarly material
is drawn from all coalfields to provide a more complete back•
ground in which the experiences of the Yorkshire coalfield
can be placed.
Finally, the standard of living of any working-
class occupational or social group can only be studied in
comparison with the standards experienced by other working-
class groups. Consequently, throughout the thesis, I have
tried to incorporate material from other occupational groups
to provide a contrast for the coalminers• experiences. vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page i
Abstract ii
Preface iv
List of Tables vi
I Introduction v 1
II The Standard of Life 17
III Marriage, Fertility, and Household Size 68
IV Wives and Daughters 109
V The Woman in her Social and Domestic Role .... 135
VI The Coalminer -- His Work 173
VII The Coalminer -- His Social Life 219
VIII Conclusion 25^
Bibliography 262 vii LIST OF TABLES
CHAPTER I TABLE I To show the decennial increase in the numbers of coalminers in England and Wales, 1861 - 1911. TABLE II To show the decennial increase in the numbers of coalminers in the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1881 - 1911. TABLE III To show the output of coal in millions of tons in Yorkshire, 1880 - 1913. TABLE IV To show the growth of population in a sample of South Yorkshire colliery towns, 1881 - 1911. TABLE V To show the birth places of a sample of males enumerated in Yorkshire, 1891. TABLE VI „To show the occupational concentration of coalminers in a sample of Urban Districts in South Yorkshire, 1901 - 11. CHAPTER II TABLE I To show the numbers of families and numbers of houses available in a sample of West Riding coal towns, 1891 and 1901. TABLE II To show the birth, death and infant death rates for Castleford, 1902 - 1906. TABLE III To show the birth, death and infant death rates for Normanton in 1906, TABLE IV To show the numbers of patients in certain Isolation Hospitals in the Yorkshire colliery areas, 1911. TABLE V To show the average daily wages of coal hewers and labourers by region, 1888 and 191^. TABLE VI To show the average weekly rates (net) of various grades of coalminers in West and South Yorkshire, 1886. TABLE VII To show the average daily earnings of various grades of coalminers in West and South York• shire, 191^. viii
TABLE VIII To compare the true weekly wage rates in five major industries, 1886 and 1913.
TABLE IX To compare the average weekly earnings of male adult workers in various industries, 1913.
TABLE X To show the number of English mining families out of a sample of 124 who consumed quantities of the following commodities in 1890.
TABLE XI To show the number of English mining families from a sample of 124 who incurred expenses for certain non-food items, I890.
CHAPTER III
TABLE I To show the average ages at marriage of bache• lors and spinsters in occupational groups, 1884 - 1885.
TABLE II To show the average age of the wife at marriage, in marriages of varying duration and social class, 1911.
TABLE III To show the conjugal status, of men and women in three sample coal towns at various ages in 1891.
TABLE IV To show the total births per 1,000 population in England and Wales, 1871 to 1911.
TABLE V To show the birth rate per 1,000 in the coal• mining counties and England and Wales in 1881 and 1901.
TABLE VI To show the annual percentage decreases in class fertility rates, standardized for age <€: of marriage,
TABLE VII To show the fertility of the eight social classes in 1911.
TABLE VIII To show the standardized total and effective fertility of marriages of various dates in each social class, as a percentage of the corresponding rates for occupied persons of all classes jointly, 1911.
TABLE IX To show mortality of legitimate children under one year of age, according to the occupation and social class of the father, 1911. -IX PAGE TABLE X To compare the illegitimacy rate of the coal areas with the national average. Crude rates. 93 TABLE XI To show the distribution of the retired males in certain occupations in workhouses and asylums, England and Wales, 1911. 99 TABLE XII To show the percentage of aged paupers in a sample of South Yorkshire coal towns, 1892. 100 CHAPTER IV TABLE I To illustrate the age distribution inta sample of mining towns, compared with the rest of England and Wales. 111 TABLE II To show the number of females per 1,000 males in England and Wales, 1861 to 1911. 112 TABLE III To show the population by sex of those civil parishes in the West Riding whose expansion was due to colliery development, 1891 to 1911 111* TABLE IV To show the numbers of females at various ages in the five sample Urban Sanitary Districts, 1881 - 1901. 116 TABLE V To show the numbers of males in various age groups in five Urban Sanitary District's, 1881 - 1901 118 TABLE VI To trace the progress of the 10 to lk year age group in 1891, to 1901, in four sample Urban Sanitary Districts, from the Census Reports of those years. 120 TABLE VII To trace the progress of the 15 to 19 years age group of 1881 to 1901, in five Urban Sanitary Districts from the Census Reports. Increase/ Decline in brackets. 121 TABLE VIII To show the proportion per cent of men, boys, women and girls employed in various trades, 1886. 12^ TABLE IX To show the ratio of occupied females to the total female population of a sample of South Yorkshire colliery towns, 1901. 125 TABLE X To show the principal occupations pursued by women in a sample of coal towns in South Yorkshire, 1911. 126 X PAGE
CHAPTER VI TABLE I To show the numbers of coalminers at groups of ages, 1891. 181 TABLE II To show the numbers of coalminers at groups of ages for England and Wales, and Yorkshire, 1911. 182 TABLE III To show the annual death rates from accidents per 1,000 living in Britain, in age groups. 192 TABLE IV To show the principal colliery disasters in Britain, 1856-1894. 193 TABLE V To compare the mortality rate for coalminers with the national rate, 1908. 200 TABLE VI To show the annual death rates per 1,000 living by ages, at two periods. 202 TABLE VII To show the expectation of life at the age of 20 years in certain occupational groups, based on mortality figures for 1900 to 1902. 203 CHAPTER VII TABLE I To compare prosecutions per 1,000 population for drunkenness in five mining counties and a group of agricultural counties, for the year ending September 20th, 1864. 226 TABLE II To compare the numbers of prisoners from certain occupational groups in England and Wales in 1901. 249 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
The history of the early development of the coal industry in England is difficult to trace, owing to the ab• sence of records regarding the working of the mines and the men who wrought in them... To a certain extent the same might be said concerning the records relating to the social life of the working classes contained in the press of our time. Although the workmen of today have attained a dis• tinct social position, have represen• tatives in the House of Commons, and trade unions, societies, and powerful combinations, very little beyond their public or political actions is noted by the press of the country. An author writing a century hence on our social history would find but sparse notices of the manner of living of the grimy toilers of the mine or workshop... he would have to search in the remotest corners of literature to obtain even , a glimpse at the inner life of a collier. R.N. Boyd made this comment in 1892, and his words have largely held true. Although much has been written about the British coal industry and on the political and labour struggles it generated, the paucity of personal records re• mains a problem for those who wish to explore the social history of the miners. Nevertheless, the problem is not intractable. Eye-witness accounts and autobiographies of coalminers are available, as are Government reports and en• quiries, census materials, and the observations of social investigators. It is upon the basis of such sources that 2 this thesis has been written. Many writers and observers have justifiably described the coalminers as being a "race apart." This judgement was perhaps stimulated by the geographical isolation of the coal• mining communities, for, as one observer noted, "miners mostly live in villages of their own, apart from the ordinary indus- 2 trial life of the country." This isolation and physical separation intensified feelings of loyalty among miners both to the community and to their occupational group. "They lived... in tightly-knit communities with a strong sense of solidarity. In times of trouble they acted together, often violently." ^•Not' unexpectedly, special attitudes emerged from this physical and occupational isolation so that: Coal-miners have always been a class apart, with mentality and aspiration unlike those of the rest of the working class. This spiritual isolation is largely a reflection of physical isolation. Living remote from the quick life of the town, the collier has developed speech and habits that effectively cut him off from his fellows, k A lack of occupational diversity contributed to the shared living and working situation which was so important to the maintenance of cohesion within the population of the coalmining communities: In communities like these there was little of the social stratification and variety of life that is usually found in large industrial conurbations. The typical mining village was a dreary collection of box-like cottages, arranged in monstrous rows, each identical with the next. Almost everyone was related in some degree to everyone else, and physi• cally and psychologically these intensely close-knit societies tended to be cut off from the rest of the world. 5 3 This study will attempt to demonstrate why the coalminers have been designated as an isolated "race" and to identify in what ways their life and work differed from that of other occupational groups. The somewhat traditional and conserva• tive attitudes of the miners, which may be discerned in many different facets of life, supports the view that the coal• mining communities tended to be inward-looking almost to the point of being closed social groups. Examples and illus• trations will be taken from different coalfields and from various sources to add weight to the thesis. It must be pointed out at this stage, however, that there were many local variations and differences in living and working situa• tions between the different coalfields. This thesis cannot attempt the mammoth task of identifying these local diver• gences. Instead, common threads have been selected and some generalizations are advanced. Though examples will be cited from the major British coalfields, including the mining centres of Scotland, South Wales, the Midlands, Durham and Northumberland, the South Yorkshire coalfield has been chosen for specific study. Development of the coalfields in this area received its greatest impetus in the last three decades of the nineteenth century and up until the First World War, While much has been written on the older coalfields of Britain, little has been written about the mines of South Yorkshire which were developed later. My purpose is to establish the outline of the social and working lives of these miners, to show what bound them so closely together, and to identify the special characteristics and features which distinguished them so drama• tically from other occupational groups, II The numbers of coalmining population expanded rapidly throughout Britain in the period under study. The following figures reveal how quickly these numbers were increasing for England and Wales alone, illustrating the scope and impor• tance of the coal industry, TABLE I To show the decennial increase in the numbers of coalminers in England and Wales, 1861 - 1911. ° 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911 Miners 246,613 268,091 378,664 513,843 640,989 874,304 in coal
1881-91 1891-01 1901-11 Increase 35.7 24.7 36.4 (Note: figures for 1861 and 1871 include retired coalminers.) Some of this expansion was accounted for by the new develop• ments taking place on the Yorkshire coalfield. The opening up of new coal mines in Yorkshire developed from west to east, though coal pits had been in operation in certain parts of Yorkshire throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. One of the most important of these early phases of coalmining was located in the Barnsley area from 1835 to 1870. However, the opening up of new collieries and the development of new communities in the Trans-Dearne area came after the early 1870's. The most important seam was the Barnsley Bed of both soft house and coking coal and hard 5 steam coal. Activity and population gravitated around this area after 1870, It was these newer developments which were largely responsible for the rapid increase in output and mining population in South Yorkshire for the next few decades: TABLE II To show the decennial increase in the numbers of coalminers in the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1881 - 1911. 7 Coal miners 1881 1891 1901 1911 West Riding Yorkshire 55,680 75,958 94,110 136,399 Increase 1881 - 91 1891 - 01 1901 - 11 36.4 23.9 43.5 The figures for the increase in/the output of coal also demonstrate the rapid development which was taking place in Yorkshire during this period. These new exploitations were so crucial to the coal industry as a whole that by 1900 York• shire and Nottinghamshire together dominated the British coal industry. TABLE III To show the output of coal in millions of tons
— ' - — - - i r\ r\ ^\ —i /—\ -i —i O 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1913 17.5 18.5 22.3 22.8 28.2 29.9 38.3 43.7 If we examine the population figures for the following South Yorkshire coalmining communities, most of which are named by the census Reports as expanding solely because of colliery development, then we can see this rapid rate of expansion in operation. These particular communities are of special interest since they are representative of those which this study examines more closely. 6 TABLE IV To show the growth of population in a sample of South Yorkshire colliery towns. 1881 - 1911. 9
Civil Parish 1881 1891 1901 1911 Ackworth 2,222 2,647 3,394 4,183 Bentley 1,484 1,880 2,403 6,497 B o It on- up on- De arne 1,002 1,205 3,828 8,670 Castleford 10,530 14,143 17,386 23,090 Conisbrough 2,690 4,499 8,549 11,059 Crigglestone 2,862 3,246 4,369 Crofton 2,777 824 1,896 2,566 6,824 Cudworth 702 1.607 3.408 Darfield 2,616 3,416 4,194 5,427 Darton 12,04,9640 3,679 4,457 5,941 Denaby 1.631 1,708 2,670 5,060 Featherstone 3,247 4.132 7,822 9,167 Glass Houghton 1,049 1,477 2,950 4,739 Grimethorpe 1,092 3,263 Hemsworth 1,665 2,887 6,283 10,173 Hoyland Nether 9.822 11,006 12,464 14,638 Mexborough 6,319 7,734 10;,>430 14,401 Normanton 8,038 10,234 12,352 15,032 Purston Jaglin 706 1,212 1,995 2,376 Rovston 1.128 2.613 4.397 6.237 Ryhill 797 1,060 1,553 2,191 South Elmsall 526 620 1,026 4,359 South Kirkby 634 1,434 2,916 7,086 Swinton 2.968 9.705 12.217 -nr6<;4 . Thurnscoe 249 217 2,366 4,074 Wath-upon-Dearne 3,012 3,894 4,847 7,331 Wombwell 8,451 10,942 13,252 17,536
From this table it can be seen that the centres of major
population growth took place in Bentley, Bolton-upon-Dearne,
Castleford, Conisbrough, Cudworth, Denaby, Featherstone,
Hemsworth, Mexborough, Royston, Wath-upon-Dearne and Wombwell.
These communities grew from '.their relatively modest beginnings
to sizeable towns in the space of thirty years. Furthermore,
Crofton, Purston Jaglin, Ryhill, South Elmsall, South Kirkby
and Thurnscoe were nothing more than small villages in 1881,
but had become small townships by the end of this period.
The problem which must now be raised is that of the origin
of this population increase. From where were the new colliery
owners drawing their labour force? 7 The first source of labour was of course the resident population in the area of development. In those coalmining areas where colliery extensions were taking place, there would be a small, basic mining population upon which to build. However, in areas of new development, the coal-owners would have to depend firstly upon the resident agricultural popu• lation. A great many of the coalmining population as a whole had their roots in agriculture. Originally their families had been farm labourers, but the sons turned to mining the land upon which their forebears had once worked. Similarly in Yorkshire, it is safe to assume that resident agricult• ural labourers left their lowly paid farm work to take up jobs in the new collieries in their areas, which were offering incentives of higher pay to attract their labour.
Secondly, the figures imply that the opening up of the South Yorkshire.coalfield involved a major influx of immigrants and their families — miners from the older, stagnating or deteriorating coalfields, those from poorly paid agricult• ural areas, and in instances, workers from occupations com• pletely divorced from coalmining. The Census Reports indi• cate that most of these immigrants did not travel very far.
From 1871 to 1891f when information on migration is available, the majority of migrants to Yorkshire came from the North Midland counties, Lincolnshire, Lancashire and Ireland. 10 Those from England therefore had, in most instances, simply crossed the border from their native counties into the mining 8 and industrial districts of Yorkshire, The following table shows the birth places of a sample of males in Yorkshire in 1891, and indicates those areas from where most immigrants were drawn: To. showjthe birth places of a sample of males enumerated in Yorkshire, 1891. 11 Birth place Numbers of males
Lancashire 33,670
Lincolnshire 31,647
Ireland 22,937
Durham 19,594
Derbyshire 17,675 Nottinghamshire 15,220 Staffordshire 14,880 Although these immigrants were enumerated for the whole of Yorkshire, and not solely the coalmining areas, it can be assumed that many of them found their way to the colliery districts. Those from Lincolnshire represent perhaps those agricultural workers who were seeking a better living in the mining and manufacturing areas, while among those from Durham, Lancashire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Staffordshire would be found a number of miners who would be hoping to find better working conditions in the new collieries than those they had left behind. There was but little influx from the south because, "it seems probable also that souther• ners regarded the mining and manufacturing areas with some 9 repugnance, particularly the coalfields where demand for labour was greatest but patterns of work and leisure least 12 familiar." Those migrants who did leave their homes and employment however, for work in the coalfields, were attracted by certain tangible inducements. Firstly, the wages paid in coalmining were higher than those which could be earned in agriculture or manufacturing industry. Low-rental housing was available and coalminers were allowed to buy coal at concessionary rates from the Total District employed Coalminers Other major employments 1) 1901 Featherstone 4,179 3,040 Building. Hoyland Nether 4,291 2,861 Building. Stanley 3,911 2,297 Building. Wombwell 4,459 3,065 Conveyance, building. Worsborouerh 3.477 2,259 Engineering. 2) 1911 Bolton-upon- Dearne 2,911 2,183 Building. Darfield 1,876 1,505 Food, lodging, pubs. Featherstone 5,001 3,790 Building, food, lodging, pubs. Hoyland Nether 5,116 3,569 Building, food, lodging. Royston 2,244 1,619 Coal products, building. Wath-upon- Dearne 3,958 2,355 Railways, building, chemicals. Wombwell 5,805 4,121 Railways, building, glass, food, lodgings. In all of these towns, coalmining was the predominant industry, employing over fifty per cent of occupied males over ten years of age. Other industries in the towns were in some way related to coalmining and the following indus• tries were those most frequently mentioned in the Census Reports as employing men ranging in the lower hundreds: building) agriculture; food} drink; tobacco; lodging; railways; coal products; glass and china; and general labouring. This occupational concentration must be kept in mind throughout the thesis. 14 III In identifying the features common to coalmining communities, and in attempting to isolate the characteristics which set the coalminers apart from other occupational groups, the following subjects have been selected for consideration. Firstly, we will look at the community as a whole and examine the standard of life in the colliery towns. The common living experience of the coalmining population served to strengthen social bonds. Then the family unit, marriage and fertility will be examined. Certain features distinctive of the coal• miners emerge from a study of these questions. A tradition of coalmining became firmly entrenched within the family. In time, a town produced its own self-replenishing labour force from its myriad of mining families. Thirdly, a study of women in the mining communities reveals that there were few employment opportunities for them. From this fact, we may make certain inferences about the home life of the miners, and attempt to assess the woman's quality as a housekeeper and mother. Finally, after making a close study of the woman, a similar study will be made of the man both in his working life and in his social role. The shared working situation of the men had a strong effect on social life and drew the community closer together. We have already noted that the miners were isolated in a geographical sense. But by examining the above features of the coalminers' lives, we can see that there were not only geographical barriers between them and other occupational 15 groups, but also deep differences in culture, attitudes, living and working experiences and in the degree of cohesion among them. The picture that is drawn in the following pages should pinpoint the social reasons for these strong bonds of solidarity, and should go some way in explaining why Roy Gregory was able to write of the coalminers that, "miners the world over have much in common with each other and always have had. The nature of their work, their pattern of life, and the type of community within which they live bind them together, and at the same time set them somewhat apart from 21 the rest of the industrial working class." FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER I 1 R.N. Boyd, Coal Pits and Pitmen (London, 1892), pp. 1-2. 2 Coal and Power. The Report of an Enquiry Presided over by the Rt. Hon. D..Lloyd George, (London, 1924), p. 8. 3 R. Challinor and B, Ripley, The Miners.;''' Association (London, 1968), p..44. 4 From T.S. Ashton, "The Coalminers of the Eighteenth Century," Economic History, (January 1928), cited in K.G.J.C. Knowles, Strikes — A Study in Industrial Conflict. 1911 - 47 (Oxford, 1952),p. 164. 5 R. Gregory, The Miners and British Politics, 1906 - 1914 (Oxford, 1968), pT^ 6 From The Census Report for England and Wales. 1901? General Report. B.P.P* 1904-, CVIII, and, The Census Report for England and Wales. 1911: General Report, B.P.?. 1917 - 18, XXXV, Table XXXIX, p. 118. 7 Ibid., 1901, General Report, p. 106, and Ibid., Census of 1911. Vol. X, B.P.P. 1913, LXXVIII. 8 B.R. Mitchell and P. Deane, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 115 - 116. B.P.P. - British Parliamentary Papers 16 9 Table compiled from: Census Report for England and Wales. 1891: Summary Tables. Vol. II. B.P.P. lB"93 - 94, CV, Table 2, p..876? Census Report for England and Wales. 1901t Index to Place Names, B.P.P. 1904. CVIII, and; Census Report for England and Wales, 1911: Index to Place Names. B.P.P. 1912 - 13, CXII, p.593. 10 See, Census Report for England and Wales, 1871: General Report. Appendices, B.P.P. 1873. LXXI, Pt. II. Table 91, PP. 74 - 75: Census Report for England and Wales. 1881: County Tables. Yorkshire, B.P.P. 1883, LXXX, Table 11, p. 416; and, Census Report for England and Wales. 1891: County Tables. Yorkshire, B.P.P. 1893 - 94, CVI, Table 8, p. 442. II 11' Ibid., Census for 1891. 12 E.H. Hunt, Regional Wage Variations in Britain. 1850 - 1914 (Oxford, 1973), P. 283. 13 B. Thomas, "The Migration of Labour into the Glamorganshire Coalfield (1861 - 1911)," Economica, (November, 1930), Vol. 10, p. 291. 14 H.J..Scott, Portrait of Yorkshire (London. 1965), p.189. 15 See J. Lawson, A Man's Life (London, 1932), p. 198. 16 See R. Lucas, Minetown. Milltovm. Railtown. Life in Canadian Communities of Single Industry (Toronto, 1971). 17 A. Horner, Incorrigible Rebel (London, i960), pp. 96-97. 18 Paul de Rousiers, The Labour Question in Britain (London, I896), p. 134. 19 Ibid.. p. 134 20 Table compiled from: Census Report for England and Wales. 1901: County Tables. Yorkshire, B.P.P. 1902, CXXI, Table 35 (A), p. 258? and, Census Report for England and Wales, 1911: Vol. I. Administrative Areas. Yorkshire, B.P.P. 1912 - 13, CXI, Table 15 (A), p. 418. 21 R. Gregory, Op. Cit.. p. 53. 17 CHAPTER II THE STANDARD OF LIFE In an examination of the standard of life in coalmining communities, certain controversies become apparent. There are varying opinions and observations which provide evidence to support both optimistic and pessimistic views of the level of comfort in the coal towns, but at the same time there are some features which can be pointed to as being common to the coalmining towns. By examining housing, overcrowding, disease, nutrition and the level of wages, a picture of life is presen• ted which indicates that the coalminers experienced similar living conditions. Both the working and living situations helped to mould the miners and their families into a tightly- knit social group, and to produce certain common attitudes in the miners. I The first visible factor which limited the residents of the coalmining communities to a shared living experience was the dwelling which encompassed the household group. Housing in the coal towns was largely the responsibility of the colliery companies, and although standards varied from town to town acoording to the attitude and wealth of the mineowner, each individual colliery company provided identi• cal housing for its own miners. This uniformity, vividly captured in the following description of a South Wales Com• munity, reinforced the bonds of cohesion within the mining 18 town or village: Everywhere there are the same long rows of drab, stone-built houses, slate-roofed, built straight on to the pavement so as to save space, each identical the one with the other — so that they look as if they had been manufactured from some common mixture in a gigantic machine whence they had emerged in an endless stream, been cut off into the lengths required, and flung down casually to stick where, and as best, they might. 1 Some of the worst examples of colliery housing existed, as might be expected, in the older coalfields of Scotland and the North East. Rows of one-room hovels with bare earth floors and no foundations, built in the eighteenth century, survived until the I860,s in the North East, and even later in Scotland. As in most pit villages in the nineteenth century, water was normally provided by communal stand-pipes in the street, while outside earth closets or privies were shared by several families. Often, open sewers and drains ran between the rows of cottages. In some instances, a second storey was added to the original construction and a cold water tap installed inside a pantry to the rear of the dwelling. In this converted state, some of these cottages survived into the twentieth century. In 1924, the report of a Liberal Party enquiry into the state of the coal industry was published. In his survey of housing conditions, the investigator R.A. Scott-James con• firmed that the worst types of coalminers' housing occurred in Scotland, Durham and Northumberland. In Lanarkshire he found that out of a total of 321,4-71 houses, 61,202 had just 19 one room and 155,285 had two rooms. These houses were built in long rows. Upon those in Rosehall, Lanarkshire, he observed that, "in each of these single rooms lives a miner's family. There is no pantry. The coal is kept under the bed. Water has to be obtained from a standpipe outside, used by a number of houses. Conspicuously huddled together in the yards are 2 filthy huts for sanitary purposes," Of Consett he wrote, "Here I saw houses with a single lower room and an upper room approached by a ladder. One that I entered was inhabited by a man, his wife, and six children, of whom the eldest were girls of 21 and 23, and another was a boy nearly eighteen." J The ex-trade union leader Abe Moffat had lived in a cottage of this type in Scotland during his boyhood at the turn of the century. His home had originally been built for _ 50 at the end of the eighteenth century, and was one of a row of identical cottages. There was no bathroom save for a shared earth lavatory outside. There was no gas or elec• tricity and lighting was provided by paraffin oil. Street lighting was not provided until 1906 when the miners furn• ished their own from the profits of their cooperative public house. Drainage was by means of an open, surface channel where the children frequently played. The privies and ash• pits were often not cleared for weeks at a time by the scavengers, so that conditions in the summer months were particularly bad when, as might be expected, disease was 20 rampant. He laid the blame for these poor living conditions 4 upon the coalowners. More comfortable living conditions were to be found in the subsequent rows of terraced housing which were built in the colliery towns throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though aesthetically depressing, the terraced house did provide more space and better facilities than the surviving single storey cottages. Portland Row in Selston, Nottinghamshire was a row of terraced housing which was typical of many of the coalfields. ^ It was built in 1823 but survived well into the twentieth century. It was comprised of 47 brick houses with outside coal houses and earth lavatories. They were the characteristic "two-up, two-down" houses, with a skullery or back kitchen, a living room and a pantry under the stairs. Upstairs, there were two bedrooms, with a fireplace in one of them. Facilities within the house included a cold water tap and sink in the skullery, a coal-fired copper for boiling clothes, and a black leaded cooking range which became a standard item in the miner's home in the second half of the nineteenth cen• tury. It had a boiler for hot water, an open fire grate and an oven. With regular concessions of coal from the employing pit, the mining family was in an advantageous position both for cooking and heating facilities when com• pared to other working-class families, for whom the provi• sion of coal was an expensive necessity. R. A. Scott-James concluded in the 1924 Liberal Party investigation that the most superior miners' dwellings 21 constructed before the First World War were to be found in those areas of most recent colliery development, specifically in Derbyshire and Yorkshire. However, although these houses compared favourably with what he had seen in the North East and Scotland, he was not entirely satisfied with the efforts of the colliery developers. A shortage of housing led to general overcrowding in these areas, where populations were seen to double in a matter of ten years. Furthermore, with a population expansion on this scale, speculative and "jerry" building ' were all too common. The extension of an old mine or the opening up of a new one, which was occurring in the Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire coalfields at the end of the nineteenth century, often led to the provision of a better type of miners' housing, services and ameneties in order to attract labour from other coalfields. On the other hand, the histo• rian of British town planning, W. Ashworth, claims that in instances this led to no improvements at all, or to a worse- 7 ning of existing conditions. ' In rural or semi-rural areas, the mining companies had to set up all basic utilities such as water-supply and waste-disposal, and to provide ample accommodation for the miners and their families. Although there were some attempts to build healthy and comfortable living places, usually the mining company did not have the capital to spare to provide adequate facilities. In these cases, the colliery company left the provision of housing to a speculative builder, laased the dwellings from him for 22 20 or 30 years and sub-let them to its employees. Speed and economy were the major concern of the builders. Consequently, houses were often poor in quality. Furthermore, a colliery company in the early stages of developing a mine was often unable to provide facilities such as shops, schools, churches and recreational amenities, and development in these spheres was left to the coalminers them• selves. One observer went so far as to say that housing in the coalmining districts was "inferior to the general run of working-class housing in construction, standards of accom- modation and in sanitary arrangements.." Some improvements can be traced in the later nineteenth century, but in Derby• shire for example, some of those newer mining villages "which 9 had been hastily built and carelessly planned" ' at this time, were almost as bad as the older deteriorating mining villages. In the same county, as late as 1936, S.J. Bartle of Chester• field was reported in the Derbyshire Times as stating before the Church Assembly that, "The houses of many miners were nothing more than hovels. He believed no class of workmen . were herded together so much in what should be lovely country villages as the miners." 10 E.H. Phelps Brown noted that these conditions were prevalent on a national scale at the turn of the century, and that good housing estates were the + .11 exception. In 1947, however, F. Zweig conducted a survey of the prevailing living and working conditions on the British coal• fields, and he had a more optimistic view of the housing situation. Although slums and hovels did exist, especially in the older colliery districts, "modern and large collieries nearly always have decent and spacious housing, with a good lay-out both of the colliery and the village." 12 Those pre-1914 houses which were still in existence in the 194-O's were of the four-room type with a kitchen, living room and two bedrooms, with privies, open ash-pits, coal houses and stand-pipes in the back yards. Zweig pointed out that these houses had been a great inducement in the recruitment of labour for though their appearance was ugly, they were the height of comfort compared to the cottages of the farm labourers. During the period of colliery development in the late nineteenth century, one common feature of coalmining tov/ns was back-to-back housing, whereby three walls of a house were shared with the surrounding houses. These were normally built in long rows. In 1910 a Government Report was published which commented upon the detrimental effects of this type of housing. 1^ The Report investigated thirteen industrial towns in the West Riding of Yorkshire between 1898 and 1907, and concluded that mortality rates were generally fifteen to twenty per cent higher from all causes in back-to-back housing, when compaired to housing with through ventilation. With only one door and one set of windows in this cheaper type of house, the lack of ventilation led to excessive rates of chest diseases, such as bronchitis and pneumonia, and those diseases "associated with defective growth and develop- 14 ment of the young child." 24 Previous investigations had shown similar patterns of disease, and in 1907, Dr. Darra Mair studied the effects of back-to-hack housing in the colliery town of Whickham in County Durham. He discovered over a period of ten years an excess of mortality from all causes of 27 per cent and an excess of infant mortality of 50 per cent in back-to-back houses, over those, houses with through ventilation. ^ •' In the 1910 Report, the Medical Officer of Health, Arthur Newsholme concluded that back-to-back houses, even in Healthy surroundings, were decidedly less healthy than houses with through ventilation. Further, this type of housing entailed additional inconveniences, for: The absence of a back-yard made it necessary in the older back-to-back houses to place the closets or privies and ashpits in groups, either on one side or at the end of a row, with the result that the closet and ashpit accommodation belonging to a house may be very far removed from it and, at the same time, often inadequate, while the proximity of the groups of closets and ashpits to some of the houses is extremely objectionable. 1° George Orwell's impressions of back-to-back housing in Yorkshire and other industrial areas were also unfavour• able, and he recorded from his observations of this living situation that, "A fifty yards' walk to the lavatory or the dust-bin is not exactly an inducement to be clean, and it is worth considering what it is like for a child to grow up in one of the back alleys where its gaze is bounded by a row of lavatories and a :wall." 17 A Board of Trade investigation of 1908 into working- class housing and retail prices provides a description of housing conditions in two South Yorkshire colliery towns-- 25 Castleford and Normanton -- in the period with which we are concerned. Both of these towns had grown rapidly at the turn of the century in response to development by colliery companies and the development of housing which accompanied this population expansion may be taken as typical of the growth experienced by the South Yorkshire colliery communi• ties at this time. The following figures demonstrate how 18 the population had grown between 1861 and 1901. CASTLEFORD NORMANTON Percentage Percentage Population Increase Population Increase 1861 - 3,876 1861 - 563 1871 - 6,268 1871 - 3,448 512.4 1881 -10,530 67.9 1881 - 8,038 133.1 1891 -14,143 34.3 1891 -10,234 27.3 1901 -17,386 22.9 1901 -12,352 20.7 55 per cent of the population of Castleford lived in four-roomed houses in 1906, with a kitchen, living room and two bedrooms, which were rented at rates of between 4s. 6d. and 5s. 6d. per week. Three-roomed houses were less common and slightly cheaper to rent at 3s. 3d. to 4s, 6d. per week. Newer four-roomed housing on the outskirts of the town, with separate yards, an indoor water supply, small skullery, water- closet and coal house rented at 5s. 6d. per week, but were usually occupied by colliery foreman or better paid families. The Board of Trade investigators described Castleford in the following way: In the central part of the town houses are packed closely, often in narrow streets and courts, and show considerable variation in structure and design. Many of these houses are old, and the character of 25 cv the accommodation hardly satisfies modern require• ments. On the outskirts of the town the general character of the working-class accommodation is rather better; the houses are of more recent date, and are more carefully designed. The usual building material throughout the town is dull red brick, occasionally relieved by stonework around doors and windows. Except in the case of newer properties water is seldom laid on in the houses, but is supplied by a tap in an open yard at the back, shared by a row of cottages. Water closets are infrequent, except in the case of the newer houses which, in some instances, are also fitted with baths. Privies and ashpits, placed in the yards and shared by several households, are the rule. Gas is in general use. 19 Back-to-back housing of two or three storeys was of "considerable importance" in Castleford, being constructed in rows of twelve. Those with three storeys had one room on each floor, while the two storied houses had one living room on the ground floor and two bedrooms above. In 1901, 11.2 per cent of the population of Castleford lived in overcrowded conditions (of two or more persons to a room), while the national average of overcrowding was, in urban districts, 8,9 per cent. Conditions were slightly better in Normanton where construction had almost kept apace with population growth. Here, the percentage of overcrowding was 9.31 and was only slightly higher than the national average. The investi• gators found housing conditions to be "generally good" with an abundance of garden allotments, a fourteen acre park and recreation grounds. Some three-roomed back-to-back houses had been provided with the usual inconvenience of an out• side communal water-supply and sanitary facilities. These rented from tween 3s. 6d. and 4s. 6d. per week. But the most common type of dwelling, which housed almost fifty 26 per cent of the population, was the four-roomed house built into rows of 12 to 24, and costing 5s. Od. to 5s. 6d.per week. They had: ... as a rule, (an) abundance of air space around them, owing to the fact that there is a consider• able amount of land not yet built upon. They are built of dull red brick, are plain fronted, and have sometimes a small forecourt, and generally ' a spacious backyard common to the row. On the ground floor there is a parlour, into which the street door opens, and at the back the kitchen containing both copper and sink. Between the front and back rooms is access to the cellar, and to the stairs leading to the two bedrooms. Again, Normanton had a superior type of home for the more highly paid, consisting of three bedrooms,;a separate yard and water closet, and cost 6s. 6d. per week. The rents for all these houses were not high and taking the average rent for a working-class house in London as a base of 100, the average rents for Castleford and Normanton in 1906 were 53 and 5? respectively. 21 But then rents in colliery communities were traditionally cheaper than those asked from other occupational groups. The Board of Trade regarded the housing in these two communities with favour, especially when compared to the conditions in the neighbouring textile towns of the West Riding. However, not all observers regarded the miners' surroundings in such a favourable light. For instance, G.A.W. Tomlinson lived in a row of company houses in his childhood in Nottinghamshire in the early years of the twentieth century, which looked out .upon a row of ashpits. "When it rained the alley between the ash-pits became a bog 27 and I was not allowed to go out. When it was hot in the summer the stench from the ash-pits would make me sick and 22 I didn't want to go out." In the 1930's George Orwell was equally appalled by the housing conditions of the working-class and cited this house in Mapplewell, a small coalmining village near Barns• ley, as one of the poorer examples: Two up, one down. Living room 14 feet by 12 feet. Sink in living room. Plaster cracking and coming off walls. Gas leaking slightly. The upstairs rooms each ten feet by eight feet. Four beds (for six persons, all adult), ... Room nearest stairs has no door and stairs have no bannister, so that when you step out of bed your foot hangs in vacancy and you may fall ten feet on to stones. Dry rot so bad that one can see through the floor into the room below... Earth road past these cottages is like a muchheap and said to be almost impassable in winter. Stone lavatories at end of gardens in semi-ruinous condi• tion. 23 The coalowners were slow to become involved in the creation of model towns. Improved housing under government inspection and financed with the aid of government subsidies belong to the post First World War era. Twelve thousand homes of an improved type were built under government and coal company sponsorship after 1919. 6,460 of these being construc• ted on the expanding Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottingham• shire coalfields. The new developments boasted the ameni• ties of bathrooms, hot water, extra living space, gardens and public facilities. The planners incorporated open spaces into the new housing estates to avoid the crowded "barrack- 24 block" appearance of pre-1914 housing. 28 There had been two major attempts in Yorkshire before the First World War to set up model colliery villages, each experiencing considerable success. In 190?, the Woodlands Colliery Village near Doncaster was built, and, after sin• king its new pit in 1906 the Brodsworth Main Colliery Com• pany built a whole new colliery village along improved lines. A cooperative store, workmen's club, fishing lake and park and other public facilities were provided, and the cost of a set of public baths was borne by the promoter of the scheme, A.B. Markham. The houses cost _200 each to build and were let to the miners at 5s. 3d. to 6s. 9d. a week. By 1912, 653 houses had been built. 2^ The Victoria County History of Yorkshire of 1912 noted that: A pleasing feature of the modern colliery proprie• tor is the desire to provide better accomodation in regard to housing than has hitherto been attempted. At Dinnington, Brodsworth, Bently and Maltby model villages are being erected, and instead of the long depressing rows of houses so commonly met with in the Barnsley and Wakefield districts, the miners' houses are being built in blocks of eight or ten with gardens and wide streets. 26 However, in his survey of industrial villages in the nineteenth century, W. Ashworth concluded that despite these notable efforts, "the provision made for them (the miners) does little credit to the social outlook of the time," and "the majority of mining communities have no place in any account of model villages." 27 A study of housing conditions leads finally to a grand encompassing view of the community as a whole. One markedly 29 common feature of the mining communities was their immediate physical appearance. The observer was struck by an all-envelo• ping image of drabness afforded by an atmosphere heavy with smoke where, "the pollution of the air is such as to reduce clothes, houses and streets to drab uniformity." 28 The dominant physical feature was the spoil or slag heap at the surface of the colliery. This could be seen from any point in the town and, "to the observer the spoil heap is the 29 physical symbol of life and work." F. Zweig was appalled by the depressing appearance of the coal towns in his survey for: ... in many if not in most places the surroundings are marked by ugly, brutal and bleak industrialism, as can be seen in some villages in South Yorkshire or in North Staffordshire, Durham, Northumberland or Lancashire. There are frightful landscapes domi• nated by the hideous grey slag-tips which look like giant dust-bins with dirt and filth all round. With their agglomeration of rows of stumpy houses, wires and rubbish widespread, ashes, mud and weeds, they make an awesome impression of soulless places deserted by God. JO It can be seen therefore, that there are both favour• able and dismal accounts of the colliers' housing and envi• ronment. The quality of housing depended to a great extent on the attitudes of the coalowners and their willingness to lay out capital for the decent accommodation of the work force. But, housing generally in the colliery towns might be considered adequate when compared to that of other indus• trial groups. Certainly, the miners' leader J, Keir Hardie experienced worse living conditions in the Glasgow dock area 30 where five families JBhared the same water closet in his 31 tenement home. J This type of dwelling contrasted un• favourably with the house of the coalminers* leader John Brophy in St. Helens in the 1880's. His miner's house had five rooms and "was so solidly and tightly built it was not 32 hard to keep warm." ^ But whether housing was good or poor, the mining population of a community was bound together by a similar environment and vista. With little or no alter• native housing, the shared living situation served to draw the population together under a set of common expectations, and uniformity of outlook. Though standards of housing might very from area to area, one constant feature prevailed in the living conditions in mining districts -- overcrowding. Throughout the Census Reports of England and Wales during the second half of the nineteenth century and up until the First World War, the coalmining counties stand out as displaying the highest rates of overcrowding. Of these counties, Northumberland and Durham were by far the worst. In 1891, 11.23 per cent of the population of England and Wales lived in overcrowded conditions of more than two persons to a room. The three most overcrowded counties were all coalmining areas, and showed the following percentages of overcrowding: Northumberland -- 38.69; Durham -- 34.03; West Riding -- 16,49, and the Census enumerator commented that, "Speaking generally, it would appear that the coal-bearing counties are those where the crowding of dwellings is most severe. Northumberland and Durham, if the figures are to be trusted, 31 J3J3 are far away the worst in this respect," Ten years later in 1901, the percentages of overcrow• ding had fallen slightly in these counties, but were still high: Northumberland -- 32.09; Durham -- 24.48; West Riding -- 10.32 while in certain North East mining towns, the average numbers of persons per inhabited house were as follows: Gateshead -- 8.01; Newcastle --. 8.03; South Shields -- 8.12; 34 and Sunderland -- 6.80. J The enumerators commented in this instance that: • Speaking generally - - it may be noted that in those counties in which Coal Mining is a prevailing industry much overcrowding prevailed in 1901, for example, in the Rural Districts of Chester-le-Street, Lanchester and Easington, situated in the County of Durham, the proportions of overcrowded persons to total population were as high as 37» 38 and 39 per cent respectively. 35 Similarly in 1911, this pattern emerged, .'whereby in some urban districts of Northumberland and Durham overcrow• ding reached proportions of forty per cent and in some West Riding towns exceeded twenty per cent. In the rural districts of the first two counties, the percentage of overcrowding was 37.6 while the next highest rural proportions were in Wakefield rural district (18.2 per cent) and Hemsworth, (16.2 per cent), both in the West Riding. The overall proportion per cent of the population living in the ratio of more than two persons to a room was as follows in certain areas in 1911s _^ England and Wales 9.1 N'br thumb e r land 30.0 Durham 29.2 London 17.8 West Riding 10.1 32 In an occupational group where families were traditio• nally so large, some degree of overcrowding might he expected. But a housing shortage led also to a sharing of houses, so that a certain amount of "doubling-up" of families into one dwelling had to take place. As late as 1925, A.L. Bowley and M. Hogg in their survey of Stanley in County Durham, found in this colliery town 4,106 one family dwellings, 496 two family dwellings and 57 houses containing three families each. Sub-tenants were usually young married couples with few or no children. They normally rented one bedroom and shared the living room: The whole arrangement savours more of a generous sharing of unavoidably wretched conditions than of an attempt to make reasonable bargains of definite rent for definite accommodation. The conditions are of course often the more burden• some because men from the same house are on different shifts and this causes much domestic disturbance. 38 After 1913» areas of overcrowding were classed as those with more than one person per room. Under this definition, 79 per cent of the population of Stanley was classified as living in crowded conditions in 1925» while 26-| per cent of 3< the population lived in the ratio of two persons to a room. ^ But this situation was not limited to the North East. In a follow-up to the Liberal Party report of 1924 dealing with housing conditions, the Derbyshire Times made its own investigation into the housing situation in the colliery districts of that county. 33 It concluded that: Shocking overcrowding is quite general. The first thing that struck our representative in every part of the district was the difficulty experienced, particularly in the poorer quarters, in finding a house which did not shelter at least two families under very cramped conditions... How some of the people would exist were it not that the men are on different shifts does not bear thinking of. ^Q As it is, in some cases they go to bed in relays. For the West Riding colliery towns also, the Census Reports indicate a degree of overcrowding and sharing of houses. In the following table, statistics are recorded which demonstrate the necessity of sharing houses in certain South Yorkshire coalmining communities in the Census years 1891 and 1901. It can be seen that there were more families than available housing. The most common type of house in this period was the four-roomed terrace house. TABLE I To show the numbers of families and numbers of houses available in a sample of West Riding coal towns. 1891 and 1901. 41 ~~~ZZT Civil Parish Inhabited Families or Population or Township. Houses Separate Occupiers 1) 1891 Ackworth 489 504 2,647 Ardsley 845 880 4,494 Castleford 2,557 2,631 14,143 Normanton 1,818 1,857. 10,234 Royston 480 491 2,613 Sharlston 374 432 2,256 Stanley 2,780 2,847 15,576 Tickhill 405 444 1,588 Wombwell 1,987 2;', 047 10,942 2) 1901 Normanton 2,349 2,375 12,352 Castleford 3,3^3 3,369 17,386 Hemsworth 1,152 1,174 6,283 Ryhill 297 319 1,553 Hoyland Nether 2,405 2,441 12,464 Wombwell 2,541. 2,570 13,252 Mexborough 2,080 2,112 10,430 34 Overcrowding in South Yorkshire was described by George Orwell in the 1930's in his observations of housing in Barnsley House in Peel Street. Back-to-back, two up, two down and a large.cellar. Living room ten feet square with copper and sink. The other downstairs room the same size, probably intended as parlour but used as bedroom. Upstairs rooms the same size as those below.... Distance to lavatory 70 yards. Four beds in house for eight people -- two old parents, two adult girls (the eldest aged 27), one young man and three children. Parents have one bed, eldest son another, and remaining five people share the other two. 4-2 Despite these conditions, the wives of the coalminers had a reputation for battling against circumstances in order to improve their homes: Nothing so much astonishes the observing visitor who comes fresh to the colliery districts of the north as the order and cleanliness, the tidiness and taste with which the pitmen's wives, under very adverse circumstances, manage their housekeeping ... When it is remembered that there was but one room, which had to do duty as kitchen, bedroom, skullery and parlour, the marvel is that there was either the desire or the ability to evoke order and beauty out of such unpromising material, ^3 Paul de Rousiers, who visited the Lothian coalfield in the 1890*s found one two-roomed cottage in which a family of nine lived. But, "the most surprising thing is that the house is clean and in good order, in spite of the limited space and the number of children,.. my visits were sometimes unexpected, and never resulted in any of those surprises which are so trying to housewives who are more jealous of 44 good reputation than deserving of it." One effect of overcrowding which miners' wives could not successfully overcome was disease. The spread of disease was facilitated under these cramped conditions in which the isolation of infected persons was not possible. Conditions 35 in which, to cite one example, fourteen people were found to sleep in one room, y were hardly conducive to the con• tainment of infectious diseases such as smallpox, measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever, diptheria and enteric fever. On 5"th March, I898, the Derbyshire Times reported that, "a doctor who was called to attend a Clay Cross family, found six children in one bed. The mother, anxious to prevent the spread of infection, had placed three who were suffering from scarlatina at one end of the bed and three who had 46 typhoid fever at the other." Certainly, the spread of tuberculosis was fostered, it has been claimed, by over• crowding. "It will be borne in mind that tuberculosis was rife at the time (1901) with no anti-biotics to sterilize the infection. The considerable sharing of bedrooms, if not of beds, implied by this overcrowding must have done 47 much to foster the spread of infection." Death rates from infectious diseases were far greater in urban areas than in rural counties for "the herd condi• tions of urban life greatly facilitate the transmission of 48 infectious disease." A Local Government Board Report into Public Health in 1909 also concluded that though death rates from infectious diseases were declining at this time, high rates still persisted in overcrowded areas, and crow• ding acted as a catalyst for disease. Further, the highest instances of infant mortality (of over 125 deaths per 1,000 36 births) occurred in those centres of overcrowding — the mining counties of Nottinghamshire, Lancashire, Glamorgan• shire, Durham, Staffordshire, the North and West Ridings 49 of Yorkshire, Warwickshire and Monmouthshire. This pattern was confirmed in 1913 in Newsholme's Second Report to the Local Government Board, when the Medical Officer of Health named these same counties and including Northumber• land, as displaying the highest rates of infant mortality in the country. ^° If we take a closer look at our model towns of Castle• ford and Normanton, this higher death rate can be seen in operation. The following tables show the vital statistics for these two communities during our period. Castleford is classed as a small town, and its rates are compared with the average for all small towns in the 1908 Board of Trade survey. TABLE II To show the birth, death and infant death rates for Castleford. 1902 - 1906. 1.000 na+.P Birth Rate oer 1.000 1 Death Rate T5e r Castleford Average of Castleford Average of small towns small towns 1902 47.8 27.3 19.7 15.3 1903 41.2 27.4 16.1 14.6 15.6 1904 36.9 27.5 18.0 14.4 1905 38.9 26.9 16.9 1906 37.5 26.5 14.9 14.5 , 10 years 1896 - 1905 38.3 17.0 37 Infantile Death rate per 1,000 Births Date Castleford Average of small towns 1902 153 135 1903 183 135 1904 183 154 1905 172 132 1906 152 138 10 years 1896 - 1905 185 - In the case of Castleford, the birth rates and infant death rates are significantly above the average for all other small industrial towns in the Boards* survey. The overall death rate is slightly higher than average for Castleford, but the Report added that, "the general death-rate in the decennial period (I896 - 1905) does not differ materially 52 from that prevailing in the West Riding textile towns." TABLE III Tfoo r shoNormantow the nbirth in ,1906. death5 3an d infant death rates 1906 Normanton England and Wales Death rate per 1,000 14.8 15.4 Infant deaths per 1,000 births 135 133 Birth rate per 1,000 population 36 27 The Medical Officer of Health, from whom these figures were taken, reported that the state of health in Normanton was generally good as indicated by the slightly lower than average death rate. However, as might be expected, the fami• liar pattern of a higher birth rate and infant mortality rate can be seen once more. The link between a higher than 38 average birth rate and consequent high infant death rate is made below. Further causes of this high pattern of in• fantile mortality must be drawn from the actual living condi• tions in the mining communities. Writing generally about the causes of infant mortality, Arthur Newsholme was reported as commenting in 1913 that: The greater part of this heavy mortality at the beginning of the century (and of subsequent improvement) is associated with the hazards of infection to which the newly born are subjected. As to specific factors, Newsholme was led to stress the interrelated complex of poverty, uncleanliness, overcrowding, alcoholic indulgence and disease, poor water supply, unsatisfactory food storage, conservancy disposal as distinct from water-carriage of excreta, inefficient scavenging, but most of all the abandonment of breast feeding without adequate cause. 54 The mining communities were, as already noted, subject to overcrowding and poor sanitary provisons, which were factors beyond the control of the inhabitants. The rush of speculative building which accompanied the opening up of the Yorkshire coalfield at the turn of the century led either to a complete neglect of vital facilities, or to the deter• ioration of already poor sanitary provisions. Existing and newly created local authorities did not have the resources to deal with the problems of health in towns and villages which were rapidly expanding. The constant influx of an immigrant population carrying infections and little or no immunity, combined with a general ignorance of how to deal with disease, had its toll on the general health of the new communities. 39 The desire for rapid and economical building led, as we have seen, to the construction of back-to-back houses with their attendant evils. Respiratory diseases among the aged, infectious diseases and "developmental diseases" in children were more prevalent than usual in this type of housing, and Dr. Darra Mair concluded in 1910, that, "The conditions which produce such effects are many and complex, but it can scarcely be doubted that in the earliest period of life, the nature of the home, especially perhaps its facilities for obtaining fresh air and sunlight must exert a powerful influence." A similar conclusion was drawn in 1911 when the higher than average death rate in the mining and industrial counties was "largely traceable to unhealthy conditions of houses and work places." During the 1890*s isolation hospitals were developed in the Yorkshire coal regions, and we find them mentioned in certain coalmining communities in the Census Reports or 1901 and 1911. In 1901, the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Brierley had 13 inmates, while that at Ardsley near 57 Barnsley had a total of 77 patients, y> These were by far the most populated hospitals. Those Isolation Hospitals at Sandal, Outwood, (Stanley), Pontefract, Glass Houghton, Whitwood and Conisbrough, and the Smallpox Hospitals at Normanton, Purston Jaglin, Monk Bretton, Balby and Mexborough had very few, or no patients at all. However, their very existence in these developing coalmining.communities probably 40 indicates that there was a need for places to house victims of infectious disease. In 1911. with the growth of population and increased efforts to stem the spread of infection, we find greater num• bers of patients in these specialised hospitals. Thus: TABLE IV To show the numbers of patients in certain Isolation Hospitals in the Yorkshire colliery areas. 1911. 58 Number of Institution Name of locality- patients Ac kt on Infectious Diseases Hospita] 37 Pontefract Isolation Hospital 12 East and West Ardsley Isolation Hospital 21 Wath-upon- Dearne Infectious Diseases Hospital 30 Conisbrough Infectious Diseases Hospital 38 Brierley Infectious Diseases Hospita] 43 We can conclude, therefore, that the :coalmining. fc-omm\in_- ties were marked by a high rate of overcrowding as a result of inadequate housing and larger than averaged sized families, which were characteristic of the coalminers. Overcrowding, combined with conditions specific to a quickly developing area, such as poor sanitation, the influx of immigrants, and neglect by local authorities, were responsible for a high rate of disease and infant mortality. Although housing standards were not as appalling in the newer Yorkshire colliery communities as in the older, deteriorating fields, it is difficult to dispute that the added factors of disease and overcrowding served to minimize life expectancy. A total assessment is, however, not possible unless the other criteria by which the standard of living is measured — wage rates and diet — are considered. 41 II The difficulties involved in determing actual wage rates for coalminers during this period are manifold, and conclusions in respect of wages must, therefore be of a general nature. These difficulties revolve around regional variations in wage rates; the complex system of paying both day rates and piece• work rates; additions to wages such as free coal and low rents; deductions; trade fluctuations and short-time; the number of wage earners and dependants per family; and finally the fact that no comprehensive survey of coalmining wages was ever made at any one time. We have to rely rather on isolated investigations into miners* pay. The consensus of opinion on this subject seems to be that in the period under study, the coalminers as a whole were a relatively well-paid group of workers. Even earlier Adam Smith had recorded in The Wealth of Nations that the Scottish miners received three times as much pay as the common labourer, while in 1832 Cobbett was writing about Sunderland that t You see nothing here that is pretty; but every• thing seems to be abundant in value; and great thing is, the working people live well... The pitmen have twenty-four shillings a week; they live rent-free, their fuel costs them nothing, and their doctor costs them nothing... they live well, their houses are good and their furniture good; and... their lives seem to be as good as that of the working part of mankind can reasonably expect. 59 It was also about this time that people could say about the miners, "Collier lads get gowd and silver, Factory lads get npwt but brass." 60 42 The miner's wage was supplemented in instances by the tangible advantages of free or low cost fuel, medical care, free housing in the North East coalfield, and low rental housing in other coalfields. However, the weekly wage was also subject to certain deductions which, though they varied from district to district, could claim a small though signi• ficant portion of the wage. For instance, in 1923 in Stanley, County Durham, Bowley and Hogg found the following deductions from pay in operation: 62. S. d. Health and unemployment insurance 1 2 HealtPermanenh antd Relieunemploymenf Fund t insurance 10 82 Infirmary - Aged Miners* Relief 0 2 Doctor 0 6 Checkweighman and pick sharpening 0 10 to Hewers only 1 0 Water (Tenants of colliery houses) 0 6 Trade Union county levy, 6d. in 11 Candles or lamp oil. 0 8 Even after additions and deductions are taken into account, the wages of individual households varied according to the number of earners within one family and the number of paying lodgers. In 1890, the United States Labor Commission included within its Report, a survey of 124 English mining 62 families from a number of coalmines in Britain. (No indication is given in the Report of where these families lived and worked.) The family incomes varied according to the work performed by the father and the number of supplementary wage earners in the family. The whole range of incomes was from approximately 1271 per annum where a father and three chil• dren worked, down to the lowest figure of £52 per annum in the case of a single breadwinner, in this instance a lowly paid surface worker. In only 14 cases out of the 124 families 43 did the combined incomes of the children outmatch the single income of the father, thus supporting the assumption that the father of a household was generally the chief breadwinner. ^ The average earnings of a single breadwinner were approximately _79 5s. Od. per annum. This average rose to _103 4s. Od. per annum when the earnings of a whole family, including those 64 from children and boarders were taken into consideration. Despite the variations in earnings from one family to another according to family circumstances, the normal miner's family, like that of any wage-earner's went through certain common phases of prosperity and poverty. Thus: When the family was first set up, the husband would probably be at the height of his earning capacity, and his wage had only two to support. Within five years there might be five mouths to fill, and clothes for three growing children to find, but no greater income: a household that had had a small margin for comforts before could be plunged in poverty now, could be actually short of food. As the children grew up, the older ones began to earn, and that brought some relief. As they left home, a room might be let to a lodger, and the householder would now have climbed out of poverty again. But the earning power of a manual worker often began to decline before he was fifty; ill• ness would increase with age; there was no age of retirement, but the time was coming when the husband would not be able to work any more. 65 We have several tables and records of coalminers' earnings for the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. All point towards a pattern whereby the actual and real incomes of the coalminers rose quickly during the latter half of the nine• teenth century, and in fact outstripped the rise in earnings of other working class groups at this time, "It would appear 44 that the wage position of colliers had improved relative to that of other workers during the second half of the nineteenth century..." and "... by the early years of the twentieth century, ... colliers were considerably better paid even than skilled craftsmen," ^ This increase in earnings is demon• strated in the following table drawn up by E.H. Hunt. He reviewed the major works on wage variations in Britain and concluded that this table shows, "what are probably the most reliable figures of mine wages available," but admitted reservations about their use in drawing general conclusions, for they were drawn from only two surveys. TABLE V To show the average daily wages of coal hewers and labourers by regionf 1888 and 1914^ 6"7 Region 1888 1914 Hewers Labourers Hewers Labourers Northumberland Id. 3s. 4d. 9s. Id. 6s. Od. Durham 5s. Od. 3s. 9d. 8s. lid. 5s. 9d. Cumberland 4s. 5d. 3s. 2d. 8s. 2d. 5s. 8d. Lancashire 5s. 2d. 3s. 4d. 8s. 7d. 5s. lOd. North Wales 4s. Id. 2s. 8d. 8s. Od. 5s. 5d. Nott inghamshire and Derbyshire 5s. 4d. 3s. 5d. 9s. lOd. 5s. 8d. Nth. Staffordshire 4s. lOd. 3s. Od. 9s. Id. 5s. 7d. Cannock Chase 5s. Od. 3s. Od. 8s. 6d. 5s. 7d. Sth Staffordshire 4s. 6d. 3s. 4d. 7s. Id. 5s. lOd. Warwickshire 5s. Od. 3s. Od. 10s. Id. 6s. 2d. Leicestershire 4s. 3d. 3s. 6d. 7s. Od. 5s. lOd. Somerset 3s. 3d. 2s. 3d. 5s. 9d. 4s. 4d. Forest of Dean 4s. 6d. 2s. lOd. 6s. 9d. 4s. 6d. South Wales 4s. lOd. 2s. lOd. 9s. 4d. 5s. 9d. Lanarkshire 4s. 7d. 3s. 2d. 8s. 3d. 6s. 6d. West Yorkshire Not available 8s. lid. 6s. 3d. South Yorkshire N ot available 10s. 3. 6s. 8d. Great Britain (weighted average) 4s. 9d. 3s. Id. 8s. lOd. 5s. 9|d. 45 The ahove figures also demonstrate the wide variations to be found between the different coalfields. For instance, in 1888, the hewers on the small Somersetshire coalfield earned over two shillings per day less than their counterparts in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. In 1914, the South York• shire hewers and labourers led the field in wage rates, showing the monetary advantages of working in a developing area. At this time, the South Yorkshire colliery companies were still trying to attract labour to their expanding enter• prises. Hunt is firm in his opinion that the colliers were relatively well paid. In Warwickshire for instance, an un• skilled labourer in a coal mine earned 6&. 2d. per day, or 37 shillings a week in 1914, whereas the farm labourer in the same county earned 13 shillings per week at this time. Although he produced no reliable statistics for Yorkshire in the earlier period, he considered the miners there to be among the highest paid of a highly paid occupational group. "In 1876 the editor of the Beehive wrote to Thomas Brassey? ' In the coal trade the highest wages are earned in North- 68 umberland and Yorkshire'". We do have some wage figures, however, for Yorkshire in this earlier period from the 1886 Census of Wages of the Board of Trade. These show the following average weekly wages for various grades of coalminers, after deductions: 46 TABLE VI To show aveage weekly wages (net) of various grades of coalminers in West and South Yorkshire, 188b.69 s. d. s. d. Deputies, etc. 29 3 Pumpmen 23' 3 Coal hewers 28 0 General labourers 20 6 (underground) Putters and trammers 22 9 Banksmen (surface) 20 11 Rippers 29 1 The reliability of these figures has been challenged by J.W.F. Rowe, an authority on the matter. They covered only nine per cent of the underground workers in Yorkshire. Furthermore, the wage variations between the two areas of West and South Yorkshire were concealed in the composite figures. Since the colliers came under two separate and independent Employers* Associations, they were covered by two completely different wage contracts. Figures exist for these two areas in a separate form for 1914 only, and are shown below: TABLE VII To show the average daily earnings of various grades of coal miners in West and South Yorkshire, 1914. 70 Daily rate in 1914 West Yorkshire South Yorkshire s. d. s. d. Coal getters: Piece rate 8 11 10 3 Day wage 7 5 7 11 Putters 5 6 7 2 Stonemen (Rippers) 7 3 8 Firemen 8 2 8 10 Labourers 6 3 6 8 47 Rowe used the years 1886 and 1913 as the pivotal points in his work on wages. 1886 was a year of trade recession while 1913 was a peak year for miners' wages. He gives the following as true average weekly wages for coalminers in 71 Britain in these two years: 1886 1913 s. d. s. d. Piece work coal getters 24 6 50 4 Putters, fillers, etc. 20 8 36 10 Labourers 18 0 33 0 When comparing these figures with the wages in other trades, however, the rates for coalminers have to be aver• aged over five year periods-- 1886 to 1891 and 1908 to 1913 -- to take into account the factors of recession and prosperity. By doing this, Rowe was able to draw more accurate wage com• parisons with other trades, shown in the following table. It will be noted from this table that the coalminers com• pared favourably with their counterparts in four other major industries. TABLE VIII To compare the true weekly wage rates in five major industries, 1886 and 1913. 72 Occupation '1886 1913 1) SKILLED s. d. s. d. Bricklayers 31 1 38 11 Coal-getters 29 1 46 6 Mule spinners 32 6 41 5 Turners (engineering) 29 9 38 2 Engine-drivers (rail) 39 7 42 11 2) SEMI-SKILLED Painters 28 8 34 7 Putters and Fillers (coal) 24 6 34 0 Grinders (cotton) 21 2 29 5 Machinemen (engineering) 22 3 30 7 Railway guards 27 6 30 9 48 TABLE VIII - continued Occupation 1886 1913 S. d. s. d. 3) UNSKILLED Labourers (building) 19 4 25 9 Labourers (coal) 21 4 30 6 Women weavers 18 0 21 11 Labourers (engineering) 17 11 21 10 Goods porters (rail) 20 0 22 1 (Note: wage dates for coalminers5 1886 represents the average for 1886 to 1891* 1913 represents the average for 1908 to 1913.) From this table it can be seen that in all three levels of skill, the coalminers increased their wage rates faster than any of the other occupational groups in the interval from 1886 to 1913, and by 1913 were among the highest paid workers in these major industries. Furthermore, the in• crease in the wage rates of the coalminers in this period reached a parity with the increase in the cost of living, which is discussed below. Finally, this picture of relatively high wages among the coalminers is supported by a comparative table issued by the Mining Association in 1924: TABLE IX To compare the average weekly earnings of male adult workers in various industries. 1913 73 Industry s. d. Coalmining 35 11 Building trade 32 10* Pig-iron manufacture 33 11 Iron and steel manufacture 36 2 Engineering and boiler-making 32 11 Shipbuilding 33 9 Railways 29 10* Cotton manufacture 30 8 Woolen and worsted manufacture 28 7 Linen 24 6 Bleaching, dyeing and printing 30 2 Boot and shoe manufacture 28 9 Pottery 31 0 Brick making 27 7 H-9 Here again, it can be seen that coalmining ranked favour• ably in the wage levels of working-class occupations. Among the coalmining classes as a whole, those miners of South Yorkshire were among the most highly paid and they were reaping some of the prosperity of this expanding field. In the late 1880's, the father of the trade, unionist John Brophy earned eight shillings per day as a hewer in the pits of St. Helens, which was considered to be a good wage. "With only about one-tenth of his pay going for rent and heat, there was plenty to take care of our needs, as long 74 as work was regular." However, this insecurity which Brophy hinted at has to be taken into consideration when examining the wages of miners. Income was threatened by strike, accident, illness or short-time work when coal was stock-piled and trade was poor. When this occurred there was little the miner's wife could do to supplement the family income, given the employment situation in the coal towns. For the Brophy family: The terrifying threat to our security was illness. My father had one long siege of pneumonia, brought on by bad working conditions. His pay stopped, of course, and as my mother nursed him through the long weeks, we got poorer and poorer. Our few belongings began to go into the pawn shop... The union gave us a small sum, but most of our help came from my grandmother and other relatives, though they had little to spare. It was months before we recovered from the effects of that- ill• ness. We could live decently when there was regular work, but we had no real security, nor was there any margin for savings. 75 A family faced destitution in the case of the death of an only breadwinner, and in a dangerous calling such as mining, this was an ever-present threat. But the coalmining 50 family was not only subject to the risk of personal misfor• tune through death, injury, or illness. There was always the constant threat of short-time work in the summer months when trade and home consumption fell off. At these times, a man might only work for two or three days in a week, and his wages fell accordingly. Rowe found that from 1895 to.1913» hewers worked an average of 5.22 days per week over the year, when the normal working week was six days. This meant that a man expected to lose between five and ten per cent of his poten• tial earnings each year, through short-time and trade fluc• tuations. When whole pits lay idle through strike, lock• out, or disaster, an entire community which depended upon coal for its livelihood could be plunged into poverty and debt at worst, and extreme frugality at best. The level of wages in coalmining was such as to limit this occupational group to a set of common expectations. There was a common desire to earn just enough money for sur• vival and to provide for leisure pursuits, for the traditional standard of living of the miners did not revolve around the acquisition of material goods. There was no stimulus for competition or social display in the mining communities. A family's status was well known to all in a community where wages and income were no secret: In that long grey street... every family knew the essential facts about every other family's life; the peculiar economic organisation of the pits made this inevitable. Every Wednesday evening... (the) assistant checkweighman of the Miners' Lodge made up the pit 'averages'. This was a record, for 51 union purposes, of the production of every coal• face in the pit and of the earnings of every man engaged on those faces. The income of every mining family, in so far as it was derived from the mine, was known to everybody. The pretensions of urban living were impossible here. No family could assume higher standards than its income warranted without incurring ridicule. Here, per• haps, is part of the reason why miners made their demands on life as a community, not as individuals.77 There were aspects of wage and income levels in the mining communities therefore, which did draw the population together under common standards and expectations. This standard was high by comparison with other working-class occupational groups.. A further indication of this rela• tively high income level is the fact that rates of pauper relief in the coalmining areas were consistently the lowest in the country. Furthermore, if we consider the diet and budgets of the collier class by comparison with other wor• king-class groups, an even more favourable income level may be discerned. Ill In 1913 A.L. Bowley and M. Hogg conducted their first survey of five industrial towns, including Stanley in County Durham. They found less poverty in this coalmining community than in the other four towns, (Bolton, Warrington, Reading and Northampton), where just 6.1 per cent of the population fell under the poverty line, (compared to 26 per cent in 52 Reading for example.) Taking Rowntree's level of poverty, whereby a working man needed to spend a minimum of 3s. 9d. per week on food, they found that poverty existed in eleven coalmining families out of a sample of 203 families. In eight of these cases, poverty was due to the death, absence, illness, or advanced age of the natural head of the family. The investigators concluded that in 1913, "miners* wages were generally sufficient to support a moderately large family." We may take the conclusions of this survey to be typical of the general standard of living in the coalfields before the First World War. Unless some misfortune befell a family, the coalmining family was generally able to maintain and feed itself, by the standards of the time. If we compare the consumption of food in coalmining families with that in families of other occupational groups among the working-class, we find them to be in a favourable position on the whole. For most occupational groups, bread was unquestionaly the major staple, and the degree of depen• dency of a family upon bread in its diet reflected its earning powers, so that higher paid families could afford a more varied diet and depended to a lesser degree upon this staple. We can see this pattern at work at an early date when comparing a coalmining family with that of a farm labourer. "A Northumberland miner in 1825, with hi a week, purchased 30 lbs, of bread for a family of five (for 6s. 3d.) and was also able to afford a pound of meat each day." At 53 the same time, "A Suffolk labourer with five children, three of whom were in work, had a total household income of 13s. 9d. 79 and devoted nine shillings of it to bread." '7 Even in 1862, thirty per cent of all families still rarely or never tasted fresh meat. Farm workers, the most poorly paid of labourers, still depended essentially on bread, consuming \2\ pounds per adult per week, with only one pound of- mea+t per week.,8 0 From the 1850's we have the following budget of a coal• mining family of Northumberland, where three sons worked in addition to the father. The family income for a fortnight's work was 15 3s. 7d., and the outley per fortnight was as -f> T t 81 follows: Outlay per fortnight s, d. Outlay per fortnight s. d Mutton 14 lbs. 8 9 Candles 6 Flour 5 stones 13 0 Soap 1 8 Maslin (mixed grain) 3 sts. 7 6 Pepper, salt, mustard 6 Bacon 14 lbs. 9 4 Tobacco, beer 4 0_ Potatoes- 2 3 Plus, shoes at 9s. Oatmeal 6 per month 4 6 Butter 21bs, Milk 3d. per day 6 0 Clothes, Stockings, Coffee lj lbs. 3 0 etc. 17 6 Tea i lb. 16 Sundries _2 6 Sugar 31bs. 2 0 TOTAL 14 5s. 0 This family was at the peak of its earning power and was further aided with free rent and fuel. It enjoyed the rare luxury among working class families at this time of a balanced budget, despite the relatively heavy indulgence in meat. It is notable that the family did not buy bread, but ate home-baked bread. This was a typical feature of coalmining communities. 54 If we compare this diet with that of another contemporary group of workers, then the relative luxury of this budget becomes more apparent. The following was the average weekly diet per family of the silk-weavers of Spitalfields, Maccles• field, Bethnal Green and Coventry. It is understandable why they were described as being "insufficiently nourished, and of feeble health". The average weekly diet of the silk-weaving family in the mid-nineteenth century. 82 Bread 9l lbs. Potatoes 2 lbs. Sugar 7| oz. Fats 4|- oz. Meat 2 lbs. Milk 1.1 pts. Tea 2 oz. Similarly, if we examine conditions at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when standards of nutrition had improved, we find that the coalminers had re• tained their relatively comfortable levels of nourishment. In 1904, a survey by the Royal Statistical Society found that the wage earning classes consumed on the average of 107 pounds of meat, 8.5 gallons of milk, ten pounds of cheese and fifteen pounds of butter per head, per year. ^ In 1906, the average wage earning family brought home 45 shillings per week which at that time would have bought the following items: The average weekly diet of a wage earning family in 1906. 32 lbs. bread and flour 3 lbs. rice, tapioca, oatmeal 17 lbs. potatoes 9 lbs. meat',,-, (including 1* lbs. bacon) 3/4 lbs, cheese 12 eggs 21bs butter 55 The average weekly diet of a wage earning family in 1906. - continued 10 pts fresh milk 5 lbs. sugar i lb. tea plus, small quantities of jam,, marmalade, treacle or syrup, fish, currants, raisins, fruit, vegetables, pickles, condiments, coffee and cocoa. From the evidence we have of the diets of coalmining families during this period, it appears that generally they did not fall below this average national level. Even before this weekly diet was drawn up, the coalminers indulged in a regimen of this nature. The 1890 survey conducted by the U.S. Labor Commission found that each of the 124 English mining families it studied spent an average of. approximately 150 5s. Od. per year on food. The variety of their diet is demonstrated in the following table, drawn from the Commis• sion's Reports TABLE X To show the number of English mining families out of a sample of 124 who consumed quantities of the following commodities in 1890. 85 Number of Number of consuming c onsuming families out families out Commodity of total of 124 Commodity of total of 124 Beef None Coffee 19 Hog products 113 Sugar 120 Meat Molasses 10 (not specified) 124 Lard 109 Poultry None Flour and meal 124 Fish 21 Bread 13 Eggs 114 Rice 4 Milk 119 Fruit 6 Butter 121 Potatoes 118 Cheese 2 Vegetables 96 Tea 120 The staple foods of this sample of coalminers can be identi• fied from this table. All families ate meat of some kind, though there was a distinct absence of beef and poultry. 56 Eggs, milk, butter, tea, sugar, lard, home-baked bread and potatoes were consumed by a large majority of the families, and the large number of families buying vegetables (or growing their own?) is significant in a period when vegetables were generally lacking in the regular working class diet. The consumption of cheese was negligible. Some years later in 1905, there was a similar pattern of food consumption in the South Yorkshire colliery towns of Castleford and Normanton. The Board of Trade Report of 1908 found that in these coalmining towns: Roll bacon is the variety in most demand, and the favourite qualities of tea are those sold at from Is. 6d. to 2s. per lb. The bread is, for the most part, home-baked, and the predominant price of household flour was Is. 4d. per 14 lbs. at the end of 1905. 86 This enquiry into the "Prevailing prices of groceries" in October of 1905 revealed that the commodities which were most important to the coalminers' diet at this time were, tea, sugar (loaf, white granulated and demerara), bacon (Streaky and roll), eggs, cheese, butter (imported), 87 potatoes, flour and milk. Again the coalminers appeared to be in a more fortunate position than many of their contem• poraries at the turn of the century. While the miners enjoyed this relatively varied diet, Joseph Arch described the diet of Warwickshire farm labourers in 1898 as consisting mainly of barley bread. But, "even barley loaves were all too scarce ... the food we could get was of very poor quality, and there was far too little of it. Meat was rarely, if ever, to be seen on the labourer's table... In many a household even a 57 88 morsel of bacon was considered a luxury." As late as 1912 Mrs. Pember Reeves found labourers in London who earned as little as from 18s. to 24s. each week. She discovered extreme cases where life was barely maintained on two penny worth of food per day, for each member of a family. Moreover, the cost of fuel for cooking prohibited the provision of hot food and as a result, an important item 89 of the diet was bread and dripping. The coalminers were in an advantageous situation with their liberal supply of cheap or free coal and the provisions for cooking in their own homes. In an occupational group such as the colliers where the wife remained at home in the majority of families, home-cooking and baking put them at an obvious advantage over other urban working class groups, for: ... urban life necessarily meant a greater depen• dence on professional services of bakers, brewers and food retailers generally, partly because living conditions were overcrowded and ill-equipped for the practice of culinary arts, partly because many wives worked at factory or domestic trades and had little time or energy left for cooking. The kind of food which most commended itself was, therefore, that which needed least preparation, was tasty, and, if possible, hot, and for these reasons bought bread, potatoes boiled or roasted in their jackets, and bacon, which could be fired in a matter of minutes, became mainstays of urban diet. Tea was also essential, because it gave warmth and comfort to cold, monotonous food. But soups and broths, stews and puddings, became for many inhabitants of the new towns the Sunday feast, for only on the day of rest was long preparation and cooking possible. 90 Finally, to obtain a fuller picture of the standard of life of the mining family, we must consider expenses other than those for food. From the U.S. Labor Commission's survey 58 of 1890 it appears that the coalminers in fact had several additional expenses. The survey found that the average family spent approximately 1>34 5s. Od. per year on non-food items. These included the following: TABLE XI To show the number of English mining families from a sample of 124 who incurred expenses for certain non-food items. 1890. 91 Number of families Number of affected families out of out of Item total of 124 Item 124 Rent 123 Other organi• Coal 120 sations 91 Lighting (mainly oil » Religion 62 some gas.) 122 Charity 49 Pit expenses None Furniture and Clothing: utensils 114 Husband 123 Books and news• Wife 120 papers 120 Children 119 Amusements and Taxes 1 vacations 83 Property Insurance 1 Intoxicating Life Insurance 107 liquors 101 Labour organisations 73 Tobacco 109 Sickness and death 100 Other purposes 50 The majority of coalminers had expenses for the provi• sion of fuel and lighting, clothing, furniture and amuse• ments. Only one family owned their home and the rest of the families were rent-paying tenants. Many families believed in insurance and the protection offered by certain organisa• tions, while a high number had incurred expenses through the sickness or death of a family member. The item on this list which is perhaps the most surprising in its importance, is the provision of books and newspapers. All but four families appear to be in receipt of these luxury articles. 59 A similar pattern of expenditure was discovered by Paul de Rousiers in Scotland at this time. His study of a Lothian coalmining family, (the Fisher family) produced this overall budget for the year 1893s The annual budget of the Fisher family. 1893. CREDIT DEBIT h s. d. h s. d. Fisher's wages 84 0 0 Rent 5 4 0 Furniture, linen 4 0 0 Two sons' wages 35 o 0 Coal 4 4 0 Lighting 2 0 0 Total 119 o 0 Food 64 0 0 Clothing 14 •0 0 Medical attendance 13 0 Amusements 2 8 0 Subscription to union 4 Educational require• ments 7 0 Insurance 2 3 4 Voluntary contri• bution to Edinburgh Infirmary 1 0 Balance unaccounted for 19 Total 119 0 0 This family was fortunate in being able to divert some of its earnings into savings. Over half of the yearly income is spent on food, while a considerable proportion is spent on clothes, though de Rousiers commented that the family dressed moderately. It appears that expenditure on clothing was general quite high. In 1903, the Board of Trade in its Enquiry into industrial conditions quoted the family budget of a coalminer for 1891. Here the total yearly expenditure on clothing for two adults and eight children came to £46 15s. lOd. out of a total yearly expenditure of £194 14s. 7d., 93 or 24 per cent of the total expenditure. 7J 60 It would appear therefore, that the coalminers were in a relatively favourable position when wages and consumption are considered. We have already seen that wages in the coal• mining communities were generally higher than those of most other occupational groups. In addition to this advantage, rents and prices were generally lower in coalmining districts when compared to other areas at the turn of the century, so that the overall cost of living was low. This can be seen in the two model towns of Castleford and Normanton when com• pared to London. Taking the level of rents and prices in London as a base of 100, the cost of living in these coal• mining towns may be compared. The figures for Merthyr Tydfil are included as an example of a South Wales colliery town. Town Rent Prices Rent and -prices combined (The cost of living) London 100 100 100 Castleford 53 94 86 Normanton 57 91 84 Merthyr Tydfil 50 97 88 We may conclude, therefore, that during this period the coalminers were generally able to maintain themselves in an adequate way by the standards of the time. In the 1890 U.S. Labor Commisions Report, of the 124 English mining families under study, 48 had a surplus of money in hand at the end of the year, 45 others had invested their surplus into savings banks, building societies, cooperative societies, 61 the post office or penny "banks, while in nineteen cases the yearly budget and accounts just balanced. In twelve cases however, families were in debt at the end of the year. This was usually due to short-time work, ill-health or over-sized families supported by just one breadwinner. Generally the Report found the living conditions of the 124 families to be good. All but fourteen homes were comfortably or well-fur- ox nished, and only two were described as dirty or untidy. 'J In conclusion, housing, sanitary provisions and over• crowding were poor, and were productive of bad health and infantile mortality. However, these miserable living condi• tions were perhaps tempered by a relatively high average of earnings and consumption. Though there were'variations in household earnings according to family size, all normal- sized coalmining families might expect to pass through common phases of relative wealth and poverty. Certainly, social pretensions were limited, if not completely excluded from the financial circumstances of the coalmining class. The living situation itself contributed towards unity among the mining population in its struggle against the environment, and at the same time, in a common resignation to the impossibility of leaving those surroundings. If a generalised description of the standard of life in a coalmining community is possible, then perhaps the most accurate is one given by J.R. Leifchild in I856. Though this account is from an early period, the conditions he described prevailed throughout the period with which we are concerned: 62 Cleanliness, both in their persons and houses, is a predominant feature in the domestic economy of the better females of this community. The children, although necessarily left much to themselves, and playing much in the dirt, are never sent to bed without ample ablution. Pitmen, of all labouring classes I am acquainted with, enjoy most the pleasure of good living: their larders abound in potatoes, bacon, fresh meat, sugar, tea, and coffee, of which good things the children partake as abundantly as the parents: even the sucking infant, to its prejudice, is loaded with as much of the greasy and well- seasons viands of the table as it will swallow. In this respect the women are foolishly indulgent, and I know of no class of pers'ons among whom infantile diseases so much prevail. 96. Conditions did not change much during the period under study. There was an apparent uniformity of conditions in the mining fields except that the coalminers in the Yorkshire coalfield enjoyed higher wage levels and in some cases, better housing, than their counterparts in the older coalfields, during our period. FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER II 1 A. Hutt, The Conditionoof~-'the Working Class (London, 1933), P. 13. 2 R.A, Scott-James, "Housing Conditions in Mining Areas," fippendix to Coal and Power. The Report of an Enquiry presided over by the Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd George, (London, 1924), p. 135. 3 Ibid., P. 131 4 A. Moffat, My Life with the Miners (London, 1965), p.11. $ From A.R. Griffin, Coalmining (London, 1972). 63 6 For instance, "between 1901 and 1911 the populations of the South Yorkshire colliery communities of Bentley, Bolton-upon-Dearne, Cudworth and Thurnscoe increased by the following percentages respectively -- 170.4%; 126.5% 100.2%; and 72.6%. From the Census Report for England and Wales. 1911: Summary Tables. B.P.P. 1914 - 16, LXXXI. Table 11, p. 13. 7 W. Ashworth, The Genesis of Modern British Town Planning (London, 1954), pp. 145 - 146. 8 W.H. Chaloner, "The British Miners and the Coal Industry between the Wars", History Today. (June 1964), Vol. XIV., No. 6. p. 419. 9 J.E. Williams, The Derbyshire Miners (London, 1962), P. 445. 10 From the Derbyshire Times 19th June, 1936, cited in Ibid., P. 782. 11 E.H. Phelps Brown, The Growth of British Industrial Relations (Londonl96o), p. 31. 12 F. Zweig.':, Men in the Pits (London, 1948), p. 42. 13 Dr. L.W. Darra Mair, A Report on Relative Mortality in Through and Back-to-Back Houses in Certain Towns in the West Riding of Yorkshire. B.P.P. 1910, XXXVIII, p. 893. 14 Ibid., p. 896. 15 Ibid., p. 902. 16 Ibid., p. 903. 17 G. Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London, 1937), p. 59. 18 Report of an Enquiry by the Board of Trade into Working Class Rents. Housing, and Retail Prices, in the Principal Industrial Towns of the United Kingdom, B.P.P. 1908, CVII, p. 144. 19 Ibid., p. 145. 20 Ibid., p. 333. 21 Ibid., P. xliv. 22 G.A.W. Tomlinson, Coal-Miner;"; (London, 1937). p. 13. 23 Orwell, Op. Cit.. pp. 56 - 57. 24 Rt. Hon. Sir. J. Tudor Walters, The Building of 12.000 Houses (London, 1927), p. 24. 64 25 See W. Ashworth, Op. Cit. 26 W. Page, (Ed.), The Victoria History of the Counties of England. Yorkshire. Vol. II. (London, 1912), p. 362. 2? W. Ashworth, "British Industrial Villages in the Nine• teenth Century," Economic History Review. (1951), 2nd Series, Vol. Ill, No. 3. p. 386. 28 N. Dennis, F. Henriques, and C. Slaughter, Coal is our Life (London, 1956), p. 11. 29 Ibid., p.11. 30 F. Zweig, Op. Cit.. p. 43. 31 J. Cockburn, The Hungry Heart. A Romantic Biography of James Keir Hardie (London. 1956). p. 23 and p. 25. 32 J. Brophy, A Miner's Life (Madison and Milwaukee, 1964), p. 5. 33 Census Report for England and Wales. 1891; General Report, B.P.P. 1893 - 94. CVI. p. 23. 34 Census Report for England and Wales. 1901s General Report, B.P.P. 1904, CVIII. p. 38. 35 Ibid., p. 42. 36 Census Report for England and Wales, 1911s General Report, B.P.P. 191? - 18, XXXV. 37 Census Report for England and Wales. 1911s Summary Tables, B.P.P. 1914 - 16, LXXXI, Table 92, p. 417. 38 A.L. Bowley and M.H. Hogg, Has Poverty Diminished? (London, 1925), p. 170 39 Ibid. 40 From the Derbyshire Times 29th Nov. 1924, cited in J.E. Williams, Op. Cit., p. 782. 41 From, Census Report for England and Wales. 1891: County Tables. Yorkshire. B.P.P. 1893 - 94. CIV. Table 7. PP. 412 - 413, and, Census Report for England and Wales. 1901: County Tables. Yorkshire, B.P.P. 1902, CXXI, Table 12, pp. 81 - 101. 42 Orwell, Op. Cit., pp. 56 - 57. 43 T. Burt, Thomas Burt. M.P.. D.C.L.. Pitman and Privy Councillor. An Autobiography.(London. 1924), pp. 100 - 101. 65 44 Paul de Rousiers, The Labour Question in Britain (London, 1896), p. 169. 45. A case reported in the Derbyshire Times, 9th March 1907, cited in J.E. Williams, Op Cit. 46 Cited in Ibid. , p. 446. 47 B. Benjamin, "The Urban Background to Public Health Changes in England and Wales, 1900 - 1950," Population Studies, (1962), Vo. XVII, No. 3. p. 229. 48 Ibid., p. 235. 49 See Statistical Memoranda and Charts prepared in the Local Government Board Relating to Public Health and Social Conditions. B.P.P. 1909. CIII. 50 Cited by B. Benjamin, Op. Cit. 51 From Report of Board of Trade Enquiry into Working Class Rents, etc. . 1908"] p. 146. 52 Ibid., p. 146. 53 Ibid., p. 333. 54 B. Benjamin, Op. Cit., p. 239. 55 Dr. L.W. Darra Mair, Op. Cit., p. 918 56 See B.L. Hutchins, The Working Life of Women Fabian Tract No. 157, (London, 1911), p. 12. 57 Census Report for England and Wales, 1901: County Tables. Yorkshire, Op. Cit., Table 17, p. 143. 58 Census Report for England and Wales, 1911: Administrative Tables, Yorkshire, B.P.P. 1912 - 13, CXI, Tahle 17, p. 580. 59 Cited in E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1968), pp. 267 - 268. 60 Ibid., p. 268. 61 See A.L. Bowley and M. Hogg, Op. Cit., p. 192, 62 Sixth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1890, U.S. Department of Labor, (Washington, 1891). 63 Ibid., Table XIX, pp. 1023 - 1025. 66 64 Ibid., Table XX, p. 1234. 65 E.H. Phelps Brown, Op. Cit.. pp. 22 - 23. 66 A.R. Griffin, Mining in the East Midlands 1550 - 1947 (London, 1971), p. 114. 67 E.H. Hunt, Regional Wage Variations in Britain 1850 - 1914 (Oxford, 1973), P. 72 68 Ibid. , p. 4In. 69 R. Giffen, Return of Rates of Wages in the Mines and Quarries of the United Kingdom Vol. Ill of the Census of Wages of the Board of Trade, 1886, B.P.P. 1890 - 91, LXXVIII, pp. 14 - 16. 70 J.W.F. Rowe, Wages in the Coal Industry (London, 1923), P. 75. 71 J.W.F. Rowe, Wages in Practice and Theory (London, 1928), P. 31 . 72 Ibid., p. 42. 73 J..Raynes, Coal and its Conflicts (London, 1928), p. 132. 74 Brophy, Op. Cit. , p. 5 75 Ibid., p. 6 76 See Rowe, Wages in Practice and Theory. 77 M. Benney, Charity Main. A Coalfield Chronicle (London, 1946), p. 24. 78 A.L..Bowley and M. Hogg, Op. Cit.. p. 23. 79 J. Burnett, "Trends in Bread Consumption," in Our Changing Fare, Ed. T.C. Barker, (London, 1966), p. 70. 80 Ibid. 81 J. Burnett, Plenty and Want. A Social History of Diet in England from 1815 to the Present Day (London, 1966) . p. 149. 82 Ibid., p. 152. 83 R.H. Rew, "Reports from the Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Statistics Available as a Basis for Estimating the Production and Consumption of Meat and Milk in the United Kingdom," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, (Sept. 1904), Vol. LXVII, pp. 368 - 429. 67 84 E.H. Phelps Brown, Op. Cit., p. 19. 85 Sixth Annual Report of U.S. Labor Commission, 1890, Table XX, pp. 1236 - 1239. 86 Report of the Board of Trade Enquiry into Working Class Rents, etc.. 1908"! p. 146. 87 Ibid.. p. 147 and 334. 88 Cited by J. Burnett in "Plenty and Want: A Social History of English Diet", History Today. (April 1964) Vol.XIV, No. 4. pp. 226. 89 See P. Reeves, Family Life on a Pound a Week Fabian Tract No. 162, (London, 1912). 90 J. Burnett, Plenty and Want, 1815 to the Present Day, Op. Cit. , pp. 33 - 34. 91 Sixth Annual Report of U.S. Labor Commission. 1890. Table XX, pp. 1240 - 1243. 92 Paul de Rousiers, Op. Cit., p. 183. 93 Memoranda, Statistical Tables and Charts Prepared in the Board of Trade with Reference to Various Matters Bearing on British and Foreign Trade and Industrial Conditions. B.P.P. 1903, LXVII, p. 216. 94 Report of Board of Trade Enquiry into Working Class Rents, etc., 1908, p. xliv. 95 Sixth Annual Report of U.S. Labor Commission. 1890. 1092 - 1094. 96 J.R. Leifchild, Our Coal and Our Coal-Pits; the People in them and the Scenes around them (London, 1856), p. 199. 68 CHAPTER III MARRIAGE, FERTILITY AND HOUSEHOLD SIZE The primary objective of this chapter is to examine the core of the coalmining community — the household of the mining family. Peter Laslett's definition of the household, 1 as the nuclear family with additions such as lodgers or kin living within the confines of the home, and under the charge of one head, is the model which I shall use. This will involve an examination of marriage patterns, fertility and family size, the roles of family members, and finally the provisions;; made for aged kin and the migratory population of young miners. There are many features here that distinguish the miners from other occupational groups, but my main concern is with the larger-than-average household size to be found in coalmining communities. The mean household size for England and Wales remained fairly constant at a little below 4.75 persons for three centuries up until 1911 . The Census Reports for England and Wales provide the following ten yearly mean sizes* for families or separate coresident domestic groups of occupiers, which Laslett termed household groups: 1861 -- 4.47 1891 — 4.73 1871 — 4.50 1901 — 4.62 1881 -- 4.61 1911 -- 4.4 3 In contrast, we find the following mean household sizes from the Census Reports for certain coalmining districts, compared with England and Wales: 69 For all dwellings 1901 1911 England and Wales 4.62 4.51 Durham 5.04 4.95 Northumberland 4.82 4.73 Rotherham 4.99 4.80 Barnsley 4.78 4.77 In certain South Yorkshire Colliery communities, during the period of most rapid expansion at the turn of the century, the mean household size was even higher. For instance: 1901 Approx. Urban District Population Number of Households Mean House• hold Size Altofts 4,024 805 5.0 Bolton-upon- Dearne 3,828 670 5.7 Wath-upon- Dearne 8.515 1,644 5.2 Cudworth 3,408 655 5.2 Darfield 4,194 819 5.1 Hoyland Nether 12,464 2,441 5.1 Thurnscoe 2,366 428 5.5 The effects of this average household size which was reflected throughout the coalfields, are demonstrated consis• tently in the Census Reports for 1861 to 1911, when the coalmining areas of Durham, Northumberland, South Wales and the West Riding are cited as displaying the worst cases of overcrowding in the country. The reason for these discrepan• cies in the, household size are to be found in the high ferti• lity rates of coalmining communities, and the common custom of taking aged parents and lodgers into the home. 70 I The first aspect of family life to be examined is the institution of marriage. The most noteworthy factor about marriage in the coalmining communities is the early age at which the coalminers and their wives married. As early as 1834, the Poor Law Commissioners in Durham noted that "... the miners assumed the most important office of manhood at the earliest age at which nature and passion prompted." (sic). More than fifty years later, in 1886, the Annual Report of the Registrar-General published the following table demon• strating that marriage occurred at an earlier age within the coalmining group than within any other occupational group. TABLE I Average ages at Marriage of Bachelors and Spinsters in Occupational Groups. 1884 - 1885~. 7 Occupational Group Bachelors Spinsters (Years) (Years) Miners 24.06 22.46 Textile Hands 24.38 23.43 Shoemakers and Tailors 24. 92 24.31 Artisans 25.35 23.70 Labourers 25.56 23.66 Commercial Clerks 26.25 24.43 Shopkeepers and Shopmen 26.67 24.22 Farmers and Farmers' Sons 29.23 26.91 Professional and Independent j Class 31.22 26.40 The average age at marriage for all classes in England and Wales at this date was 26.1 years for men and 24.6 years for women. It can be seen therefore, that the miners and their wives married generally, two years earlier than the average for all other classes. The Royal Statistical Society devoted much time to the question of declining fertility in England and Wales in the earlier part of this century. The tables offered in the Society's journal from their investigations into fertility and the age of the wife at marriage, add support to the view that the miners displayed the lowest mean age at marriage of any social or occupational group. In Table II below, the classifications I to VIII are those established by the Census Report of 1911, and represent the following socio-occupational groups: I -- Professional and Higher Administrative II -- Employers in Industry and the Retail Trade III -- Skilled IV -- Semi-Skilled V -- Unskilled VI -- Textiles VII -- Miners VIII -- Agricultural Classes (Note: This classification will be used throughout the chapter) TABLE II shows the average age at marriage of the wife, according to social class and the duration of the marriage in years in 1911. TABLE II To show the average age of the wife at.marriage, in marriages of varying duration and social class, 1911. Date Duration Average Age at Marriage in Years of of age Marr Marriage for all Social Class iage in Years the in 1911 occupied classes I II III IV V VI VII VIII 1906 -11 0 - 5 25.3 26.6 26.1 25.1 25.2 24.8 25.1 23.6 24.9 1901 -06 5 - 10 24.8 26.1 25.6 24.6 24.7 24.3 25.0 23.3 24.7 72 TABLE II - continued Date Duration Average Age at Marriage in Years of of age for Marr Marriage all the Social Class iage in Years occupied in 1911 classes I II III IV V VI VII VIII 1896 -1901 10 - 15 24.5 25.7 25.2 24.2 24.4 24.0 24.7 23.1 24.7 1891 -96 15 - 20 24.2 25.3 24.9 24.0 24.1 23.7 24.2 22.8 24.3 1886 -91 20 - 25 23.8 24.7 24.4 23.5 23.7 23.3 23.6 22.5 24.0 1881 -86 25 - 30 23.4 24.2 23.9 23.1 23.2 22.9 23.0 22.1 23.4 1871 -81 30 - 4o 23.0 23.7 23.3 22.6 22.8 22.5 22.5 21.6 23.0 Prom this table it can be seen that the average age at marriage of the wife, in all social classes, had gradually- increased from the date of the earliest marriages recorded in this table, in 1871, until the latest in 1911. For instance, the earliest recorded average age at marriage was for those miners* wives in Class VII who had married thirty or forty years before, (I87I to 1881) at 21,6 years of age. The average ages gradually rose from that time. As might be expected, the wives of the upper and middle class professional groups recorded the highest average ages at marriage. However, we must note that in all cases, the wives of the miners record the earliest average age at marriage. The group which most closely resemble the miners in this question is the unskilled class — a comparison which will be made again in this chapter, with respect to fertility. In 1911, less than one-third of professional men's wives were married before the age of 25 years, whereas three 9 quarters of miners' wives were married before this age. 73 Table I (see page 70) indicated that on average the women in the coalmining communities married at an earlier age than the men. An examination of a sample of coal towns in South Yorkshire shows this more clearly. In 1891, the coal towns of Pontefract, Hemsworth and Barnsley displayed the following conjugal conditions at specified ages, which are typical of the coal towns. TABLE III - To show the conjugal status of men and women in , Q three sample coal towns at various ages in 1891. Town and Conjugal Under 15 Status Years 15- 20- 25- 35- 45- 55- 65- PONTEFRACT Male 1,324 3,142 2,116 1,363 398 232 110 67 Single Female 1,123 2,331 1,161 634 219 120 71 60 Male 0 8 601 2,871 2,911 1,902 1,031 364 iMarried Female 0 113 1,062 3,047 2,599 1,686 843 367 Male 0 0 3 55 111 164 198 332 Widowed Female 0 0 _1 _J2 131 291 371 636 HEMSWORTH Male 2,994 786 571 479 185 80 37 22 Eingle Female 2,788 538 276 232 96 47 29 30 Male 0 2 143 752 663 451 286 152 Married Female 0 38 237 752 619 412 223 107 Male 0 1 2 19 31 42 64 95 widowed Female 0 1 2 15 43 51 95 143 BARNSLEY Male 18,863 5,423 3,765 2,487 953 430 198 96 Single Female |18,601 5,888 1,756 1,008 292 152 87 64 Male 0 25 1,245 5,344 4,772 3,184 1,605 719 Married Female 0 251 2,093 6,146 4,208 2,775 1,379 489 Male 0 0 •9 109 228 340 493 Widowed Female 0 0 17 128 290 471 657 850 74 Here we find a high rate of marriage at the earlier ages, with the number of married women exceeding the number of married men at these ages, and an excess number of single young men, compared to single young women. A large number of young women married between the ages of 20 and 24 years. We cannot tell how many of the women in the column 25 to 34 years actually contracted marriage within that age period as this table only records those who had a married status at those ages in 1891, and does not show when those women were actually married. We must assume that some of those women recorded as being married in the age group 25 to 34 years actually contracted marriage before their 25th birthday. This same argument can be applied to all age groups over twenty years. The large discrepancy between the numbers of those young women and young men who are reported as being married before the age of 35 years is reversed when the number of married men exceed married women after the age of 35 years. This is accounted for by the fact that many older men took younger women as their wives. After the age of 35 years, moreover, the larger number of widows compared to widowers becomes more pronounced. Because of a lack of diversity of employment in the coal• mining towns, a marriage pattern developed whereby the daughters of miners married miners, who in turn propagated a coalmining family. Marriage was contracted at an unusually early age because the miners reached their highest earning capacity normally by the age of twenty years. Those who worked at the 75 surface of the colliery earned the least of all, and they married generally after the age of 35 years."'""'" Employment opportunities for women were strictly limited in these single industry towns, and marriage therefore assumed a greater im• portance for them. Reasons for early marriage within the coalmining class are discussed in greater detail in the fol• lowing chapter on women. One of the most distinctive aspects of married life in the coalmining community was the strict differentiation of the roles of husband and wife. Role differentiation in the traditional nuclear family as described by Zelditch, closely approximates to the situation that existed in the coalmining family. He describes the father as the instrumental leader of the nuclear family: "Ego is boss manager of the farm; leader of the hunt, etc. Ego is the final court of appeals, final judge and executor of punishment, discipline, and control over the children of the family." The mother on the other hand is the expressive leader: "Ego Is the mediator, concili• ator, of the family; ego soothes over disputes, resolves hostilities in the family. Ego is affectionate, solicitous, warm, emotional to the children of the family; ego is the 'comforter,' the'consoler,* is relatively indulgent, rela- 12 tively unpunishing," In the coalmining family, the father was the sole bread• winner, unless he was fortunate to have sons working too, and as such, represented the community to the family, and vice versa. The wife's primary roles were reproductive and 76 and educational. , With her..:husband absent at work for much of the day, the wife's responsibilities in the home and family were strengthened, and she emerged as the primary socializing agent within the family. She held more emotional and senti• mental importance than the father. Marital roles within the coalmining community were clearly set when compared to the community where the wife was employed. When the coalminer writer Jack Lawson married in 1904, he was emphatic about the set roles he and his wife assumed — "For 13 me the pit, for her' the home." ^ Because of the lack of female employment, the man's primary function as the bread• winner was indisputable. The man who failed to provide for his family through his own failings was regarded with contempt by his fellows. Through his work, the husband was responsible for the status of his family and its relationship with the rest of the community. The wife was responsible for the socialization of the family and the management of the home, and, by acting as the mediator between the children and the father, she became the centre of affection and emotions. It may be inferred from these distinct roles that the coalmining family was in fact mother-centred. Indeed, in a study of a coalmining town in the United States in the 1950's, it was found that the majority of the families interviewed were, for the reasons cited above, mother-orientated. There existed "... a social arrangement in which family activities and goals are primarily organized around the wishes and power 14 of the mother." Furthermore, the father was constantly threatened by death or injury, and so life became organized 77 around the mother "... who represents in her own way stability and predictability in the home." The distinctive, traditional role differentiation in coal• mining families can be demonstrated more clearly if compared with the situation which existed where female employment was normal. Female employment tended to break down traditional family roles. Thus in nineteenth century Lancashire, "the recruitment of women and children weakened the traditional domestic basis for child-rearing. Because the opportunities for the adult male in the industry (cotton) were limited, his status as chief breadwinner in the family was in danger." Moreover, the semi-apprenticeship system of son to father in the cotton industry was declining after the 1830's,,. "Hence the economic authority, instruction, and control associated with the apprenticeship system were probably absent in the weaving rooms." The apprenticeship of son to father persisted in coal• mining into the twentieth century. This factor, which promoted an economic and socializing link between father and son, and the distinct division of roles between husband and wife in economic and emotional spheres, persisted in the coalmining family long after they had disappeared from those families in areas of greater industrial diversification. This points towards a more traditionally orientated society in the coal• mining areas. 78 II Marriage patterns and the distinct husband and wife roles served to set the coalmining population apart from other occupational groups, but it was in fertility and family size, above all, that the greatest distinctions occurred. After the late 1870's there was a general decline in the birth rate in England and Wales. Between I876 and 1920, the birth rate fell by one-third. This was a matter of great con• cern to contemporary social statisticians who identified the decline as being >due to a fall in productivity rather than a decline in the marriage rate. I876 was pin-pointed as the turning point in the downward pattern of the birth rate by those social observers who saw the decline as being caused by l ft voluntary limitation of family size. Table IV demonstrates the declining birth rate for England and Wales in the period 1871 to 1911. TABLE IV To show total births per 1.000 population in England and Wales, 1871 to 1911 19 Date Total births per 1,000 population 1871 35.0 1876 36.3 1881 33.9 1886 32.8 1891 31.4 1896 29.6 1901 28.5 1906 27.2 1911 24.3 The idea that the decline in fertility was caused by the widespread degeneracy of the health of the population was rejected by most contemporary observers. The decline in the economic importance of children as wage earners, and greater 79 opportunities of employment for women, combined with a dis• semination of knowledge on birth control methods pointed rather to limitation by deli'-berate volition as the major factor in the falling birth rates. T.H.C. Stevenson, who was the Census investigator and tabulator for 1911, stated before the Royal Statistical Society in 1906 that the falling birth rate was due neither to poverty nor physical degeneracy, but was rather associated with rising standards of comfort and rising expectations. Moreover, with the raising of the school 20 leaving age, children were no longer a great source of profit. The Fabian Society reiterated this viewpoint in the following 21 year. Others have identified the growth of a desire for emanci• pation among women as a contributory factor in the limitation 22 of the family which would explain why the decline in the birth rate occurred first of all among the higher social orders, and among those groups, such as the textile workers, where female employment was high. F. Zweig, whose social investi• gations of working women took place in the late 1940's, also discovered this pattern whereby wage-earning wives were far more likely to practise birth control than those wives who remained at home. "I do not mean to say that all women workers make such calculations (about birth control), but the ten• dency is there, and they are more inclined to do so than 21 women staying at home for good." ^ Although natural methods of birth control were widely practised by the working class, and artificial means were 80 employed by the middle and upper classes, after 1880 the availability of contraceptives was increasing. "With the exception of the oral contraceptive, there is not a single birth control method in existence today (1963) which was not oh. already available, and available in greater variety in 1890." This throws a good deal of weight behind the arguments of those who cited an increase in artificial limitation as a cause in the decline of productivity. Further, Peel states, "The trade literature of this period gives no support to the con• tention that such contraceptives as were available sixty years ago were generally crude, unreliable, expensive and difficult to obtain." 25 If we examine the coalminers to see how they fit into this pattern of general decline in fertility, It will be seen that they provide a significant contrast to other socio-occu- pational groups in that they maintained a high average rate of birth throughout this period of decline. The birth rate of the miners' class remained higher than all other groups and in fact only began to decline at a later stage. While the general decline had started between 1861 and 1871, the miners' fertility did not begin to fall until between 18?1 and 1881, and even then decreased at a slower rate than other classes. Thus: .....there was much more difference between the average doctor's family and the average miner's in 1906 than thirty years before. Among brides of the 185O's, for instance, the miners' were to have about eight children each, to the six of the doctors' and lawyers'? among those of the early 1880's the miners' were still to have about seven, but the 2{, ' doctors' and lawyers' now not even so many as four. 81 The miners in fact outnumbered the unskilled poor in fertility rates despite the fact that generally speaking their work and life style did not merit the description of either unskilled or poor. Their most rapid reduction in family size occurred between 1900 and 1911, but even in 1911, Peter Stearns suggests that there was still an average of 3.6 chil• dren per family. According to his calculations, the miners were the only large category of industrial workers with fami• lies with more than three children at this point in time. Moreover the coalmining class experienced an extremely high infant mortality rate so that, "the average miner's wife had to bear about 4|- children to achieve the average family size even in 1911." 27 Table V shows how a higher birth rate persisted in the coalmining counties when compared to the average birth rate for England and Wales. TABLE V To show the birth rate per thousand in the coalmining counties and England and Wales in 1881 and 1901. ZG Area Total Birth Rate (Crude) 1881 1901 England and Wales 33.9 •28.5 Durham 39.5 35.48 Northumberland 35.1 32.15 West Riding 34.6 28.56 Glamorganshire 37.35 35.25 Monmouthshire 34.0 35.16 The birth rates for the West Riding are affected by the existence of a large section of the population who were in• volved in the textile industry. However, the rates for the counties where coalmining dominated all other industries, are 82 significantly higher than the national rates. There was a degree of decline in the rates between 1881 and 1Q01 in all areas except Monmouthshire, where there was a slight increase in fertility between these two dates. This decline, however, was slower than among other classes and is demonstrated more clearly in the following table, again using the eight social classes identified by the 1911 Census Report. TABLE VI To show the annual percentage decreases in class ~ fertility rates, standardized for age of marriage. Year of Social Classes Marriage I II III IV V VI VII VIII Total 1851 - 61 to 1861 - 71 .51 .71 .40 .39 .28 .32 +0.1 .49 .40 1861 - 71 to 1871 - 81 1.62 1.28 .94 .85 .66 1.04 .57 .67 .92 1871 - 81 to 1881 - 86 2.01 1.74 1.28 1.17 .88 1.27 .61 .70 1.24 With the sole exception of the miners during the first period, fertility had diminished consistently for all social classes. Innes, from whom this table is drawn, concludes that "although the decline was characteristic of all the classes, the lower the status of the class, the more slowly did it 30 participate in the downward trend," Having looked at the birth rates for the individual coal• mining counties and having compared the decline in the ferti• lity of the miners with other social groups, we must now com• pare the actual birth rates of the miners with those of other social classes. Table VII shows both total and effective fertility for all classes in 1911 — total fertility being the 83' numbers of children born, effective fertility being the numbers of surviving children. The standardized rates are those cal• culated by the statistician T.H.C. Stevenson. TABLE VII To show the fertility of the eight social classes in 1911. 31 Social Class II III IV V VI VII VIII Children born per 100 families Crude Rates 190 241 279 287 337 238 358 327 Standardized Rates 213 248 278 285 317 247 348 320 Children surviving per 100 families Crude Rates 168 205 232 237 268 191 282 284 Standardized Rates 187 211 231 236 253 197 274 278 Children dead per 1F000 born Crude Rates 116 147 167 173 206 200 213 131 Standardized Rates 123 150 167 173 202 203 212 129 All these figures are at a maximum for miners except that the miners lose their initial advantage of a higher total fertility to the agricultural classes (Class VIII), when con• sidering effective fertility. The high death rate among in• fants which characterized the coalmining class, and the rela• tively healthy conditions of the rural, agricultural envi• ronment, had an equalizing effect on the effective fertility of these two groups. However, this table shows quite clearly the high birth and death rates which prevailed in coalmining communities, and indicates that despite a high infant morta• lity rate, miners' families were still significantly larger 84 than those of other classes. Finally, Tahle VIII, taken from T.H.C. Stevenson, draws together all the points discussed above and again shows how the coalminers were distinguished from other groups with regard to fertility. Stevenson has standardized his rates so that each figure in this table is expressed as a percentage of the combined rates for all the eight classes at the same specified duration of marriage, 100 per cent being the mean birth rate. Both total and effective fertility are considered in this table. TABLE VIII To show the standardized total and effective ferti• lity of marriages of various dates in each social class, as a percentage of the corresponding rates fpr-QGOUPied persons of all classes .jointly. 1911. A) Total Fertility Date of Duration Marriage of Marriage in Years I II III IV V VI VII VIII 1906 - 11 0 - 5 80 92 98 102 114 87 120 114 1901 - 06 5 - 10 79 91 98 101 112 86 122 114 1896-1901 10 - 15 76 89 99 101 114 86 125 114 1891 - 96 15 - 20 74 88 99 101 113 88 127 115 1886 - 91 20 - 25 74 87 100 101 112 90 126 114 1881 - 86 25 - 30 76 89 100 101 110 92 124 114 1871 - 81 30 - 40 81 93 101 101 107 93 117 109 1861 - 71 40 - 50 88 96 101 100 104 94 113 104 1851 - 61 50 - 60 89 99 101 99 103 94 108 105 B) Effective Fertility 1906 - 11 0 - 5 83 93 99 102 111 84 116 116 1901 - 06 5 - 10 84 94 99 101 109 83 116 118 1896-1901 10 - 15 81 92 99 101 109 83 119 119 1891 - 96 15 - 20 79 90 100 101 109 85 120 122 1886 - 91 20 - 25 79 90 100 101 107 87 119 122 1881 - 86 25 - 30 81 92 101 101 106 89 116 122 1871 - 81 30 - 40 86 96 100 101 103 89 110 116 1861 - 71 40 - 50 91 99 100 100 100 88 105 111 1851 - 61 50 - 60 91 102 98 98 99 91 97 111 85 The high total fertility of the miners loses its lead after the mortality rate is taken into account and effective fertility is considered. Once more, it can be seen that the agricultural group is in a favourable position among the lower orders of society, for effective fertility shows that a higher proportion of children survive among their ranks than in other groups. Though total fertility is less, the effective fertility of the agricultural population exceeds that of the coalminers in some instances. The table also shows, through Stevenson's method of standardization, that though fertility was decreasing in all social classes, in the case of the miners (Class VII), the agricultural workers (VIII) and the unskilled class (V), fertility was decreasing at a much slower rate when compared to those .socio-occupational classes who were more inclined to exercise family limitation. Consequently, these three groups show an increasingly higher percentage of fertility in later years, up until 1911, when compared to the rest of the social classes, than they did in earlier years before the effects of birth control were felt. The effects of family limitation may be noted in the higher social groups and within the textile worker class (Class VI) by the decreasing rates of fertility demonstrated by these classes. Among all the classes whose total fertility was higher than the mean of 100, the mining class showed the highest figures throughout the whole period covered by this table. The slowness with which the miners adopted voluntary family limitation is shown by the increase of this higher than 86 average fertility from eight per cent in 1851 - 1861 to 27 per cent in 1891 - 1896. As the miners gradually began to limit their families their higher than average fertility fell slightly to 20 per cent above the mean in the final period, 1906 to 1911. There are five main reasons for the persistence of the high birth rate in the mining classes during a period of general decline. Firstly, the characteristically early marriage within the coalmining groups, discussed in the early part of this chapter, meant that the legal child-bearing period was lengthened. The coalmining population generally began to procreate families at an earlier stage than other occupational groups. Secondly, with the lack of opportunities for female employment, the women became more home-centred and family orientated. The following two chapters discuss in detail how wifehood and motherhood was the woman's vocation in the coalmining community. The birth rate figures for the coalmining communities indicate that birth control was slow to be adopted by the miners and their wives. They were not motivated to limit their families to the extent of those groups who first practised birth control. Among the upper and middle classes, where Feminist ideas and increasing desires for leisure were first experienced JJ and among those industrial classes where the women commonly worked, .rthe advantages of family limitation were obvious. T.H.C. Stevenson suggested that the fall in fertility affected those classes first who had access to information 8? on birth control, and lastly, those "least immediately accessible to such influence," y In• Certainly, birth rate statistics suggest that family limitation began primarily at the top of the social scale, (the textile workers are the exception here) and permeated down through the ranks. Perhaps the adoption of birth control was not so much a question of necessity or accessibility of information, but was more a matter of attitude and reception of ideas. Phelps Brown noted that changes in fashion usually originate at the top of the social hierarchy, and spread downwards according to how far people are aware of new ideas, and are responsive to them. He said that the following factors motivated the spread of family limitation: Such are the growth of a personal responsibility for the well-being of the children one has brought into the world; the spread of the scientific out• look, breaking down inhibitions, and increasing men's belief in their power to control their lives; the extension of the small family simply as a fashion with which men conform to avoid appearing unusual; and especially the rising status of women, which made wives less willing to be exhausted by pregnancies and worn out by family cares, and (though this more slowly) raised the cost of children by giving a daughter nearly as great a claim on her parents' purse as a son. 35 The coalminers were slow to be affected by changes of this nature. Though they were probably aware of methods of family limitation, as Peel suggests that this knowledge was general, the lack of such motivations discussed above, and a slow response to new ideas, perhaps goes further to explain the gradualness of the spread of voluntary family limitation in the coal areas. 88 A connection between high rates of fertility and rough, manual labour has been identified in Britain by Phelps Brown. He made this link with the coalminers, farm labourers, iron and steel workers, glass workers and dock and building labourers. "Only the roughness of the work -- the bodily exertion, the exposure to heat and dust and weather -- seems to provide a factor that is consistently different between the two groups," (that is between those with large and small families.) This idea cannot be proved or disproved and so should be treated with reservations, but it may be noted that a similar link was discovered in the United States where the birth rate was higher among those groups involved in occupations requiring 37 "unusual physical exertion." ^ This connection is explained by Phelps Brown thus: It may be that rough and hard work increases desire, as danger does, or makes men want children more. But a stronger reason is probably that it makes men conservative in the social sense -- less ready to change their ways and take up new ideas. In 1873 the Cambridge economist Alfred Marshall had stressed how bodily fatigue inhibits thought among "those vast masses of men who, after long hours of hard and unintellectual toil, are wont to return to their narrow homes with bodies exhausted and with minds dull and sluggish." We have all heard," he went on, "what rude manners have been formed by the rough work of the miners; but even among them the rougher the work of the body, the lower the condition of the mind. Iron miners, for instance, are a superior race to colliers." It happens that the Census of 1911 found that the number of children born to a hundred couples was J60 for the coalminers, 3^3 for the iron miners. 38 Yet the actual work of the coalminer called upon great powers of concentration, forethought, cooperation and some degree of technical knowledge. In fact Phelps Brown is exaggerating when describing their work as "unintellectual toil". The miners were conservative and suspicious of change, 89 "but to blame this upon a "low condition of the mind" engen• dered by hard work is perhaps erroneous. The question of conservatism of ideas brings us to a fourth reason why high fertility prevailed in the coalmining group. A high birth rate and a high infant mortality rate prevailed in those groups where people were slow to change their ideas and habits, so that a vicious circle developed. "Where many babies were born, there could have been less care for each; and where many babies died, there was more room for more." 3^ Here, Phelps Brown was reiterating what T.H.C. Stevenson had discovered in the earlier part of the twentieth century. Stevenson demonstrated that infant mortality rose with a higher rate of fertility so that for example, for a wife aged 15 to 19 years at marriage, child mortality rose from 117 per 1,000 born in one-child families, to 368 per 1,000 born in families of twelve children, to as high as 429 per 1,000 born in families of over twelve children. "It seems probable both that in many cases children die because many are born, and that many are born because comparatively few sur- ,.40 vive. A definite connection can be identified therefore between high fertility and high mortality. In 1911» deaths of infants under one year of age occurred in the following ratios, per 1,000 born: Solicitors -- 4l per 1,000 Coalminers -- 62 per 1,000 Doctors -- 39 per 1,000 Costermongers -- 196 per 1,000 90 The average number of children born to wives under 45 years of age for the same occupational groups were as follows: Solicitors - 1.73 Coalminers -- 3.60 0 . i 41 Doctors -- 1.69 Costermongers -- 3.45 Some of the highest infant mortality rates on record occurred in the coalmining areas, with Lancashire, the West Riding, Northumberland, Durham, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire and Glamorganshire, all coalmining counties, being noted for the highest infant mortality in the country between 1907 and 1910. In this same period, Merthyr Tydfil, Rhondda and Barnsley were included among the 25 towns in the country 42 with the highest rate. When comparing the coalmining group to the other seven social groups, it is found that the miners were distinguished by a higher mortality rate among infants. TABLE IX To show mortality of legitimate children under one year of age, according to the occupation and social class of the father. 191lT 4~3 Social Deaths per 1,000 Classification babies born 76 106 113 122 153 148 160 It is noteworthy that the agricultural classes record low infant mortality when compared to other working-class groups, being more closely akin to the upper and middle classes. The miners resemble the unskilled poor in terms of infant mortality. 91 There is also a connection between infant mortality and the age of the wife at marriage. Infant deaths were at a maximum where the wife married under twenty years of age, and at a minimum where the wife married between the ages of 25 and 30 years. In the 1911 Census Report, T.H.C. Stevenson showed that in most cases, mortality was higher among the 44 children of wives who married at an earlier age. The characteristically early age of marriage among the coalmining class had a deleterious effect on the rate of survival of children in the coalmining communities. Stevenson suggests,however, that infant mortality was probably affected even more by the rapid rate at which children were born, rather than the actual number born, from the out• set of married life. He found that highest mortality occurred where, in the early years of marriage, a wife gave birth to a child each year. For example, in those families where six children had been born within five years of marriage, where the age of the wife at marriage was 20 to 24 years, the death rate was as high as 462 per 1,000 children born. He said that the situation most favourable to the health of the mother and child was for one child only to be born in the first five years of married life, and from then onwards, two children only to be born every five years. By spreading out a family in this way, the health of mothers and children in the fer• tile-groups would improve. However, among those classes where artificial limitation was not practised, rapid birth rates continued to prevail. 92 With the persistence of early marriages and rapid rates of birth, combined with poor living conditions which promoted the spread of disease, (see above), infant mortality rates remained high throughout the coalfields. It can be argued that these high death rates aided the maintenance of high rates of fertility. Finally, an above average birth rate may have prevailed among the coalminers because of their attitudes to children. Sons traditionally followed their fathers into the mining profession, and their value as wage-earners may have influ• enced the miners towards larger families. At the age when the miner's strength began to fail, a family of wage-earning sons was of increasingly vital importance. It would appear then that large families in the coal• mining communities were not unusual, and that a child might expect to grow up with a great number of siblings. Certainly, among those coalminers who wrote their autobiographies, the large family was no exception. For instance, Jack Lawson was 45 46 one of ten children , Abe Moffat one of eleven , while John Brophy survived with four other children, though eleven 48 died at birth or in childhood. Before proceeding to discuss family ties and relationships, a brief examination of illegitimate birth rates among the coal• miners reveals an interesting sidelight on their attitude to marriage and the importance of children. Despite the high degree of mobility and migration among single, young men in the coal industry, and the periods of 93 unsettlenient and instability at a time of expansion in the coal towns, and in spite of the miners' reputation for heavy drinking and leisure-orientated lives, rates for illegitimacy closely approximate to the national average, though one might expect them to be in excess of the national rates. TABLE X - To compare the illegitimacy rate of the coal areas to the national average. Crude rates. 4~9 : Illegitimacy birth rate Area per 1,000 born. 1881 1901 England and Wales 1.7 1.12 Durham 1.62 1.23 Northumberland 1.97 1.22 West Riding 1.90 1.21 Glamorganshire 1.39 0.94 Monmouthshire 1.63 0.84 Illegitimacy rates had decreased during these 20 years on both the national and county levels. This was probably due to the increasing use of contraceptive methods rather than any change in the level of morality. Contemporary evidence suggests that promiscuity was rife in the coalfields, but in fact, rates for illegitimacy were not excessive because of a pressure from the community to marry in the event of pregnancy. In 1893, the French social observer Paul de Rousiers visited the coalfields of the Lothians in Scotland, and here he found a great deal of promiscuity among the mining classes. However, public pressure acted as a counter force to desertion and illegitimacy: Marriages are lightly made, and often to legalize previous relations.; Such irregularities are very rife '. in Rosewell, (on the Lothian coalfield) and public opinion is not very hard upon them if the situation 94 is regularized. A young man who refused to marry the girl he had seduced would find himself in a very bad case, without taking into account his legal responsibilities. Such a case occurred at Rosewell a few years ago, and the man was kicked out of the village, 50 Although many marriages were made to legalize illicit relationships, marriage.itself and child rearing were of im• portance, especially to the women. It has been suggested, moreover, that the coalminer was more family orientated than 51 most men of other occupational groups. ^ He paid more attention to the welfare of his family, and was more prone to take part in family leisure activities, where these occurred, such as walks or outings. This brings us to the final aspect of family life to be discussed in this section -- family relationships. The high birth rates among the coalmining population affected the age-cycle of the coal communities in that there was a preponderance of young children in the population. There was a characteristically high number of dependants in the producer/dependant ratio in the coal towns. Because of the emigration of some young women out of these single industry towns, and the inflow of young men seeking work, there was a discrepancy in the male/female sex ratio, with an.excess number of young males. There was on the other hand, a lower than average number of aged persons in relation to the rest of the mining population. This is accounted for by the influx of young persons, the death rate among aged miners, and the fact that some of the aged miners who origi• nated from an agricultural environment, tried to return to 95 their areas of origin after retirement. All these factors relating to the age-cycle in the mining communities are demon• strated in Table I of Chapter IV below. (Table to illustrate the age distribution in a sample of mining towns.) One consequence of the high degree of dependancy which was created in the coal towns by the excessive numbers of children and non-working women was a strengthening of family ties. Indeed, in the isolation of the mining-";j',' communities, family ties were such that personal conflicts often led to family feuds, "for when a man strikes in a colliery, he does 52 not merely hit a person, he hits a family." Family rela• tionships were strengthened more; by the existence of strong traditionalism in the mining profession among families. Sons were recruited to mining because of strong family bonds, normally becoming apprenticed to their own fathers, and thus extending family relationships into the working situation. "Family life was attractive and the sons went to learn their 53 father's craft with a deal of pride and interest." JJ The importance of this situation is captured by G.A.W. Tomlinson, a working miner, when he wrote: There is something about colliery life, something which brings fathers and sons very close together.. ,.. There is a sort of friendship and understanding between them which is unlike that of any other walk of life... a greater respect because of their knowledge of each other gained in the pits. A father will often- be in charge of a "stall" in which two or three of his sons are working, and in the pit one sees one's father or brother or son as a man, not as a relative. The hard life of a pit tests a man, his weaknesses are clearly seen as also is his strength and courage. When one has seen one's father naked and sweating at the coal face, one realises the debt which one owes to him for having beenjbrought up to manhood a fit person to take place by his side. There is 96 no deep sentiment about the miner's family life: theirs is a deep understanding of each other. 54 Tomlinson's concluding sentence crystallizes the essence of family life among coalmining groups. The miners and their wives were not sentimental hy nature, but were held together rather, by respect, loyalty and an understanding and appre• ciation of each other's role in the family. A study of the miner's household cannot be restricted to the nuclear family alone;., and in the final section of this chapter, attention is focused upon those other members of the household who made up what Laslett termed "the extended family household." III Apart from the nuclear family, the miner's household often included other residents of a temporary or permanent nature. These could be rent-paying lodgers or aged parents, whose only recourse in old age was to the hospitality of their children. Aged parents might pay a token rent, or receive house-room and food in exchange for their help in the home. The following section is largely concerned with those provisions made for old age in the coalmining commu• nity. For many of the aged poor throughout England and Wales, the workhouse was the final or only resort in old age. In the period 1906 to 1914, as many as one-third of the aged expected to end their days on parish relief. ^ Others 97 depended upon savings or Friendly Society benefits, or upon the non-contributory old age pensions introduced after 1908. But for many, these sources of income proved to be insuffi• cient, and if the workhouse was to be avoided, aid from relatives.had to be sought. The family was in fact the most important institution for the provision of relief for the aged. In instances where aged parents were taken in by children, a symbiotic relation• ship developed whereby reciprocal duties were performed. In the nineteenth century, children were more likely to take in aged parents in areas where women commonly worked, such as in the textile towns. In these situations, the older persons could be of value, offering services such as child-care in exchange for shelter. In 1851, in Preston, 32 per cent of persons over 65.years of age lived with married children, while 36" per cent lived with unmarried children, ^ But this living situation was by no means restricted by period or occupational area. As late as 1957, in an enquiry into Bethnal Green, it was found that 45 per cent of a sample of 203 old people lived with relatives.^ We must now see if this common phenomenon in the relief of the aged had any effect on household size in the coalmining districts. The proportion of old people in the coalmining areas was quite low by national standards. On average, in 1892, out of 10,000 persons in mining areas, 195 were old men and 225 old women. The average for England and Wales by comparison 98 was 210 old men and 265 old women per 10,000 of the population. The age-cycle in the mining districts was distinguished "by a preponderance of children and reduced numbers of aged per• sons. Moreover, of the widowed aged, widows greatly outnum• bered widowers so that in the West Riding in 1861, there were 27,265 widowers compared to 50,282 widows, ^° • As well as finding a low proportion of aged persons in the coal mining areas, a study of parish relief reveals that there was an equally low proportion of the aged seeking indoor and outdoor relief in the coal towns. Charles Booth found in his survey of the aged in 1892, that relief was lowest for England and Wales in the coalmining areas of the North of England (apart from purely residential areas), where 22|- per cent of the aged population received relief. For all mining areas combined, relief still only amounted to 28-| per cent of the aged, and the rates for the mining population were generally lower than those for all other occupied groups. In the coal towns of Newcastle and Gateshead, 20^ per cent of the aged population were paupers, while the figures for Liverpool and London stood at 29i per cent and 38 per cent respectively. The Census Reports can be used to support what Booth found in his survey. In I871,the Census Report stated that pauperism in the mining counties was considerably below the 6i average. In 1901, only 997 male inmates of workhouses in England and Wales returned themselves as being retired 62 coalminers, out of a male workhouse population of 208,650. 99 Out of these, only 298 were ex-coalminer, indoor paupers in the West Riding. ^ In 1911» the figure for retired miners who had sought 64 refuge in the workhouse had risen to 1,928 hut at this time, coalmining was, of all occupations, one of the greatest em• ployers of men. Table XI demonstrates how the retired coalminers were distributed in the workhouses and asylums, when compared to a sample of other occupational groups in England and Wales. The percentages shown are the proportions of the retired to the total of occupied males in that occupational group, so that in the case of the coalminers, the number retired (17,150) is I.96 per cent of those occupied, (874,304). TABLE XI To show the distribution of the retired males in certain occupations in workhouses and asylums, England and Wales. 1911. 6"5 Proportion % retired to total occupied. Total Total In In Occupation Occupied Retired Total Workhouses Asylums Coal Miners 874,304 17,150 1.96 0.22 0.18 Civil Service 61,213 9,664 15.79 0.05 0.27 Officers Brick layers 102,752 3,461 3.37 1.20 0.34 Boot and Shoe makers 160,087 6,735 4.21 1.30 0.66 These figures demonstrate the low number of miners who resorted to the workhouse on retirement. The low proportion of miners recorded as being retired is accounted for by the fact -that the collieries had a higher than average rate for 100 employment of the elderly, mostly in light-duty surface occu• pations. The following table shows what percentages of aged persons depended on parish relief in a sample of coalmining towns in South Yorkshire. There is some variation in the proportions, but on the whole, the figures demonstrate that the majority of the aged in these coal towns, had some other form of sup• port, without falling into the class of aged paupers. The preponderance of aged women over aged men in all cases demon• strates further the effects of female longevity. TABLE XII To show the percentage of aged paupers in a sample Population over Paupers over Total 65 years 65 years percentage of aged Town Male Female Male Female paupers Wortley 643 796 73 149 15% Pontefract 903 1,063 312 500 4 If. Hemsworth 269 280 53 57 20% Doncaster 1,387 1,642 297 449 25% Wakefield 1,553 1,766 363 623 30io Barnsley 1,308 1,412 298 504 29% A minority of aged persons in the coalmining communities depended on the parish for relief, but of all the occupational groups, Booth found that the miners displayed the lowest pro• portions of aged pauperism. Four ways may be suggested as to how the aged miners and their wives managed to keep out of the workhouses in such great proportions. Firstly, coalmining had a higher rate of elderly employ• ment than other occupations. Employed miners over the age of seventy years were not uncommon. They earned reduced rates of 101 pay, but expenses - were far less for them in old age. . Secondly, the miners were an occupational group who involved themselves in the welfare of the aged. Many volun• tary schemes existed in the miners' unions for the provision of benefits for retired miners, notably the provision of aged miners' homes, Durham and Northumberland were the leaders in this respect. John Wilson, the Durham miners* leader was especially active here, and in 1895 aged miners* homes were set up under his direction in County Durham, He initiated the purchase of the colliery village of Haswell Moor by the Durham Miners' Union for £840. 112 houses for the aged were provided by this scheme, which were paid for by the working miners of the county at one shilling per year each. By 1908, the following homes for aged couples had been secured in Durham -- Shincliffe - 64; Houghall - 32; Wallace Village - 30; Middlestone Moor - 18; West Pelton - 12; Boyne - 6: Crook - 4; and St, Helens - 6. There were also thirty nursing £.1 homes for single old men distributed throughout the county. ' Jack Lawson explained the coalminers' involvement in the welfare of the aged as respect for those who had completed a lifetime of hard work. He describes the homes as, "old comrades of the pit who formed a little community talking over the past .,. Men and women cut out of the granite of grim circumstance, steel-hewn characters, the centre of affection for all the colliery." There was a great deal of variety among the miners in saving habits, but investment in insurance, Friendly Societies, Cooperative Movements, Sick and Burial Clubs, or Benefit 102 Societies was an important factor among some of them. Those who had saved through one or more of these agencies were per• haps able to maintain themselves in old age and retirement with the aid of relief offered through the miners* unions. The miners did not have their own pension scheme on a national scale, but there were regional schemes in operation to provide for old age. In the 1860's and I8?0's Miners* Permanent Relief Funds were set up in Derbyshire, which were supported both by the miners and the colliery owners. In 1901, the Warwick• shire colliers began a scheme whereby five shillings were provided weekly to those miners unable to work beyond the age of sixty years. In Durham and Northumberland, the Miner,s': Permanent Relief Fund was an important source of relief for many retired miners. Booth mentions that in South Shields, Chester-le-Street and Houghton-le-Spring, there was a great deal of dependence upon this pension. In Auckland, as many as one-sixth of the retired miners depended on this source 69 of income for their livelihood, 7 However, there were of course some miners or their widows o for whom these sources of relief were either unavailable "or insufficient. For them, the alternative to the workhouse was to solicit help from relatives and children. Booth discovered that on the whole there was a willingness among sons and daughters to care for aged parents. Exceptions to this rule occurred in those areas where poverty simply precluded the maintenance of aged dependants. It was noted above that parents were more likely to be maintained by their children in those areas where female 103 employment was commonplace, where a reciprocal duty of child care could be performed. Female employment in the coalfields was rare, and consequently the aged parent perhaps held a more redundant role in the home when compared for instance to those in the textile areas. It is likely that the aged person in the coalminer's home, with some means at his disposal through the various miners' benefit funds, was in fact a lodger con• tributing in the family whatever his means would allow. In some cases this would be but a token rent, but would alle• viate the stigma of dependence. This is not to suggest that the coalminers were mercenary, and if an aged or widowed parent had no means whatsoever, children were still a likely source of livelihood. In the colliery town of Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, for instance, Booth found that "assistance from children is very general, and friends give much help. No 7 respectable person would be allowed to go to the workhouse." ' This attitude prevailed in the South Yorkshire coalfield also, as can be seen from the reports Booth collected from local clergy on the state of the aged poor. In Wortley ex• treme poverty was rarely experienced. Help from the aged came from charities, Friendly Societies and the miners' clubs, and "a fair number are wholly maintained by children 71 or relatives." In Pontefract, the Church gave some dona• tions to the aged poor, but very few of the retired had in• vested in insurance or Thrift Agencies, Many depended there• fore on children and friends for relief. A similar situation existed in Wakefield where savings had been neglected and 104 penslons were few. Many men worked at reduced rates at the pits beyond the age of 65 years. It was reported that '"children are generally willing to help if they can; it depends much 72 on their bringing up." It would appear therefore that children in the colliery districts aided their parents in old age where the financial situation made this possible. They were instrumental in keeping the aged out of the workhouses and in maintaining the low rates of aged pauperism that prevailed in the coal areas. When examining the typical household of the miner therefore the likely presence of an aged or widowed parent must be taken into account. Finally, within the coalmining population, there existed a number of mobile young men, who roved the coalfields in search of better conditions of work and pay. A number of lod• ging houses for single men existed in the coal towns, but a lack of sufficient accommodation meant that many of these young men became paying lodgers in the homes of the miners themselves. Accommodation in the home maant the sharing of every amenity with the family, including the sleeping room, for the miners could not offer the luxury of separate quar• ters to their paying guests. But, the taking in of lodgers was accepted as a necessity in the mining communities, and for many families was an added source of income. If we consider therefore the factors at work in making up the household of the miner, we find clear and distinctive features. In the first place, the coalminers were distin• guished by a higher than average effective birth rate, so 105 that the size of the nuclear family was larger than the average. Further, filial duty and economic circumstances meant that many families included dependent or semi-dependent aged relatives. Finally, economic and spatial considerations in many instances added a further party to this sizeable extended family household. It is small wonder that the coalminers were noted for living in cramped and crowded conditions, and that the counties of Durham, Northumberland, the West Riding, Monmouthshire, and Glamorganshire were consistently attri• buted with the highest rates for household overcrowding in England and Wales in the Census Reports, and by contemporary observers. FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER III 1 See P. Laslett and R. Wall, Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge, 1972), p. 24 2 P. Laslett, "Size and structure of the Household in England over Three Centuries"' Population Studies, No. 23, 1969), P. 200. 3 See the General Reports to the Censuses of England and Wales from 1861 to 1911 in the British Parliamentary Papers. 4 The census Report for England and Wales. 1911: Summary Tables, B.P.P. 1914 - 16, LXXXI, Table 74, p. 362. 5 Table drawn from Ibid.. Table 11, p. 13. 6 M. Hewitt, Wives and Mothers in Victorian Industry (London, 1958), pp. 40 - 41. 7 Ibid., p.,45. 8 T.H.C. Stevenson, "The Fertility of Various Social Classes in England and Wales from the Middle of the Nineteenth Century to 1911," in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, (1920), Vol. LXXXIII, p. 426. 106 9 See E.H. Phelps Brown, The Growth of British Industrial Relations (London, I960). 10 From the Census Report for Englandand Wales. 1891: Summary Tables, B.P.P. 1893 -94, CVl, Table 5, p. 415. 11 See The Census Report for England and Wales. 1911: B.P.P. 1913, LXXVIII, Vol. X, p. 59. 12 M. Zelditch, Role Differentiation in the Nuclear Family: A Comparative Study, cited in T, Parsons and F. Bales, Family, Socialization and Interaction Process (New York, 1955), P. 318. 13 Jack Lawson, A Man's Life (London, 1932), p. 14-7. 14 H.R. Lantz, People of Coal Town (New York, 1958), p. 150. 15 Ibid., p. 155. 16 N.J. Smelser, Social Change in the Industrial Revolution, (London, 1959), p. 188 17 Ibid., pp. 199 and 201. 18 See G. Udny Yule, The Fall of the Birth-Rate (Cambridge, 1920), and J.W. Innes, Class Fertility Trends in England and Wales, 1876 - 1934, (Princeton. 1938). 19 From the Annual Report of the Registrar-General, cited in B. Mitchell and P. Deane, Abstract of British Statistics. (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 29 - 30. 20 T.H.C. Stevenson and A. Newsholme, "The Decline of Human Fertility in the United Kingdom and ether Countries," in The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Vol. LXIX, (March, 1906), pp. 34 - 87. 21 See S. Webb, The Decline in the Birth-Rate Fabian Tract No. 131, (London, 1907). 22 See J.A. and 0. Banks, Feminism and Family Planning in Victorian England (Liverpool, 1964). 23 F. Zweig, Women's Life and Labour (London, 1952), p. 56. 24 J. Peel, "Manufacture and Retailing of Contraceptives in England," Population Studies. Vol. XVII, (1963), No. 2. p. 116. 25 Ibid., p. 116. 26 E.H. Phelps Brown, Op. Cit.. pp. 4 - 5 27 P. Stearns, "Working Class Women in Britain 1890 - 1914," in Suffer and Be Still. Women in the Victorian Age, Ed. M. Vicinius (London, 1972), p. 10?,. • 107 28 T.H.C. Stevenson and A. Newsholme, Op. Cit., Table II, pp. 74-77. 29 J.W. Innes, Op. Cit., Table XIV, p. 43. 30 Ibid., p. 43. 31 T.H.C. Stevenson, Op. Cit., p. 410. 32 Ibid., p. 416. 33 See J.A. and 0. Banks, Op. Cit. 34 T.H.C. Stevenson, Op. Cit., p. 418. 35 E.H. Phelps Brown, Op. Cit.. p. 7. 36 Ibid., p. 6 37 See F.W. Notestein and X.Sallume "The Fertility of Specific Occupational Groups in an Urban Population", in The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly. Vol. X. No. 2. (April, 1932), New York, pp. 120 - 30. 38 E.H. Phelps-Brown, Op. Cit., pp. 6 - 7 39 Ibid., p. 8 40 T.H.C. Stevenson, Op. Cit., pp. 402 - 403. 41 Ibid. 42 From Newsholme's Second Report to the Local Government Board, 1913, cited in "The Urban Background to Public Health Changes in England and Wales, 1900 - 1950," B. Benjamin, Population Studies, Vol. XVII, No. 3. (1964). 43 E.H. Phelps Brown, Op. Cit., p. 39. 44 From The Census Report for England and Wales. 1911. Vol. XIII, "Fertility of Marriage," cited by T.H.C. Stevenson, Op. Cit., p. 407. 45 J. Lawson, Op. Cit. 46 A. Moffat, My Life with the Miners (London, 1965). 47 J. Brophy, A Miner's Life (Madison and Milwaukee, 1964). 48 A. Horner, Incorrigible Rebel (London,196o.) 49 T.H.C. Stevenson and A. Newsholme, Op. Cit., pp. 74 - 77 108 50 Paul de Rousiers, The Labour Question in Britain (London, I896), p. 192. 51 See P. Stearns, Op. Cit. 52 J. Lawson, Op. Cit., P. 101. 53 B.L. Coombes, Those Clouded Hills (London, 1944), p. 7. 54 G.A.W. Tomlinson, Coal-Miner (London, 1937), pp. 177 - 178. 55 P. Laslett and R. Wall, Op. Cit. 56 See E.H. Phelps Brown, Op. Cit. 57 See M. Anderson, Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire (London^ 1971). 58 P. Townsend, The Family Life of Old People (London, 1957). 59 See Charles Booth, The Aged Poor in England and Wales (London, 1894). 60 The Census Report for England and Wales,. 18.6.1: Summary Tables. B.P.P. 1863. LIII. Table VIII. pp." 289 - 290. 61 See The Census Report for England and Wales. 1871: General Report. B.P.P. 1873, LXXI. 62 The Census Report for England and Wales, 1901: Summary Tables, B.P.P. 1904, CVIII, Table XXXVIII, P. 213. 63 Ibid., County Tables, Table 34, p. 226. 64 The Census Report for England and Wales. 1911: Summary Tables, B.P.P. 1914 - 16, LXXXI, Table 52, p. 179. 65 The Census Report for England and Wales. 1911: General Report, B.P.P. 1917 - 18, XXXV, Table XLIX, p. 149. 66 C. Booth, Op. Cit., pp. 121 - 129 67 See J. Wilson, Memories of a Labour Leader (London, 1910). 68 J. Lawson, Op. Cit., pp. 238 - 230. 69 See Charles Booth, Op. Cit., pp. Ill - 112. 70 Ibid., p. 248. 71 Ibid., p. 123. 72 Ibid., p. 129. 109 CHAPTER IV WIVES AND DAUGHTERS For of the community as a whole there was one half unorganized, unsafeguarded, unrepresented in Parlia• ment -- the wives and mothers of the working miners. No Government reports measured from year to year the changes in their conditions of life: nor do they figure in statistical columns beyond their place in the tables of births, deaths and marriages. Their song, or their dirge, remained unsung or at any rate unheard. 1 . . Although much has been written on the coalminers, both the primary and secondary material available has revolved around the history of the men. No history has been written of the women, and there is a distinct lack of personal and official documentation of their lives. Instead the women are mentioned very briefly in the available autobiographies of miners, or are cast aside with a cursory mention in general histories. The following two chapters will attempt therefore to suggest a picture of the life of the women in the coal towns from the available material in eye-witness accounts, personal memoirs and biographies of coalminers, statistical evidence from the Census Reports, combined with a good deal of inference. Because of the absence of substantial material on the life-style of the female section of the coalmining population, the picture of women in the coal towns cannot be complete; this exercise can only attempt to identify the place of the woman in coalmining society. To do this, we must take into account the wage-earning woman, the woman as a domestic creature, her importance in the family, and her interests, if any, in affairs outside the home. 110 I The first factor to consider is the numerical importance of the female section of the coalmining population. Arnot's comment in the quote above that women constituted one half of the community is erroneous, for it is an undisputable fact that the females in the coal towns were consistently outnum• bered by the males. This conclusion can be drawn from an exami• nation of the Census Reports relating specifically to the coal communities, but it is also verified in numerous instances in secondary works. The reasons for this discrepancy in the sex ratio will be examined in greater detail below, but the immediate objective of this section is to examine the material which demonstrates the extent of this discrepancy. Table XXII of the General Report of the Census of 1911. may be taken as the starting point illustrating the sex and age proportions in a sample of mining towns, compared with the corresponding proportions in England and Wales. Taking the national average for the number of males and number of females in England and Wales at each age group from under five years to over 90 years as bases of 100, the table demonstrates how the proportion of males and females in the sample of coal tov/ns related to the average for England and Wales. To faci• litate comparison, each figure in each age group in the coal towns represents a percentage of the proportion of corres• ponding males and females in England and Wales at the same age. Ill TABLE I To illustrate the age distribution in a sample of mining towns, compared with the rest of England and Wales. 1911. 2 AGE RATIO TO CO RESPONDING P R0P0RTI0NS I N ENGLAND AND WALES Merthyr Rhondda Barnsley Rotherham Middles - Tydfil borough Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female 0- 122 120 131 133 118 118 119 120 117 119 5- 116 115 119 120 110 111 111 112 113 109 10- 103 103 106 104 101 106 109 111 104 108 15- 107 96 111 90 104 102 104 90 98 98 20- 119 90 131 87 105 100 102 87 107 96 25- 122 85 133 85 108 93 111 90 114 96 30- 115 88 124 82 113 95 116 94 116 97 35- 120 87 123 81 103 89 112 92 112 91 40- 112 81 114 77 103 88 107 85 106 88 45- 103 74 105 68 102 84 93 79 100 84 50- 93 69 91 61 99 81 93 77 96 77 55- 89 66 78 55 95 81 99 79 90 74 60- 95 67 68 52 90 78 100 77 91 71 65- 77 67 58 47 83 70 96 76 79 61 70- 73 56 42 39 64 66 85 64 78 59 75- 52 48 39 35 60 60 73 63 58 42 80- 63 51 29 27 58 55 58 44 43 39 85- 37 46 20 20 31 31 53 48 31 34 90- 75 36 17 12 33 16 50 44 50 40 All ages 110 91 113 88 104 96 107 94 106 95 The first point to he n oted from this table is the widely differing sex ratio. Up until the age of 15 years, the sex ratios are quite close, but from 15 years onwards we find a discrepancy arising, until there is a sharp distinction be• tween the numbers of males and females in the coal towns. While the numbers of males rise above the national average of 100, the females fall to varying degrees below the national average. There is a continual decline in the numbers of women in these towns, but from the age of 15 years onwards, with the exception of Barnsley, these figures fall below the national average, perhaps indicating an outflow of women of these ages, and an influx of men after the age of 15 years. 112 The most striking fall in the number of females is in Rhondda and Merthyr Tydfil, probably indicating poor opportunities for female employment in these towns. (The other three towns in fact offered greater opportunity for female employment, particularly in the service industries.) The final row of figures showing the ratios for all ages demonstrates quite amply the discrepancy with which we are concerned, showing that there were higher numbers of men and lower numbers of women in the coal towns than the national average. Finally, the figures support those characteristic features of colliery towns described in the previous chapter of a higher than average1 birth rate and relatively small numbers of aged persons. On the last point, the Census indicates that these towns were marked by relatively high death rates. Throughout the Census Reports we find references to the high proportion of males and the low proportion of females in the coalmining towns. This situation is a reversal of the general population situation in England and Wales, where women outnumbered men considerably according to the Census figures. The following table shows the male/female ratio at all ages in England and Wales during the Census years 1861 to 1911, using a standard of 1,000 males. TABLE II To show the number of females per 1,000 males in England and Wales. 1861 - 1911 3 Date Males Females 1861 1,000 1,053 1871 1,000 1,054 1881 1,000 1,055 1891 1,000 1,064 1901 1,000 1,068 1911 1,000 1,068 113 Despite the fact that male "births outnumber female births, females exceed males in number (except for ages 10 years to 15 years), after the first year of life, due to a higher death rate and a higher propensity to emigrate among males. The 1861 Census Report concludes that in the average, community there are more boys than girls, but that after youth, there k are more women than men in the middle and later years of life. Those counties which differ from this proportion have a special occupational situation. Here we can examine the special situa• tion of the mining counties where, "A ".cursory examination ... shows that in mining parts, such as Durham, Monmouthshire, and Glamorganshire, to which large numbers of young men are attracted from without, the proportion of unmarried males is high; whereas in the absence of any special occupation for unmarried females, the proportion of these is low." ^ Bearing in mind the above proprtions of females per 1,000 males for England and Wales, it is interesting to note how the coalmining counties fell below this proportion. In 1891 and 1901, the numbers of females to 1,000 males were as follows for these coalmining counties, where information is available:- COUNTY 1891 1901 Glamorganshire 908 937 Monmouthshire 934 9k7 Durham 963 972 Flintshire 992 Denbighshire 997 Northumberland - 994 Although the county figures for 1911 are not given, it is once again stated in the Census Report of that year that the counties with the lowest numbers of females to males were those 114 where coalmining was the major employer, "that industry having the tendency to draw large numbers of single men into its ranks," Q whereas it "does not make much demand upon female labour." Those towns with the lowest proportions of females per 1,000 males connected with mining were, in 1901. Rhondda - 825 Middlesborough - 94? Merthyr Tydfil - 869 Rotherham - 948 9 On the national scale, however, towns usually included a larger proportion of females to males. The 1891 Census Report noted that there were 109 females to 100 males in towns at all ages. Females began to migrate from the rural to urban areas between the ages approximately of 13 years to 20 years, while male migration occurred largely after the age of 20 years. If we move from the county figures to a closer look at the mining communities in South Yorkshire, we can see this distinct sex ratio more clearly at work. The following table drawn from the Census Reports shows the sex ratio in those West Riding communities which were specifically referred to by the Census enumerators as expanding solely because of colliery develop• ment . TABLE III To show the population by sex of those Civil Parishes in the West Riding whose expansion was due to colliery development, 1891 to 1911. 10 Population Civil 1891 1901 1911 Parish Males Females Males Females Males Females Ackworth 1,345 1,302 1,732 1,662 2,164 2,019 Bolton-upon -Dearne 635 570 2,108 1,720 4,653 4,017 Brierley 267 235 912 772 2,119 1,757 Castleford 7,498 6,645 9,061 8,325 12,005 11,085 Conisbrough 2,390 2,109 4,528 4,021 5,967 5,092 115 TABLE III - continued Population Civil 1891 1901 1911 Parish Males Females Males Females Males Females Crigglestone 1,468 1,394 1,713 1,533 2,305 2,064 Crofton 430 394 1,054 842 1,396 1,170 Cudworth 893 714 1,889 1,519 3,740 3,084 Darton 1,942 1,737 2,350 2,107 3,111 2,830 Denaby 947 761 1,446 1,224 2,762 2,298 Featherstone 2,313 1,819 4,261 3,561 4,941 4,226 Great Houghton 338 282 660 560 945 775 Hemsworth 1,595 1,292 3,473 2,810 5,568 4,605 Mexborough 4,128 3,606 5,551 4,879 7,694 6,707 Purston Jaglin 681 531 1,102 893 1,286 1,090 Royston 1,437 1,176 2,389 2,008 3,331 2,906 Ryhill 609 451 859 694 1,211 98O South Elmsall 322 298 589 437 2,437 1,922 South Kirkby 779 655 1,601 1,315 3,903 3,183 Thurnscoe 111 106 1,313 1,053 2,190 1,884 Wath-upon- Dearne 1,993 1,901 2,517 2,330 3,823 3,508 Wombwell 5,888 5,054 7,113 6,139 9,383 8.153 For comparison, the following three samples are woollen towns in the West Ridings 1901 Males Females Dewsbury 13,090 14,970 Hebden Bridge 3,429 4,107 Keighley 19,758 21,806 In Table III, illustrating the sex ratios in the expan• ding coalmining towns of South Yorkshire, it is consistently shown that the males outnumbered the females and that, in general, the numbers of males were increasing slightly faster than those of females. The figures for the county sex ratio are substantiated, therefore, by the population figures at the local level. It may be proposed at this point that this discrepancy between the sexes was due to an influx of young males, who were 116 attracted by favourable employment opportunities, and an out• flow of young females who had few chances of employment in. their home locality. If we look at a modern example of the development of single industry towns, this pattern is verified, 12 In Minetown, Militown, Railtown , Rex Lucas surveys the development of these communities in Canada, where he concludes that there exists a distinctive discrepancy in the sex ratio. There is a high number of single, young men and a low number of single, young women in these towns. Most women are married and do not normally work, whereas the single women are employed mainly in the service industries. He notes that there are very few daughters of marriageable age as most leave the town for outside employment when they reach this stage in the life cycle. If we now turn to examine the numbers of women at various age groups in a sample of coalmining towns, further trends emerge. The five coal towns of Castleford, Featherstone, Hems- worth, Mexborough and Wombwell will be used as the sample group, as these are the only towns in South Yorkshire, whose economy depended overwhelmingly upon coalmining, and whose populations are traced by age groups through the three Censuses from 1881 to 1901. Table IV below shows the numbers of women in the various age groups in the five towns from the Census Reports, 1881 to 1901. TABLE IV To show the numbers of females at various ages in the five sample Urban Sanitary Districts. 1881 to 1901. 13 Urban Sanitary Under District Year 5 5- 10- 15- 20- 25- 30- 35- Castleford 1881 387 383 430 341 1891 1,094 923 84-3 606 589 520 418 422 1901 1,262 1,104 1,022 787 745 648 615 492 117 TABLE IV - continued Urban Sanitary Under District Year 5 5- 10- 15- 20- 25- 30- 35- Feather• 1881 14 0 157 231 213 stone 1891 593 500 445 278 255 245 192 195 1901 957 845 638 410 463 46l 403 300 Hemsworth 1881 443 435 383 339 1891 1,033 924 831 577 515 530 469 421 Wombwell 1881 291 298 277 245 1891 907 789 624 410 370 411 314 277 1901 1,037 891 744 517 518 482 418 370 Mexborough 1881 _ _ _ 251 232 244 184 _ 1891 551 503 446 312 314 264 227 213 1901 768 633 518 483 426 401 350 290 From this table it can be seen that the numbers of women decrease as the age groups progress. Naturally, the death rate is responsible for a certain degree of this decline. However, the sharpest decline consistently occurs in the age group 15 to 19 years, (except inexplicably for Mexborough in 1901), which suggests that something more than the factor of death is at play here. Moreover the figures in the 20 to 24 year old age group are approximately half of the figures for under five year olds. This decline is more than that displayed by the men (see Table V below). This would support the thesis that females in this age group were emigrating from the coal towns in search of employment, A period of notable decline can be identified therefore in the numbers of women in the age group 15 to 19 years, over the previous age group, but this decline is slowed down, halted or actually reversed in instances, between the ages of 20 and 29 years,. These cases have been underlined in Table IV. The explanation for this 118 phenomenon may be that certain of the women who left the towns earlier were returning, perhaps to marry, or were entering the towns as wives of male immigrants. Certainly, the average age of marriage for women in the coalmining districts falls within this age period, that is 22 years. It is difficult to deter• mine the major reasons for females entering the mining towns, other than for purposes of marriage since female employment was limited and could not exert a strong pull on single, young women from outside, (see Table IX below). The South Yorkshire colliery districts therefore were losing young women under 19 years of age, but the proportion of young women from the early 20's upwards began to increase throughout this period. (Tables VI and VII below demonstrate this more amply,) As employment was not the motivating factor for this increase, we are left with the marriage factor. Its importance is sup• ported by the extremely low percentages of spinsters to be found in the coal areas. Table V below shows the age groups of the male population of the same five sample towns during this period. We may use this to compare patterns in the male population figures with trends in female population figures. Some useful factors emerge when comparing the two, TABLE V To show the numbers of males in various age groups in five Urban Sanitary Districts, 1881 to 1901. 15 Urban Sanitary Under District Year 5 5- 10- 15- 20- 25- 30- 35- Castleford 1881 529 493 539 461 1891 1,083 975 853 783 695 597 549 515 1901 1,237 1,069 993 915 885 734 682 577 119 TABLE V - continued Urban Sanitary Under District Year 5 5- 10- 15- 20- 25- 30- 35- Feather• 1881 277 270 273 276 stone 1891 635 545 484 409 417 302 253 273 1901 959 830 683 641 616 612 524 408 Hemsworth 1881 _ — — 578 598 480 426 _ 1891 1,090 951 953 789 716 632 618 483 Wombwell 1881 — 421 438 415 324 — 1891 879 756 683 652 580 496 414 317 1901 1,081 923 776 710 670 602 550 432 Mexborough 1881 _ — 322 275 301 250 _ 1891 517 510 463 481 393 316 299 272 1901 742 671 545 568 561 537 427 368 . When this table is compared with Table IV, it can be seen that population figures in the age groups up to 14 years of age are somewhat similar in each town for both males and females. However, a distinction between the two emerges from the age of 15 years onwards, when the number of males far outstrips the number of females. Except for Hemsworth, the period of sharp decline in the numbers of women (15 to 19 years) is not appli• cable to the male population. Despite the decline in the numbers of men and women as the age groups progress, the population of these towns was rising rapidly in the period covered by these tables, as es• tablished in Chapter One. Though it can be seen from the above three tables that the population of these towns was rising as a whole, and that the female population was rising too, we can use these tables of population by age group to point out some interesting patterns. If a particular age group is followed through the Census Reports, some interesting trends 120 can be discerned. In Table VI, the 10 year old to 14 year old age group in 1891 is followed through to 1901 for both males and females, in each of the towns except Hemsworth, (the figures are lacking here for 1901.) TABLE VI To trace the progress of the 10 - 14 year age group in 1891 to 1901 in four sample Urban Sanitary Dis• tricts, from the Census Reports of those years. TE Urban FEMALES Sanitary 10 - 14 year olds 20 - 24 year olds Increase/ District in 1891 in 1901 Decrease Castleford 843 745 -98 Feather stone" 445 463 +18 Wombwell 624 518 -106 Mexborough . 446 426 -20 MALES Castleford 853 885 +32 Featherstone 484 616 +132 Wombwell 683 670 -13 Mexborough 463 561 +98 This table covers the period of suggested outflow for women, hence the drop in their numbers, (though the death rate also accounts for some of this decline). The period of influx of young men is shov/n by the additions to this age group in each case except Wombwell, where there is a slight loss. This table might be used therefore to add weight to the proposition that there was a reverse population flow for men and women. It must be remembered however that these figures are crude figures; no account is taken of the death rate involved in the intervening ten years. We may take this method of tracing through particular age groups a stage further to suggest another pattern in female population movements. Table VII traces the progress made in the five towns of the 15 to 19 years age group of 1881: 121 TABLE VII To trace the progress of the 15 to 19 years age group of 1881 to 1901 in five Urban Sanitary Dis• tricts from the Census Reports. Increase/Decline in brackets. 17 FEMALES Urban Sanitary 15-19 years 25-29 years 35-39 years District in 1881 in 1891 in 1901 Castleford 387 520 (+133) k92 (-28) Featherstone i4o 245 (+105) 300 (+55) Hemsworth 443 530 (+87) Wombwell 291 411 (+120) 370 (-41) Mexborough 251 264 (+13) 290 (+26) MALES Castleford 529 597 (+68) 577 (-20) Featherstone 277 302 (+25) 408 (+106) Hemsworth 578 632 (+54) Wombwell 421 496 (+75) 432 (-64) Mexborough 322 316 (-6) 368 (+52) In the table relating to female population, we find generally that there are additions to the 15 to 19 years age group as we trace it through the Census Reports. This shows that the growing female population is not due solely to a rising birth rate, but that there are additions other than the natural increase - additions through immigration. The highest additions of women occur again in the 25 to 29 years age group, those who are perhaps returning to marry, or who are entering the towns with immigrant husbands. This table covers the age period of influx of females, whereas Table VI covers the age period of outflow for females. Both tables demonstrate, with few exceptions, a gradual influx of males, but after the first generation had settled down in these mining towns, the resi• dent population would be breeding-most of its own replacement miners. 122 Female immigration appears to be at a higher rate in Table VII, but neither it nor Table VI takes into account the young men who moved into these towns for a short period of time, for temporary work, in the intercensal period, and who, having moved on again, were not recorded in the Census statistics. The limitations of these figures must be acknowledged. They are crude figures which do not take into account the death rates or the outflow of unrecorded population. We cannot tell from these.figures how many persons died in the intercensal period, if their statistical places were taken by others, or how many persons left the towns to be replaced by newcomers. When rely• ing on Census figures alone- therefore, we are hampered by the lack of intercensal indications of population figures. The figures are used only to suggest patterns of population move• ment, and with the absence of other primary materials, they can only be regarded as suggestions. However, one factor is well supported by the above two tables. They verify the factor of male population preponderance. Finally, it may be suggested that female immigration into these five particular towns after 25 years of age was higher than normal for coalmining communi• ties, since they were larger than the normal community, and might therefore have had more well developed service • industries. II This brings us to the question of the employment of women in the coal towns, and why women were so consistently out• numbered by men. 18 J.E. Williams in The Derbyshire Miners says that the 123 miners anticipated the birth of their offspring with a certain amount of dread that the unborn child would be a girl. From the economic point of view a girl was a handicap because of the lack of employment opportunities for women in single-industry communities, while a boy could follow the family profession of mining in his early 'teens. The Census figures showing the rates of female employment in coalmining areas demonstrate how difficult it was for woman to become employed. The General Report for the Census of 1911 points out that the lowest rates for female occupation occurred in mining towns, while, as might be expected, the highest rates were found in the textile towns. The following figures compare rates of employment in 19 these two types of town. y Percentage employed Unmarried Married Total Coal Rhondda 28.8 Not 14.39 Aberdare 31.0 more 15.87 Merthyr Tydfil 34.0 than 17.95 Rotherham 4% 18.06 Textiles Preston 74.5 35.3 Burnley 76.6 41.4 Blackburn 78.0 44.5 National Average 45.5 10.3 Similarly, the lowest percentage of all employed widows are to be found in the following coal towns: Rhondda (15.2$); Aberdare (17.2%); Wakefield (19.6%); Rotherham (19.9%); and Merthyr Tydfil (20.8%). 20 This pattern of employment was discovered earlier in a Government Report of 1890. The Report's figures are reproduced 124 in Table VIII to show the percentage employment for males and female in certain mining and textile industries. TABLE VIII To show the proportion per cent of men, boys. women and girls employed in various trades, 1886. 21 Trade Men Boys Women Girls Coal, Iron Ore and Ironstone Mining 85.7 13.6 0.5 0.2 Cotton 22.5 16.7 44.4 16.4 Woollen 33.3 12.4 45.3 9.0 Worsted 19.2 15.3 46.5 19.0 Linen 17.2 10.5 55.4 16.9 Hosiery 29.7 3.9 61.0 5.4 Those counties which were the lowest on the list for female employment were the counties of Durham, Monmouthshire, Glamor• ganshire and Northumberland -- all mining counties. Yorkshire was omitted from this list because the textile towns in the western part of the county raised the county percentage for employed females. However, a closer examination of the South Yorkshire coal towns will demonstrate that they were no excep• tion to this pattern of unemployment. The coal mines themselves offered little employment to women, the simpler tasks of sorting and cleaning the coal at the surface being reserved mainly for young boys and elderly or disabled miners. No woman worked underground •in the period under study. The Census Reports return the following figures 22 for women employed by the collieries in England and Wales. 1851 -- 3,260 1891 --3,267 1861 -- 3,763 1901 — 2,665 1881 -- 3,099 1911 -- 2,843 125 The majority of these women were unmarried and fell into the 15 to 19 years age group. Of these, the figures we have for the West Riding indicate that only 138 women were employed in 1881, and only 65 in 1891, in Yorkshire pits. 23 Most of the women recorded above were enumerated in Lancashire and Cumberland. It was not the custom to employ women in the Yorkshire mines. What occupations employed those women who remained in the Yorkshire mining communities? The following tables from the Census Reports of 1901 and 1911 indicate how many women were employed in a sample of South Yorkshire col• liery towns, and in what principal occupations. TABLE IX To show the ratio of occupied females to the total female population of a sample of South Yorkshire colliery towns, 1901." 2T Female Females Employed population Locality 1901 Single Married Ardsley 2,913 265 32 Castleford 8,325 822 168 Dart on 2,10? 265 73 Featherstone 3,561 337 78 k Hoyland Nether 5,? 6 355 89 Mexborough 4,879 358 111 Normanton 5,717 306 96 Stanley 2,260 636 119 Swinton 5,771 396 111 Wath-upon-Dearne 2,330 306 73 Wombwell 6,139 352 91 Worsborough 4,827 371 81 As might be expected in a single-industry community, the numbers of employed females are low in comparison to the total female population. Single women by far outnumber those married women and widows who worked. Most of these women are recorded as being employed in domestic work or dressmaking. The following table gives a more detailed picture of types of occu• pations open to women in these towns. 126 TABLE X To show the principal occupations pursued by women in a sample of coal towns in South Yorkshire, 1911. 25 Female Principal female occupations, Locality population with figures in brackets Ardsley 3,285 Domestic (98); Dressmakers (23) Bolton-upon -Dearne 4,017 Domestic (114)s Shopkeepers (30) Castleford 11,085 Domestic (405); Teaching (109); Shopkeepers (130); Dressmakers (108) Cudworth 3,084 Domestic (88); Shopkeepers (37) Darfield 2,539 Domestic (79)J Dressmakers (28) Darton 2,830 Domestic (142); Textiles (64); Shopkeepers (26) Featherstone ..4,226 Domestic (169); Dressmakers (54); Shopkeepers (58) Hoyland Nether 6,806 Domestic (216); Teaching (67); Dressmakers (50); Shopkeepers (48) Mexborough 6,707 Domestic (215); Shopkeepers (67); Teaching (56); Dressmakers (65) Normanton 7,015 Domestic (181); Teaching (83); Shopkeepers (78); Dressmakers (67) Royston 2,906 Domestic (110); Dressmakers (30); Shopkeepers (28) Swinton 6,452 Domestic (221); Teachers (58); Shopkeepers (67) Wath-upon- Dearne 3,508 Domestic (252); Dressmakers (54); Shopkeepers (58) Worsborough 5,981 Domestic (200); Charwomen (88); Shopkeepers (43) The principal occupation for women in all cases is seen to be domestic work. This would involve mainly the employment of single, young girls by large families to help out with the simplest, domestic chores of child-care, cleaning, laundry, and running errands; they were simply mothers' helpers. There were few, if any residences of the professional classes in these areas, (apart from the colliery manager and the upper echelons of the management hierarchy), which would be able to employ servants in such numbers. If the family had enough wage-earners on the other hand, contributing to its upkeep, domestic help on a simple scale could be hired. Moreover, "domestic service was not regarded as a vocation, rather ... 127 the girl was in a sense serving her probation for marriage." The girl would not regard herself as destined to live and die in service. Domestic help is distinguished in the Census Return from the charwomen (see Worsborough) who possibly thought of themselves as a more professional occupational group. Dressmakers occur in considerable numbers. It is not possible to ascertain whether these women kept shops, but it is more probable that they carried on a simple business from their home to supplement the family income. Teachers figure in large numbers naturally only in the larger communities. It is unlikely that the teaching profession drew all its members from the resident female population. Rather, these women pro• bably represent an influx from outside. Finally, those women who were listed in the census investigations as shopkeepers would not fit the image of the shopkeepers in a more sophistica• ted or well-developed community. By 1911, service industries and retail shops were developing and were in need of assis• tants. Yet many of these women ran shops in their own homes, whereby one room would be used for minor transactions in food• stuffs, goods being displayed in the window to the street out• side. None of these home-run businesses were large. They might be employed by the mother to supplement the family's income. Often a widow, with no other source of support, would enter into a small retailing business. For instance, John Brophy in his autobiography, A Miner's Life remembers how in Wigan in the 1890's his grandmother kept a greengrocery 27 stall in the market place. ' 128 Apart from these four major occupations there is only- one town in the sample which displays any other occupation of any note. Darton employed 6k women in textiles in 1911. Other lesser employers of women included such services , as laundry and washing, and the provision of food and drink. It might be expected that in an industry involving some degree of mobility of its work-force, with a perpetual flow of young men looking for work, that some provision of lodgings would be necessary. The majority of these towns did not possess jthe sophistication of hotels at this early stage, and this floa• ting population of casual workers was accommodated by the resident mining population. A number of women concerned them• selves therefore in caring for lodgers, either alongside their own families, or solely as lodging-house keepers, who are men• tioned in small numbers in the Census, Unfortunately, there is no indication as to the conjugal status of these women in the Census Reports, but this may have been a source of employ• ment for widows. One final occasional or part-time occupation which the Census Reports do not mention, but which figured largely in many communities, was seasonal work in the fields. In the sum• mertime, women found employment in the surrounding agricultural areas pulling peas, picking potatoes and burning twitch. This was often one of the few opportunities for them to escape their drab environment. G.A.W. Tomlinson, a Nottinghamshire miner emphasized the love of the land which permeates the mining community and which attracted the women to work in the fields despite their many other household duties. • 129 The important point to note from the above tables however is that female employment was minimal. In most cases, eighty per cent or more of the female population were unemployed in the South Yorkshire colliery towns. When compared with the figures for female employment in the textile areas of Preston, Burnley and Blackburn mentioned earlier (page 123), we can see that the woman in the coalmining community was faced with a dilemma. With fewer opportunities for employment, she was distinguished from her counterpart in the textile areas by being faced with two alternatives — migration or marriage. As has already been noted in an earlier part of this chap ter, statistical evidence points to a migration of young girls from the coal towns after leaving school. We can only infer that these females were seeking employment elsewhere. There is no evidence of where these women went, though the Yorkshire woollen mills would afford the largest and closest employment. This entailed overcoming a weakness characteristic of the mining population of "inertia based on custom and adaptation to a given place and set of social relations with known people In his survey of contemporary, Canadian single-industry towns, Rex Lucas concluded that this lack of female employ• ment drove some women from the towns, but also led to early marriage, for many preferred to stay if possible. He noted that, "there is a shortage of marriageable females because there is no work for them to any extent. They leave town. To avoid the problem of leaving town or finding themselves in unsatisfactory jobs, girls tend to take the opportunity 10 to marry early." J 130 To return to the period under study, similar evidence can be cited for early marriage consequent upon the lack of female employment. Lady Florence Bell in her 1907 social sur• vey of Middlesborough noted that the females of that town tended to marry at a very early age, often in their 'teens, because there were so few means of self-support. She concluded bitterly that "the women have no independent existence of their own." ?1 Many therefore found marriage rather than migration to be the answer to the vacuum created by unemployment, though there were many other factors at work which favoured an early marriage for these women. Firstly, there was a surplus number of males in these towns, through the steady influx of single, young workers. Most of these men were miners and the chances of a women marrying outside of this industrial group were small. Consequently, as the community developed, there emerged a pattern whereby daughters of miners who did not migrate would in turn marry miners, down through the generations, thus reinforcing the elitist aspect of the coalmining community. Moreover, in addition to the lack of opportunity for marrying outside the miners' group, many women would be unwilling to sacrifice a higher standard of living afforded by the miners' wages when compared to many other industrial groups. Women tended to marry miners to maintain the standard of life they were used to, and to remain within their known environment and circle of friends. Mining itself was an occupation whereby the young man would reach his period of maximum earnings at an early age. 131 A man would become a hewer on average at the age of 20 years, and remain as such for as long as his strength lasted. The miners were fortunate in that they earned their highest wages when they most needed them, that is, from their embarkation upon family life until that family was old enough to earn its own livelihood. This of course increased the eligibility of the young miner. Finally, there was in the towns with which we are con• cerned, a building boom in the 1890's. As these towns rapidly increased, so did building speculation, and though most newly married couples might begin their married life by living with their in-laws, the chances of obtaining a low-rental home were favourable. The exceedingly low age of marriage which characterized mining communities has been discussed above, (see previous chapter). Statistics to show the low percentage of spinsters in coalmining districts, however, will serve to illustrate the view that most of these women chose the alternatives of either marriage or migration. The mining areas had a parti• cularly low percentage of spinsters as can be seen in the following figures: - 1901 percentage of unmarried women aged 20 to 45 years Upper Class areas Coalmining areas Cheltenham 65-60% Durham 35-30% Barnsley 29-25% Eastbourne 59-55% Glamorgan 35-30% Chester Brighton 54-50% Whitehaven 35-30% -field 29-25% Windsor 54-50% Rotherham 35-30% Middles • -borough 29-25% 132 Despite the influx into the mining towns of women who were accompanying their husbands who were seeking work, and women who were returning to marry, there were still fewer numbers of women than men. This discrepancy in the sex-ratio has to be explained therefore by the large scale influx of single men seeking work, and the outflow of single women who could find no employment in the coalmining districts. Marriage was doubtless the only factor in attracting women to return to these areas, or to keep them in the mining communities. FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER ROURi^ 1. R.P. Arnot, The Miners: Years of Struggle Vol. 2. (London, 19537, pp.146 - 147. ' ' 2 Census Report for England and Wales. 1911: General Report. B.P.P. 1917 - 18. XXXV. Table XXII. P. 75. 3 Table II compiled from the General Reports to the Censuses for England and Wales. 1861 to 1911 in the B.P.P."- " ' 4 Census Report for England and Walesf 1861: General Report. B.P.P. 1863. LIII. '" ~ 5 Census Report for England and Wales. 1881: General Report. B.P.P. 1883. LXXX. p. 24. ~ " ' ~~ 6 Census Report for England and Wales. 1891:. General Report. B.P.P. 1893 - 94 CVI. " rr^~~ 7 Census Report for England and Wales. 1901: General Report. B.P.P. 1904. CVIII. ' • """^ 8 Census for 1911: General Report p. 58. 9 Census for 1901: General Report. 10 Table III compiled from: Census Report for England and Wales, 1901: County Tables, Yorkshire, B.P.P. 1902. CXXI, Table 12, pp. 81 - 101, and, Census Report for 133 10 continued England and Wales, 1911s Administrative Areas. York• shire, B.P.P. 1912 - 13, CXI, Vol. I, Table 10, p. 374. 11 From Census Report for England and Wales. 1901: Summary Tables. B.P.P. 1902 - 1904. LXXXIV. Table XI. pp. 44 - 73 12 R.A. Lucas, Minetown. Militown. Railtown (Toronto, 1971) 13 Table IV compiled from: Census for 1881: Divisional Reports, Yorkshire, Op. Cit., Table 6, p. 385J Census Report for England and Wales, 1891: Divisional Reports. Yorkshire. B.P.P. 1893 - 94. CIV. Table 3. p. 403j and, Census for 1901: County Tables. Yorkshire, Table 24, p. 182. 14 See Chapter III above on the average age of women at marriage. 15 Table V is compiled from the same sources as Table IV above, 16 Table VI is compiled from Tables IV and V above. 17 Table VII is compiled from Tables IV and V above. 18 See J.E. Williams, The Derbyshire Miners (London, 1962). 19 See Census Report for England and Wales. 1911: General Report, p. 158. and Vol. X, Occupations, B.P.P. 1913. LXXVIII. 20 Ibid., Vol. X. 21 R. G if fen,. Return of.. Rates of Wages in the Mines and Quarries of the United Kingdom, B.P.P. 1890-91, LXXVIII, p. xxiv. ~ 22 From Census for 1861: General Report, and Census for 1911: General Report. Appendix C. Table 9, p. 274. 23 From Census for 1881: Divisional Reports. Yorkshire, Table 10. p. 406 and Census for 1891: Divisional Reports. Yorkshire, Table 7, p. 424. ! ~ 24 Census for 1901: County Tables. Yorkshire, Table 12, pp. 81 - 101, and, Table 35A, p. 258. 25 From Census Report for England and Wales, 1911: Summary Tables, B.P.P. 1914 - 16, LXXXI, Table 11, p. 13,and, Vol. X, Table 15 (B), p. 456. 26 Paul de Rousiers, The Labour Question in Britain (London, 1896), pp. 189 - 190. 134 27 John Brophy, A Miner's Life (Madison and Milwaukee, 1964), pp. 13 - 14. 28 G.A.W. Tomlinson, Coal-Miner (London, 1937), pp. 143 - 144. 29 N. Dennis, F. Henriques, and C. Slaughter, Coal is our Life (London, 1956), p. 173. 30 See R.A. Lucas, Op. Cit.. p. 95 and p. 357 31 Lady Florence Bell, At the Works (London, 1911), p. 252. 32 F. Musgrove, The Migratory Elite (London, 1963), p. 35. 135 CHAPTER V THE WOMAN IN HER SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC ROLE From the foregoing, it may he concluded that marriage was of great importance to the woman in the coalmining com• munity and it is to the subject of the married woman in the coal town that we must now turn. What kind of woman was produced by the harsh, unpredictable life in mining towns? Despite the many difficulties of her duties, what was her worth as a home-maker, and her importance in the family, and what were her interests, if any, outside of the home? I As the responsibility of supporting the family devolved almost totally upon the males, the division of responsibilities in the home was reinforced. With the. lack of what Lady Bell called an "independent existence," the miners had a distinc• tive attitude towards their women. With few alternative employments, the wife's role in the home became doubly im• portant, and there emerged within the mining community an idealistic image of what the wife and mother should be. She was in fact tied to the home, and she had to devote her• self to the task of running the.f household, managing home finances, and catering for the needs of a hard-working family. Added to this idealized domesticity of the woman, the miners also insisted upon high standards of comfort within'the home. The ideal home was described in a sociological survey of a South Yorkshire mining community in 1956 as clean, 136 comfortable, warm and cosy, in contrast to the conditions of work. The miners worked in such dreary, damp, and drab con• ditions that the home by preference was seen as providing a relaxing, comforting contrast. Hence the chief duty and res• ponsibility of the wife was to ensure these standards. How this image emerged, or how the women as a whole matched up this idealization cannot of course be measured statistically. A good deal of our evidence rests heavily on personal accounts and references in surveys and secondary sources. In most working class autobiographies, the women are rarely or never mentioned, "... only fathers are given o any space." However, this is not the case in the auto• biographies of miners, who are concerned to portray the women in their lives as individuals and to describe their work. This .'perhaps illustrates a different attitude towards the home-centred woman in the mining communities, when com• pared to other working-class wives. Lady Bell concluded from her survey of working-class wives in Middlesborough, that the non-earning housewife was the central force in her family: The key to the condition of the workman and his family, the clue, the reason for the possibilities and impossibilities of his existence, is the capa• city, the temperament, and, above all, the health of the woman who manages his housej into her hands, the future of her husband is committed, the burden of the family life is thrust...The pivot of the whole situation is the woman, the wife of the workman and the mother of his children. 3 Despite the fact that the miner's job presented his wife with extra duties, such as the constant provision of meals and hot waterto cater for a family of workers in the shift system, and the constant battle against grime in the mining 137 communities, the coalminer's wife was noted hy many for her good housekeeping. The wife not only had to cater for the traditionally large family, hut also to lodgers who were a recurrent feature in an industry where mobility was common. The miner's wife therefore had extra duties imposed upon her because of the nature of her husband's work and her environ• ment. She also had to manage with a lack of adequate facili• ties. This had already been discussed in some detail in Chapter II, but it is relevant here to mention what effects the "jerry-building" in the rapidly built "boom" towns of South Yorkshire, had upon the miner's wife. Houses lacked such basic necessities as running water, adequate drainage and of course bath-tubs. In the Report of the enquiry into conditions in the coalfields presided over by Lloyd George in 1924, the investigators concluded that over-crowding was rife and that, "the conditions are specially hard on the women, who, because they often have to cook and provide for men working in successive shifts, have special need for proper L housing conditions." Pit-head baths were rare in the period before the First World War, and the lack of a proper bathroom at home added to the burden of the housewife, as well as to the discomfort of the miner, who: ... is condemned to trudge home covered in coal- dust, wearing his wet and filthy pit-clothes. When he arrives home he most likely has not got a bathroom and has to wash in a tub in front of the kitchen fire. Next morning his pit-clothes are stiff and uncomfortable after drying. The extra labour for a miner's wife that this barbarous business entails has often been the subject of bitter comment, especially if more than one man in the house is working in the pit, and on different shifts. 5 138 The problem raised public interest to the extent that a Government investigation into the advantages of pit-head baths had been ordered in 1913. The Report concluded that the home conditions of the miners would improve from both "social and moral aspects" if pit-head washing facilities were provided. ^ Gn a more personal level, George Hitchin, a Durham miner, remembered in his autobiography the effects of having no running water: Water for cooking, drinking, washing and the fre• quent hot baths had to be carried from a communal tap - each bucket, and there were many, perhaps a hundred yards along the unmade street. In winter the task became excruciating - always supposing, of course, that the tap had remained unfrozen. If it had not, an alarm signal was hurriedly sent to the colliery plumber while distraught housewives took up panic stations. Our drinking water was kept in the pantry in a specially clean pail covered with a board or a sheet of tin, and two or three times a day a fresh supply had to be hauled from the street. 7 But this was.just one small aspect of the wife's working day, and Hitchin also said that in his experience, "the women worked harder than the men. They aged rapidly under the strain of childbearing, anxiety, and labours that had no end. If we look more closely at the typical working day of the miner's wife, from eye-witness and personal accounts, we begin to see what motivated this strong comment. For instance R. Page Arnot wrote that, "behind each man who had to go down the pit there was a wife and mother toiling to feed them and o clothe them and keep them clean." 7 He quotes the story of one miner's wife in Durham, who personally narrated her typical working day to him. She was married in the 1880's, and had brought up nine sons and daughters (which Arnot 139 describes as not an abnormally large miner's family): The day began at 3 a.m. when the eldest son, a hewer, made his breakfast, took his "bait" (food) put up the night before and went on shift at four. Mother, if awake, would try to snatch an hour's sleep before preparing a younger son, a datal worker, whose shift started at 6 a.m. He would no sooner be off than Father would be coming in for breakfast and bath, his shift ending at 6 a.m. He had started his shift at 10 p.m. the previous night (repair shift). By the time Father had had his breakfast and bathed in a tin in front of the fire it would be time for three children to get up and prepare for school. Even with this task performed, Mother had no time to rest. She had now to prepare a dinner for the eldest returning between 11 and 11:30 a.m. He would not have finished washing in front of the fire before the children returned from school for their mid-day meal. In all probability Father would get up and have something with the children at mid-day, go to the local for a pint, return at tea-time and go to bed for a couple of hours. V/ith the children off to school for the after• noon Mother had to prepare three more sons going on shift at 2 p..m. By the time she had got them off she had to prepare a meal and bathing water for the son who went on shift at 6 a.m. and would be retur• ning to the house just after 2 p.m. By the time he was off the kitchen floor, it was nearly time for the school children returning. On top of this continual round all the washing "laundry" was done at home as well as baking. There was no bought bread in northern mining villages in those days. The bread was all baked at home. This took sacks and sacks of flour. Then she had to prepare for Father going on shift at 10 p.m. The next preparation was the biggest of the day. After 10 p.m. the sons who had gone on shift at 2 p.m. would be home. Not only had Mother to prepare their meals on the kitchen fire, but she had also to boil the water for their bath in pan and kettle. Altogether it would take anything up to two hours before they were all bathed, which they took suc• cessively in a tin on the hearth in front of the fire. It was always after midnight before they were all off to bed. This was the end of a normal day and the alarm clock would ring again at 3 a.m. for another day. 10 140 This type of existence seemed to he the rule rather than the exception. Jack Lawson was one of ten children in a coal• mining family in Cumberland. As each of the boys became old enough, they entered the pit. Lawson himself began work at the age of twelve years in 1894. His mother always rose at 3.00 a.m. to get her husband off to work, and again at 5.00 a.m. to send her sons off to work. Although the family tried to persuade her not to do this, he explained her persistence in rising and seeing them off as an old colliery law, for the woman never knew if she would see her husband or sons alive again when they left for the dangers of the mine. 11 In 1947, F. Zw;eigvisited all of the major colliery areas of Britain as part of a survey into the daily life of the mining community. In his report, reflecting on the past, he had the following to say on the subject of women: In the past the miner's wife had a very rough time, especially when she was the mother of many children and the mortality rate for women was nowhere greater than among the silent heroes of work and sacrifice in the old days of mining... the housewife was an integral part of the mining routinej she was the pit-head bath attendant, the rotary machine which now cleans the pit-boots before the men go into the bath• room, the canteen attendant and often the ambulance man for light scratches, the hospital when she nursed her husband, and the attendant in the lamp-room, keeping clean his lamp, which in those days he often brought home. She washed, cleaned and dusted, cooked and mended from morning to night. She was the most important link in the wheel of work, wel• fare and education. And it was she who provided new hands to fill the gap in the man-power caused by so great a wastage. She needed all the fortitude and endurance she couldcmuster. Was her life not harder than that of her husband? 12 Zweig sees here that the miner's wife had an elevated status among housewives, because of her many varied duties and roles. She was the central, motivating force in the l4l family, and carried a great deal of importance. Returning to Jack Lawson*s family, he says that his mother and her eldest daughter never left the house. Their life was a con• tinual battle in the home against dirt. "And how they worked! Clean! They rubbed and scrubbed, washed and dusted, from morning until night. If you want heroism, go to such homes and such mothers. Patience, fortitude, selflessness is there in full measure, pressed down and running over... When I grew up to years of understanding I vowed that the wrestle and risk of the pit was infinitely preferable to life in that kitchen." 13 Lawson here reflects many views that the wife spent much of her day in cleaning the home and making it comfortable for the earning members of the family. Paul de Rousiers, a French observer, who chronicled his findings from a tour round Britain in 1893, found that the miners* houses were simply furnished, comfortable, and out of necessity, clean. For instance, in the Lothians, he found that despite the concentration of coal-dust in the air, there were always clean, white curtains at the windows, a sure sign of the housewife's 14 virtues. In the home of G.A.W. Tomlmson in Nottingham• shire, his mother would spend hours in polishing, especially the black, iron fire-place or kitchen range, which was a constant feature of miners' homes. She also spent a good deal of time in baking, and he recalls when he was a child that she was always producing surprises with their food, despite a shortage of money. His mother was "a typical collier's wife, clean without being faddy, proud without being arrogant, masterful without being unwomanly and patient 142 as the earth "beneath which her husband laboured. She made our home a happy place." ^ The coalminer Mark Benney drew upon his experiences of life in the coalfields to produce the novel, Charity Main. A Coalfield Chronicle, which tells the story of what he calls a typical mining community. In this, the mother of the cen• tral family is pictured as a typical miner's wife and is the most important person in the home. "Mrs. Kelso was con• stantly at work, baking bread and tarts and pastries, washing, mending, scouring, and above all serving an endless succession of meals... no one seemed to eat at the same time as anyone Qther literary evidence on the subject of the wife's wor• king day revolves around the importance of washing day. George Hitchin remembers washing day with trepidation: On one side of the fire was a boiler and on the other a vast oven. On wash-day the fire was poked and stoked until the temperature was,such that the kitchen had an atmosphere of a foundry. Out then came the paraphena- lia of the laundry... The housewife, her arms thrusting like pistons, sweated her way through the weekly wash, her figure crouched over the poss-tub and scrubbing bench under a rolling cloud of steam that hovered near the ceiling. It has left me with more than a normal abhorrence of wash-day. By late afternoon the clothes flapped on the line: dirty water was carried out to the street drain and, since under the stimulus of the roaring fire the oven wasnow hot, bread-making began immediately... until at last after hours of hot work 7 or 8 loaves and a yester cake would come from the oven. Mean• while men were coming home from the pit and expected cooked meals and hot baths and, miracle upon miracle, the women somehow dovetailed these into washing and baking. 17 Finally, in addition to these duties, many wives made their husbands* pit clothes by hand. It is small wonder 143 that the mining chroniclers dwelt upon the working lives of their wives and mothers on the few occasions that they are mentioned. In a community where heavy emphasis was laid upon hard work as a sign of character, a woman's pride and standing depended upon the state of her home, so that even in times of depression, the round of housework did not stop. They were able to make their dreary surroundings into clean and comfortable homes through sheer hard work. Jack Lawson went so far as to say that "housewifery is such a great vir• tue with them that it has almost become a fault, for the woman will deny herself things to which she is entitled and will wear herself to the bone in order to make the house comfor- T ft table and shining." The woman was firmly placed in the home, fulfilling a role to which there was little alternative. Even by modern standards, the coalminer's wife is tied to the home by force of circumstances, and by necessity the home and family be• comes the centre of her life. In 1950, two observers in Yorkshire were still able to write that "... even in the con• gested areas, miners' wives are notoriously house-proud, and their homes have more shining cleanliness and warm com- 19 fort than are found in many country cottages." However, these almost idyllic pictures and descriptions do not fit in with the pessimistic view of the standard of life put forward by other observers, who were not part of the coalmining community. Though this question has been discussed more fully in a previous chapter on the conditions of living, we must at this point turn to the pessimistic view of life, where it related to the role of wives and mothers. 144 Though living conditions varied considerably among coal• fields and alternated between prosperity and distress, there were two constants in the coalmining communities — overcrow• ding and high rate of infant mortality. Overcrowding and the near impossibility of isolating a victim of disease, fostered the spread of diseases among children especially. The high rate of infant mortality caused concern to the Medical Officers of Health in the coalmining districts, who concluded that poor sanitary provisions, and ignorance among parents, especially young parents, were the causes. Child mortality was high for instance in all Derbyshire colliery districts. While the national average stood at 151 infant deaths per 1,000 births in 1901, the rate in Chesterfield was 217 per 1,000, and in Shirebrook it was as high as 236.4 deaths per 1,000 births. 20 The birth rate in these areas was substantially higher than the national birth rate (see Chapter III), but other reasons were put forward by contemporaries for this high death rate: The medical officer of health for the Blackwell Rural District Council attributed the high infant mortality rate to 'gross neglect in the clothing and feeding'. Such 'parental neglect and inexperience', he said, were *tpo often the concomitants of early marriages.' Peck (the M.O.H.) believed that the infant mortality rates were kept up ' by the existence of the priwy midden system and the ignorance of mothers'. He advocated, as a speedy remedy,'the introduction of the water carriage system in urban parts of the dis- 2T trict, and the teaching of mothers by health visitors'. By allowing children infected with measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever, dysentery or diarrhoea to play and mix with other non-infected children, disease spread rapidly. But in the crowded conditions of the miners* housing with 145 its unsanitary provisions, isolation and other rules of health were neglected either through ignorance or force of circum• stances. We can see therefore that there are two sides to the picture of the qualities of the miner's wife. Autobiogra• phical and social survey accounts point to a high degree of success in household management, while statistical evidence and the comments of medical men suggest some degree of neglect and ignorance on the part of the wife. The first point to make is that maternal ignorance, squalor and neglect were general features among working class groups at this time. Reports on British wives found them to be generally "sloppy" in their housework. This was due to poverty, overcrowding, early marriage, ignorance of how to run a household, and a sense of unhappiness due to life's hardships. Despite improvements in the standard of living up until 1900, housekeeping standards did not improve and a "tradition of poverty" prevailed. This poor standard of housekeeping "... expressed a sense of hopelessness and des- 22 pair that was not simply economic." We can now profitably look at some specific examples to which these Reports were generally referring and with which we may compare and contrast the miners' wives. In her studies of poverty in London at the turn of the century, Helen Bosanquet examined the contribution of the mother to the state of distress. Some mothers were found to be lazy, pre• ferring to spend time gossiping than working, or "often she 146 is in bad health, worn out with bearing children, sickly from living close, dirty rooms, anaemic from bad food." 23 To Bonanquet, poverty depended upon the character of the mother, and those women who lacked "interest, foresight and pride" were the ones who neglected themselves, their home and their children, and depended upon external aid rather than the efficient planning of their own resources. Ignorance also played a great part in poor living standards, especially in the care of her children. "Her untrained eye hardly 24 notices that they are ragged and sickly and forlorn." Further evidence from Lend on of poor housekeeping qualities and a general neglect of children comes from Mrs. Pember Reeves for 1912. In her short tract, Mrs. Reeves reported on the poor health of women and its effect upon the family. "Give:' her six children, and between the bearing of them and the rearing of them she has little extra vitality left for scientific cooking, even if she could afford the necessary time and appliances. In fact one woman is not equal to the 25 bearing and efficient, proper care of six children." J Moreover, the children of the London poor suffered from the lack of more basic necessitiesi The children of the poor suffer from want of light, want of air, want of warmth, want of sufficient and proper food, and want of clothes, because the wage of their father is not enough to pay for these necessaries. They also suffer from want of cleanli• ness, want of attention to health, want of peace and quiet, because the strenth of their mothers is not enough to provide these necessary conditions. 26 147 Lady Florence Bell concerned herself with the iron-workers of North Yorkshire for thirty years. Her findings were drawn together in 1907 when she devoted considerable attention to the wives of the iron-workers. She found in the foundry towns that there existed both a high birth rate and a high infant mortality rate, with detrimental effects on the women of the towns. Women soon became physically worn out from bearing children too quickly. She found that in rare instances some women gave birth to a child almost every year of their peak child-bearing years. If this was in fact the case, then obviously this in turn would affect family welfare, for, "what chance has the welfare, physical and moral, of the children thus rapidly brought into the world by a mother whose strength, owing to imperfect nourishment and unhealthy surround- dings, must be steadily declining umder this immense strain as time goes on?"2 ^ She too blamed the high mortality rate - upon what is now becoming a familiar pattern — overcrowding, bad air, maternal ignorance and negligence, unsuitable feeding and a poor milk supply. Of these, Lady Bell found ignorance to be the most important factor in infant mortality and in the general health of the family. The mother was generally ignorant of the value of cer• tain foods, which, combined with poor cooking facilities and in many cases, an inability to cook, meant a limited diet for the family. Many relied for food on the eating-house or the fried fish shop, with the extra expense that this en• tailed. Special foods could not be afforded for the baby in the working-class households that Lady Bell visited, nor 148 did the mothers know of their value. Consequently, an infant would he given the same food as the rest of the family. Further, she found that disease spread rapidly among children due to parental ignorance about infection. The Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration of 1904, revealed an awareness of the importance of diet to the nation's health, and recommended that young girls should be taught how to cook in school. It had been discovered that the British housewife was generally lazy, and found the easiest way around cooking. There was a good deal of ignorance at the root of this, but apart from this factor, not all tenements contained cooking facilities. The absence of meat and milk, and a heavy reliance on tea, bread and jam and the excessive use of tinned food among working class wives were also cited as contributing towards poor health. The Report showed a high degree of concern with the effects of the employment of women upon the welfare of the family, drawing upon information offered by the investigator Miss A.M. Anderson. It was within the families of working mothers that perhaps the greatest incidence of ignorance and neglect occurred. It was found that infant mortality in areas of high female employment, such as Lancashire cotton towns, Dundee jute mills, and the pottery towns, was unduly high, Anderson would not directly link high infant mortality with the employment of women, but asked that housing and sanitary conditions should also be taken into account before any con• clusions could be drawn. However, she offered the following figures which compare infant mortality in areas of female 149 employment with the coal areas, where few females were employed. Infant Mortality per 1.0Q0 Born Areas of high female Areas of low female employment employment Dundee 1893 — 217 Durham 1901 - 179 1903 -- 142 Northumberland 1901 - 182 Hanley Average South Wales 1901 - 170 Yearly Rate 204 over 10 years Longton Ditto — 239 Preston Ditto 236 Burnley Ditto — 210 Blackburn Ditto -- 200 Further evidence which demonstrates a similar trend in infant mortality is that of Dr. George Reid, County Medical Officer of Health for Staffordshire who stated in 1892 that: In the south of the county the people are mostly engaged in coal-mines and iron works, in which the element of female labour may be disregarded, while in the north the chief industry is potting, in which large numbers of women are employed. Three years ago, when first it became my duty to collate the reports of the various medical officers of health, what impressed me most forcibly was the 'extraordinarily high infant death-rate in certain districts. Further than this... the broad fact was apparent that the rate was much higher in the north than in the south of the county, a circumstance which has since been proved by figures covering, in most cases, a period of ten years, and which show a rate of 182 (deaths per 1,000) as compared with 158. 29 High infant mortality in areas where mothers were exten• sively employed, developed from the abuses necessarily inflicted upon children by the lack of adequate attention, artificial feeding in the hands of untrained "nurses" (usually older children or old women), and ignorance on the part of women who had neither the time nor the means to learn the arts of motherhood. Miss Anderson uses evidence in the 1904 Report 150 from a Miss Paterson's investigations in Lancashire to support this accusation of neglect! As to the effects on health, moral and physical, both of the mothers and children, she was able to form very definite ideas of the excessive and inju• rious strain on the mothers and of the lack of sufficient care of the children. Visits on Saturday afternoons to the homes showed that any energy that was left over by the week's work in the mill was spent by the mother in family washing and house-cleaning, but dirt and discomfort abounded and she 'never saw any attempt at cooking'. 30 It may be argued that coalmining families were at a greater advantage than families in the Lancashire cotton areas or Midlands pottery towns, because the mother in the coal areas at least remained at home. With the knowledge she possessed, she focused all her attentions upon the amelioration of the domestic scene. In contrast, it may be suggested that domestic comforts suffered in the cotton areas of Lancashire for instance, where 23 per cent of mothers were factory workers. The factor of working mothers has been put forward as one cause of family 31 disintegration. v Neil Smelser supports this in part when he says of the working mother, "her traditional role, in short, like the roles of her children and of her husband, was being twisted beyond recognition by the moral evils of the factory." 32 Of course, women in the miningi v vareas had not always pursued housewifery as their vocation. Domestic chaos had also reigned in those homes where the woman had been employed in the mines, according to the Report of the Royal Commission on Mines of 1842. In fact, the 1842 Report stated that there was a distinct difference between the order and cleanliness 151 of non-working wives and the filth and misery of conditions where the wife was employed. "The description of miners' homes in Durham, for example, where miners declared they had as much right to domestic comfort as other men, stands out in strong contrast to the deplorable pictures of filth, wretchedness and perpetual poverty in the districts where 33 women were employed." II From the above examples, we may conclude that, the truth of the matter was that amongst the working classes generally 34 the standard of domestic accomplishment was deplorably low." J The coalminers' wives cannot be singled out by the pessimists as poor housekeepers when standards were so low thoughout the working classes. As has been demonstrated above, the miners as a group were at an advantage because their womenfolk remained at home, concentrating their energies on the care of the family. With no or few employment opportunities, the daughters became "apprenticed" to their mothers in the domestic arts an advantage missed by the young girl with a wage- earning mother, and a method advocated by the social observer 35 Bosanquet as a means of dispelling ignorance. JJ Moreover, there are many impressive testimonies to the cleanliness of the miner's home. The social observer F. Zweig wrote, "there is a great contrast between the unplea• sant appearance of the houses from the outside and the nice appearance inside. The rooms are kept very tidy and clean, and the housewives take immense pride in keeping their houses spotless." There were also those men such as B.L. Coombes who actually experienced life as a lodger in the coalmining 152 community, where, "... I have found most Welsh mining-houses as clean — or nearly so — as this one. The women work very hard — too hard — trying to cheat the greyness that is outside by a clean and cheerful show within. They age them• selves before they should because of this continual cleaning 37 and polishing." The "clean comfort" of this miner's cottage contrasted favourably with the rural worker's cottage which Coombes had left behind in Hereof ordshir^ with its leaking roof, broken oven and chimney and cold atmosphere. Finally, one writer had the following comments to make upon motherhood in coalmining communities in 1888: The collier's wife is a good mother to her children} her ideas of what is for their good may not be wide or far-reaching but what she does see she puts into effect with a thoroughness and devotion that are admirable. She is wholly unselfish, and to keep her house, "bien," her husband sober, and her children at school, and in a well-conduced state, is her continual effort. A hard effort it is too. 38 There were of course exceptions to the examples cited. But even though these existed, the Rt. Hon. Sir. J. Tudor Walters still believed that the building of model housing estates for miners was a most worthwhile project, when he referred to the success of the building of such model houses in the South Yorkshire coalfield after the First World War. He said that criticism of the miners for abuse of new housing projects were unfounded, and in fact, "we find that the bulk of the tenants greatly appreciate a good house and make full use 39 of all its conveniences." Standards of living depended greatly on the state of trade and prosperity. The miners as a whole were not a group 153 of savers, and therefore soon sank into distress in times of irregular work. Even though poverty was rampant at these times however, the miners' wives did not lose the incentive to maintain cleanliness, as witnessed by a Derbyshire journa• list during the 1893 lock-out in that county. He reported in the Derbyshire Times for 30th September, 1893: What struck us at Chesterfield, after many days of wandering among the same class of people, was the fact that more homes than we had noticed anywhere else were spotlessly, beautifully clean. The bare, flagged floor, the rickety wooden chairs, the hearth, the windows, the steps, all showed that the women, in spite of all, had not sat down and folded their arms. 40 There is evidence to show that conditions of living were poor in the mining districts, and that there was a certain level of ignorance and squalor. However, instances of these conditions can be found for all working class areas. In fact, from the evidence cited from working class memoirs, and social investigators' evidence, it would seem that the coalminer's wife, armed with better domestic training, such basic facilities as fuel, cooking facilities, a low-rental or rent-free home and her commitment to her family, was better equipped to tackle the problems of daily life. There were squalor, disease and ignorance in these communities. But there were also fortitude, hard work, self-respect, and a continual battle against circumstances. In concluding this section, there is no denying that disease and high rates of infant mortality existed in the coal towns, adding fuel to the pessimists' fire. What is at question here are the reasons for this trend. Since we have I5k already proposed that maternal ignorance was a general con• dition among the working classes, other forces were at work to push forward the child mortality rates in the coalfields, and to blacken the reputation of the colliers' wives in this respect. Neglect and maternal ignorance were constants among the working classes as a wholej the variables in the case of the coalminers were the high birth rates characteristic of mining families, and the unsanitary, overcrowded, and disease-promoting conditions of the "jerry-builtM boom towns on the coalfields. II The final object of this chapter is to attempt to ascer• tain how the woman was regarded in the heavily male-orien• tated mining society. We cannot hope to reach into the per• sonality of the woman in the coal town. As she left so few records behind, we can only look at her through the eyes of others and suggest certain characteristics which might emerge in a community of this nature. One effect of the type of existence described above which might be expected, is the premature aging of the wife. This feature was the result of hard work, and is mentioned in several instances in the collier autobiographies. Both George Hitchin and B.L. Coombes noted the recurrence of premature old age in women in their 30*s. Neither did these women escape with full health. In 1929, a Government investigation into the social results of depression in the South Wales coal 155 trade commented upon the exhausting effects of hard work, concluding that, "there could he no question that in some areas women, especially the mothers of young children, suffer to an unusual extent from languor and anaemia." It cannot he doubted that the ill effects of rapid chil- bearing that Lady Bell observed among the iron-workers• wives in North Yorkshire, also affected the miners' wives with their equally high birth rate. Moreover, in times of distress the wife was probably the first to suffer from a lack of adequate food and clothing, which would contribute further to health problems. There is a good deal of evidence upon this last point. It has been found that there was an unequal distri• bution of food and other benefits such as clothing and medical care among working-class families, the priority being to provide for the breadwinner first. "The wife deferred to the breadwinner because without him her own situation would have been even worse. The efficiency and health of the chief breadwinner was essential to the welfare of the entire family. This was no less true for the mining families, and as late as 1956, the sociologists who investigated life in the South Yorkshire coal town discovered that the middle-aged and older women would serve "a heavy meal for their families" whilst providing a mere snack for themselves." J The dependence upon the husband which this activity illustrates was a common characteristic of coalminers' wives. They married early and, with few opportunites for employment, their dependence on the breadwinner and subjection to male economic dominance was reinforced from the start. Unlike 156 many wage-earning wives, the coalminer*s wife did not have the security to assert her own economic independence. Peter Stearns identified this dependence upon the husband in the question of judgement. He gives this as the reason why the practice of birth control was so slow to reach the coalmining areas. Most wives, particularly those who had married before 1900, "had not sufficiently escaped from tradi• tion to arrange a reduction the family size. Only the younger generation was rapidly awakening to an interest in birth con• trol, which older miners considered "unnatural and wicked". Hence the continued resemblance to the urban poor, whose fami- lies in 1911 averaged 3.9 children." However, Stearns is perhaps assigning too much importance to the men here in the decison-making about voluntary family limitation. It has been argued in Chapter III that the move towards acceptance of birth control ideas was slow among the coalmining population as a whole, and not just among the male section of the popu• lation. In fact, a more basic reason for the slow adoption of birth control methods has been identified. In the coal• mining area, the only vocation that a woman could pursue was to marry and have a family, and she had little chance of pur• suing an occupation even if she did decide to limit her family size. In fact, the slow adoption of family limitation was a combination of many factors, described in Chapter III. One effect of the large family size was that once a woman had borne a large family, her chances for contact with the out• side world were limited even further. Certain characteristics have been identified as distinct features of the wives of miners. Traditionalism was one of 157 these characteristics and flourished particularly in those villages remote from urban centres. There was a traditional loyalty of women to their husbands and families, and emerging perhaps from the economic dependence, a dedication to the needs of the breadwinner., In a drama about the lyneside pitmen, written by a native of Jarrow, Alan Plater describes the leading wife as being, "gently persuasive, with a manner toughened by years of hardship and sometimes violent bereave• ment. A life dedicated without question to her . husband and, by implication, to coal." J Moreover, he suggests that the wife had to obey her husband and was always there "to provide LA baths and tend wounds." Peter Stearns suggests that the miner's wife was resigned to poor conditions, especially where.housing was overcrowded and unsanitary. But this was an advantage in so far as ex• pectations were low? she did not experience as much unhap- piness as her counterpart who was in employment: Horizons in the mining village were assuredly narrow, which is why the women preserved a rather traditional family focus for so long. Lack of job opportunities even before marriage served, rather like extreme poverty in the big cities, to limit expectations among women... Because there was little sense of alternatives there was little visible despair, and active participation in their husbands* labor protest gave women an outlet many'of their urban sisters lacked. 47 Increasing employment opportunities in the towns led to "a virtual revolution in the life-style of working-class women 48 before marriage." The young working girls experienced independence, social contacts outside the home, rising material expectations and,"a new concern for freedom and 158 49 dignity was developing." However upon marriage this newly found social and economic freedom was curtailed, and women were thrown back into a male-dominated world, and aspirations were strictly limited. Moreover, the behaviour of husbands towards their wives was worse in the factory cities than in the mining towns, and a limited allowance system operated whereby the husband's control of the budget lowered the woman's economic status. Wives who had once controlled their own budget suffered great disappointment with their reduced economic status. Those material expectations they had developed in their single, independent days, were not met, adding to their frustrations. Their pre-marriage social contacts were severely curtailed. Consequently, Stearns identifies greater unhappiness among married operatives than among miners' wives, and this was reflected in sloppy housekeeping. The control of the budget was an important function in the family for it was not how much the breadwinner earned which was important, but how it was spent. A family's happi• ness or very existence depended on how wisely the wage was divided. The economic role of most working class wives, however, was low, in that most did not know how much their husbands earned and relied therefore on the "wage" that they were given each week, their husbands keeping back an unknown amount of "pocket money." Lady Bell found that in over one- third of the homes she visited in North Yorkshire, the wife had no idea of how much her husband earned, while Laura Oren found that this was the general situation among the labouring 159 classes. However, in rare cases the wife was in control. In mining villages for instance, the husband gave all his earnings to his wife and received a fixed amount of "pocket money" in return. This custom was called the "tip-up". Michael Young noted that working children in mining villages also handed over all their earnings in return for a small amount of "pocket money". Usually the colliers gave their wives their wages out in the streets. Here tradition was at play, for public witnessing of the act ensured that the wife's traditional claim to the wage would be met. This tradition was described in the mining novel How Green was my Valley. "As soon as the whistle went they (the wives) put chairs outside their front doors and sat there waiting till the men came up the Hill and home. Then as the men came up to their front doors they threw their wages, sovereign by sovereign, into the shining laps, fathers first and sons or lodgers in 51 a line behind." J It was the woman's responsibility to decide how the money would be spent. In times of distress, such as strikes or lock-outs for instance, Llewellyn, who was writing from experience noted that, "women like my mother, who had sons earning, and had saved and kept a good house were putting money and food together each week for the babies of the women who had just married, or for women with only a 52 husband working and many children." J This control of family finances obviously elevated the status of the woman in the home, and is some further indi• cation of how the woman was regarded in the mining community in her domestic role. "Control over the budget," Stearns 160 writes, "was a vital element in the working-class woman's life, for it reflected her place in the family and determined how well she could carry out her responsibilities. Mining women like the urban poor, usually had substantial power." JJ The duties of the woman were concentrated on family life -- it was here alone where the miner's wife could excel, for she had no opportunities to concentrate her energies elsewhere. Her first priority was her duty to her family, and in Chapter III it was noted that the coalmining families were mother-centred. Evidence of a matriarchal system can be recognized in what few references we have to the persona• lity of the mother in the memoirs of coalminers. Jack Lawson regarded his mother's devotion to her family as a form of heroism, while the coalminer*s leader John Brophy said of his mother that, "her great concern was the welfare of her family, and devotion to it was her way of life. She accepted the perils and hardships that came to a miner's family, and did the best she could with the situation from day to day. She had the strength to meet all duties and demands of life, and a loyalty to her family that was inspired." J The miners* wives have been seen to exercise a sobering in• fluence over the mining population, both in their role as wives and as mother, for parental duties were in many cases left entirely to them. As early as 1842, the Royal Commission had recognized the female role heres "The Complete lack of educational opportunities for girls in colliery villages was, however, a serious handicap on mining communities and was constantly lamented by witnesses and Commissioners alike — the more so as the women were said to exercise an unusual 161 and unlimited influence over the miners." ^5 Jack Lawson saw this powerful influence at work when he said that "women have been very powerful educational forces indeed in the northern counties. In my lifetime I have seen women, religion and education perform miracles in the personal life of the miner. For I remember well the old, gross, gambling, drinking type." - John Wilson, the Durham miners* leader also remembered the "gross, gambling, drinking type" that he was as a young man, but attributed his conversion, in his autobiography, to his wife. ^ Under her influence he changed his ways and became a Methodist lay preacher, Secretary of the Durham Miners' Association, and eventually entered the House of Commons, (sic.) The women displayed a high degree of dedication to their husbands, emerging from tradition and their dependent status. In a community where leisure was heavily male-orientated, their recreational activities were limited to a morning's shopping in the city once or twice a year, or perhaps an annual outing to the coast, so that their lives were circum• scribed by the home. In spite of these facts, however, we cannot conclusively say that the wife came under the strict authority of her husband, as in most other working class families. Despite the male-orientated nature of work and leisure, we can still identify aspects of a matriarchy in coalmining society. As early as 1856 it was found thats ... whatever may be the peculiarities of the husband on the one hand, or of his wife on the other, the difference is still so great as to authority at home, that she is almost sure to rule in every case} and this from no 162 amiableness on the part of the husband. Should the pitman have anywhere to go, or any little business to transact, the wife must not only be there, but superintend, or even do it entirely. 58 Neither was she a passive creature in times of distress or when the welfare of her family as at stake. Stearns notes that women were particularly prominent in times of strike, and in this respect they differed from their counterparts in other industrial groups. He cites the occasion of the 1909 to 1910 South Wales strike as an example when the women, faced by the threat of extra work for their men through the proposed introduction of a three shift system, were unusually active in stoning shops and policemen. John Wilson in the early years of his campaigning for labour in the 1870's faced many set• backs because of the conservative nature of many of the miners, but one one occasion he had to face the wrath of a band of angry women who, "made an attack upon me, and threw various kinds of missiles at me... The sum of their epithets was that they did not want any agitator there stirring up the minds of their menfolk and inducing them to strike." Jack Lawson noted a great fear among women of strikes, because of the hardships that they entailed, but once they occurred they displayed a great strength of purpose and will to victory. "When this stage is reached, then the world may be against them,death and everlasting damnation come upon them, but they will not retreat an inch. And woe betide the man who 6o would compromise." He remembers his own mother in this predicament when, "all her battling and wrathful spirit rose up against the proposed wage reduction, (1892) and her insis- 163 tence on "no surrender" was in inverse ratio to her fear of the strike at its beginning." ^ It is difficult to estimate, apart from her role in strikes and times of distress, how far the woman in the coalmining community involved herself in politics. Lady Bell found that the iron-workers' wives were totally ignorant and disinterested in their attitude to public questions, and that they were "apathetic and suffered from an inertia," However, an early cause of the Women's Labour League was "Baths for Miners", about which they produced a set of pamphlets directed towards, "... the graat mass of women, particularly those belonging to 6? the wage-earning class." It is hard to say how effective these pamphlets were if they reached the miners' wives, but they were certainly directed towards a female audience, con• cerned with "black slavery in the home for the brave wives and mothers," The provison of pit-head baths would certainly have alleviated the work of the wife who had to wash and dry both husband and clothes in the home, and where she had to contend with what Robert Smillie, the miners' leader, had described in a Women's Labour League pamphlet in the following way, "... he had himself seen the sick mother or little children under the care of the doctor, living in the room where all the bathing of the men and boys from the pit had to be done, and where the foul-smelling pit clothes had to be dried before the common fire." ^ A series of illustrated pamphlets entitled Baths at the Pit-Head and the Works, "... which were sold literally in the tens of thousands in mining and industrial communities, pressed 164 home the special possibilities and advantage of hot and cold 64 spray bath installations..." while, "Mrs. Bruce Glasier lectured in different parts of the country and distributed illustrated pamphlets calling attention to the enormous help that pit-head washing accommodation would be to the wives and mothers of miners." J The Women's Labour League found that the experimental pit-head baths of the Atherton Collieries in Lancashire in 1915, were;g%yen a good reception. "The testi• mony alike of miners and their wives, and of enlightened em• ployers and inspectors was unanimous." ^ During and after the First World War, branches of the Women's Labour Section grew up throughout the South Yorkshire coalfield. The 1922 Motes and Minutes of the Women's Labour Section of one of these branches in the heart of the mining industry — South Elmsall, Moorthorpe and South Kirkby — indicate the existence of branches of varying strengths in Rotherham, Featherstone, Chesterfield, Sheffield, York, Outwood, Leeds, Penistone, Cudworth, Askern and Ackworth. They ranged from 250 members in Sheffield to 20 members in Featherstone. From this limited source, it is hard to gauge the extent of the influence of politics among women in the colliery towns, though it is interesting to note the extreme enthusiasm and hope for the future which marked the notes of this small branch of politically active women. As might be expected their main concerns were for child welfare through the schools — "It is our duty to mother the nation"? problems of unemploymentj votes for women at 21 years of age? higher taxation of the wealthy? and, after the holocaust they had 165 recently experienced in the Great War, a desire for no more war, . "Why should men and science be out for destruction instead of reconstruction and world peace?" they asked. ^ It is almost impossible to tell however how many wives were affected by similar interests in public questions in the period with which we are concerned. Finally, in order to attempt to understand the wife of the coalminer further, the element of risk to the life of the breadwinner must be taken into account. The element of danger extended to every member of the community, but fell especially hard upon the women who had to bear the consequences of a fatal accident, which struck down the centre of senti• ment, and the breadwinner of the family. There is no denying that the threat of this possible eventuality continually hung over the women-in the mining community, though it was a threat with which they had to come to terms if possible. As late as 1969, Rex Lucas found in his study of the implications of a mining disaster upon those involved that, "the daily threat of death to the breadwinner affected the families of the miners. Many wives stated that as they saw their husbands off to work, 68 they wondered if they would see them alive again." If possible, a wife had to conceal her fears from her husband and family. G.A.W. Tomlinson wrote how his own mother was able to hide her emotions: Sometimes there would be rumours of an accident at the pit and though Mother never told us, we knew that she was troubled. Then we could sit quietly together on the sofa whilst she v/ent on preparing the supper for a man v/ho might never need it. God alone knows what fears she kept hidden from us and how with iron con• trol she continued to attend to the cooking of the supper. 69 166 When an accident did occur, a woman had to retain the same iron will and composure that she displayed under the threat. The pit posed a harsh threat to life, and had to be faced with a similar ruthlessness. There existed a sense of community in misfortune, so that one family's loss was everyone's loss, but at the same time, sentimentality was masked. A poignant description of the effects of tragedy is given by Tomlinson, when he writes from experience: Tears are rare things in colliery towns and villages. Colliers and their wives seldom cry. I sometimes wish they did cry occasionally, for the sight of a woman's face when her man or son in brought home from the pit injured is one that haunts the mind for a long time after• wards. I have seen them so many times as they have met the sweating party of men carrying a husband or son — no excitement, no fluttering around the stretcher, no fainting, no tears. Just the question, "Is it very bad?" The muscles of the face set in hard lines, the lips drawn tight together and the voice as steady as it was when the man started off for the day's work. But it is in the eyes that a man dare not look. 70 It is little wonder that the men who left their life stories behind them were struck by the heroism of the women in the mining communities. The women who were left without means by a fatal acci• dent to the wage earner could rely on the.ihelp of the other members of the community for material aid. Apart from the occasional instances of compensation from the colliery com• pany — this appears to be rare — and aid from the Union or Friendly Society, she would also receive help from neigh• bours. In addition to his, explosions gave rise to a flood of ballads and poetry-sheets, which were sold in the cities 167 and neighbouring towns to raise money for the victims of tragedy. Such mining balladry, though sentimental in the extreme, was effective in stirring consciences and raising alms. One such ballad was the Trimdon Grange Explosion. written in 1882 by a working Durham collier, Thomas Armstrong. Seventy-four men were lost in this particular tragedy, which elicited this ballad? "Oh let*s not think of tomorrow, lest we disappointed be. Our joys may turn to sorrow, as we all may daily see, Today we may be strong and healthy, but soon there comes a change, As we may see from the explosion that has been at Trimdon Grange. Men and boys left home that morning for to earn their daily bread, Nor thought before that evening they'd be numbered with the dead. Let's think of Mrs Burnett, once had sons but now has none — By the Trimdon Grange Explosion, Joseph, George and James are gone. February left behind it what will never be forgot? Weeping widows, helpless children may be found in many a cot. Now they ask if father's left them, and the mother hangs her head, With a weeping widow's feelings, tells the child its father's dead. God protect the lonely widow, and raise each dropping head ? Be a father to the orphans,never let them cry for bread. Death will pay us all a visit, they have only gone before. We'll meet the Trimdon victims where explosions are no more." 71 It is impossible to say exactly what type of woman the miner's wife was, because she left behind her no written record of her own. It can only be suggested from personal 168 accounts and inference that she possessed some or all of the above characteristics. On thing is certain, the nature of her social and domestic role did differ from that of other working class wives in the ways suggested above. It is proposed that all miners* wives possessed some similar characteristics, because of the nature of their work and environment, and in this respect they shared a degree of solidarily. In the words of the social commentators I. Lubin and H. Everett, which appropriately conclude this chapter: They are all fighting the same battle against the dirt brought home from the pit: they all face the same round of meals ^preparation of bath water and the dry/ing of pit clotnes in houses where modern sanitary conditions are virtually unknown. If their husbands and sons are working on different shifts, their struggle may begin at four in the morning and end at midnight. And through the hard routine runs the daily fear of disaster for one's family, and the despression that comes from moving among those whom death or serious accident has left desolate. The lot of a miner's wife gives to her the same fixity of purpose, the same intensity of conviction as that of her husband. If one asks the secret of the miner's "staying power" in times of conflict, one must look to the miner's wife for the answer. 72 FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER V 1 N, Dennis, F. Henriques. and C. Slaughter, Goal is our Life (London, 1956). 2 Peter Stearns, "Working-Class Women in Britain. 1890 - 1914," in Suffer and Be Still. Women in the Victorian Age Ed. Martha Vicinus, (London, 1972), p. 113. 3 Lady Florence Bell, At The Works (London, 1911), pp. 242 - 243. 169 4 Coal and Power. The Report of an Enquiry presided over hy the Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd George, (London, 1924), p. 7 5 A, Hutt, The Condition of the Working Class (London, 1933), P. 30 6 Report of the Departmental Committee on the Provision of Washing and Drying Accommodation at Mines, B.P.P. 1913, XXXIV, p. 6. 7 G. Hitchin, Pit-Yacker (London, 1962), p. 20. 8 Ibid.. pp. 13 - 14. 9 R.P. Arnot, The Miners: Years of Struggle Vol. 2. (London, 1953TTp. 148. 10 Ibid., pp. 147 - 148. 11 J. Lawson, A Man's Life (London, 1932), pp. 52 - 53. 12 F. Zweig, Men in Pits (London, 1948), pp. 101 - 102. 13 Lawson, Op. Cit.. pp. 47 - 48. 14 Paul de Rousiers, The Labour Question in Britain (London, I896), pp. 173 - 174. 15 G.A.W. Tomlinson, Coal-Miner (London, 1937), pp. 21 - 22. 16 M. Benney, Charity Main. A Coalfield Chronicle (London, 1946), p. 19. 17 Hitchin, Op. Cit., pp. 21 - 22 18 Lawson, Op. Cit.. pp. 59 - 60. 19 E. Pontefract and M. Hartley, Yorkshire Tour (London, 1950), p. 19. 20 J.E. Williams, The Derbyshire Miners (London, 1962), p. 449. 21 Ibid., p. 449. 22 See Stearns, Op. Cit., on this topic, p. 104. 23 H. Bosanquet, The Strength of the People (London, 1902), p. 103. 24 Ibid.t p. 107. 25 P. Reeves, Family Life on a Pound a Week (London, 1912), p. 16. 170 26 Ibid., p. 17. 27 Bell, Op. Git., p. 278. 28 Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration. B.P.P. 1904. XXXII, Appendix V, p. 123. 29 Cited by M. Hewitt in, Wives and Mothers in Victorian Industry (London, 1958). p. 120. 30 Report on Physical Deterioration. 1904. p. 124. 31 See M. Anderson, Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire (Cambridge. 1971). 32 N.J. Smelser, Social Change in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1959), p. 282. 33 I. Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revo• lution. 1750 - 1850 (London. 1930). P. 263. 34 Hewitt, Op. Cit.. p. 75. 35 See Bosanquet, Op. Cit.. p. 191. 36 F. Zweig, Op. Cit.. pp. 142 - 143. 37 B.L. Coombes, These Poor Hands (London, 1939), p. 21 38 R. Haddow, "The Miners of Scotland," The Nineteenth Century. Vol. XXIV, (July - Dec. 1888), p. 366. 39 Sir J. Tudor Walters, The Building of 12.000 Houses (London, 1927), p. 31 40 Cited in J.E. Williams, Op. Cit.. p. 453. 41 Report on the Investigation in the Coalfield of South Wales and Monmouth. B.P.P. 1928 - 29. VIII. p. 6. "Languor" is defined by Webster's Dictionary as "lack of vitality." 42 L. Oren, "The Welfare of Women in Labouring Families: England, I860 - 1950," Feminist Studies. Vol. I, (Winter/Spring 1973) P. 119. 43 N. Dennis et al., Op. Cit.. p. 243. 44 Stearns, Op. Cit.. p. 107 45 A. Plater, Close the Coalhouse Door (London, 1969) 46 Ibid. 47 Stearns, Op. Cit.. p. 108. 171 48 Ibid., p. 110 49 Ibid., p. 112. 50 M. Young, "The Distribution of Income within the Family," British Journal of Sociology. No. 3. (1952). 51 R. Llewellyn, How Green was my Valley (London, 1939) p. 8. 52 Ibid., p. 228. 53 Stearns, Op. Cit.. p. 108. 54 J. Brophy, A Miner's Life (Madison and Milwaukee, 1964), p. 8. 55 Pinchbeck, Op. Cit.. pp. 262 - 263. 56 Lawson, Op. Cit., pp. 59 - 60. 57 J. Wilson, Memoirs of a Labour Leader (London, 1910). 58 J.R. Leifchild, Our Coal and Our Coal-Pits> the People in them and the Scenes around them (London. 1856). P. 219. 5$ Wilson, Op. Cit., pp. 268 - 269. 60 Lawson, Op. Cit., p. 64. 61 Ibid., p. 66. 62 Dr. M. Phillips (Editor), Women and the Labour Party (London, circa 1919). 63 Ibid.. pp. 89 - 90 64 Ibid., p. 90. 65 R. Smillie, My Life for Labour (London, 1924), p. 153. 66 Phillips, Op. Cit.. p. 91 67 Notes and Minutes of the Women's Labour Section? South Elmsall, Moorthorpe and Sourth Kirkby, 1922. MSS Cusworth Hall Museum, Doncaster, Yorkshire. 68 R. Lucas, Men in Crisis (New York, 1969), p. 10. 69 G.A.W. Tomlinson, Op. Cit.. p. 22. 70 Ibid., pp. 154 - 155. 172 A.L. Lloyd, Come All Ye Bold Miners (London, 1952), PP. 78 - 79 I. Lubin and H. Everett, The British Coal Dilemma (New York, 1927), P. 193. 173 CHAPTER VI THE COALMINER - HIS WORK I am proud that I am a miner, and the son of a miner, and although I have hated the pit I am grateful for what the men of the pits have taught me. 1 We must now turn to the coalminer himself and consider his life in both its vocational social contexts. Unlike the women of the coal towns, much has been written about the coalminers, and most writers agree that the solidarity which existed between the coalminers as a group was their most notable and distinctive feature. The purpose of the following two chapters is to present some reflections on the coalminer — on his work, health, leisure pursuits, his social roles, and to attempt to distinguish some common features of per• sonality which emerged from these factors. They are an attempt to sketch a picture of the miner in his occupational and social role -- a picture which can only be an outline, because of the sheer size of the topic. The primary aim of these descriptions is to illustrate the characteristic cohesion and solidarity which bound the coalminers together. Reasons why the coalminers have been designated as "a race apart" by historians and social observers are put forward. Although there are great variations in life styles and work among the coalfields, some parallels and common features are drawn out in these two chapters. The greatest problem here lies in the differing opinions that observers have held of the coalminers* behaviour. Social commentators and investigators have written both disparaging and uplifting assessments of the coalminers, and from these differing 174 opinions we must attempt to evaluate the character of the coalmining population. This involves firstly, an examination of the occupational role and the actual working life of the coalminers, how they were regarded by non-miners, and also, the attitudes that the miners have taken towards themselves. The opening quotation from a working miner crystallizes how most coalminers have regarded their life and work. I Despite the fact that the coalmining industry was in• tegral to the economy of Great Britain in the nineteenth century, the coalminers as a class were regarded as an inferior group, set apart from the rest of the population by their particular living and working conditions. An observer in 1842 said that "in the character of the collier population there are phenomena which demarcate it from every other class 2 of the community." For the last two centuries, Frank Machin said that the coalminers had been assigned a lowly social status by observers and that they had been described as "a people apart and an inferior race." J Comments made by contemporary observers illustrate the general attitude displayed towards the pitmen. In the 1760,s Arthur Young described them as "a most tumultuous, sturdy set of people, greatly impatient of control, and much void of common industry." The very nature of the miners1 work caused outsiders to regard them as being something less than human. Their work was to many, unnatural, and as such added 175 a sinister facet to their character. The conditions under which they laboured, it was believed, fostered degradation and immorality. The investigation of the Royal Commissioners into Children's Employment in 1842 added weight to this belief in the public mind. Moreover, the miners were regarded as being dangerous and violent. In 1839» a Welsh M.P. Wrote to the Home Sec• retary urgently requesting troops to quell Chartist disturbances. He lamented his situation when he wrote, "a more lawless set of men than the colliers and miners do not exist ... It requires some courage to live among a set of savages." J One of the reasons why outsiders regarded the miners in this way was that little was really known about them. Isolated geographically from the rest of the population, the miners were mistrusted and were a source of misunderstan• dings, stories and rumours. The majority of miners lived in villages physically isolated from other workers, "out of sight of the rest of the community and wholly out of its ken." People displayed a remarkable ignorance about the life of the mining population. Even William Cobbett held a mistaken belief about the coalminers when he wrote in his Political Register in 1832, "Here is the most surprising thing in the whole worldj thousands of men and thousands of horses continually living underground: children born there, and who sometime never see the surface at all, though they live to a considerable age." 7 Cobbett was not alone in believing that the mining popu• lation actually resided underground. As late as 1856, we 176 have a reference to this same misunderstanding when John Wilson, the Durham miners' leader was working on the "colliers" shipping sea coal to London. In his autobiography he des• cribes the following conversation he had with a London barman: "He was told I was a pitman. Pressing for more information, he enquired how long I had been down the pit. 'Seven years,' was the answer. In most surprised tones he said, 'Have you not been up till now?' I was surprised at him, and replied, 'Yes, every day except on rare occasions.' 'Why, I thought Q you pitmen lived down there always!' said the querist." W. Palmer, a pitman friend of John Wilson's experienced a simi• lar incident in London when his occupation was the cause of great interest to the southerners: That increased the surprise of the Londoner, and he requested the Northerner to accompany him to a tavern nearby, and took him into the parlour, where a number of persons were sitting, and made Palmer walk round like a horse showing his paces at a fair, and the general cry was, "Why, he can walk as straight as ourselves. We thought those pitmen could only walk in a doubled-up posture owing to the cramped condi• tion of their work and their continual residence underground." 9 So little was actually known about the miners that it is hardly surprising that "to the majority of people, especi• ally those in the non-mining districts, the miner was a curio• sity of inferior social status." 10 At least one miner bene• fited financially from this public curiosity. John Marshall, reputed to be the first collier to leave the pits in the great national stoppage of 1912, earned his living after this time as an attraction in the London music halls. He appeared on the stage in his work clothes, carrying a pick and his miner', s ilamp . 11 177 It was only on the occasion of some great colliery disaster or prolonged cessation of work through a strike or lock-out, that public attention was seriously drawn to the lot of the coalminers. Nothing was known of the labour or habits of the colliers outside of the coalmining districts. Tragedy usually provoked public interest for instance. On the occasion of the famous Hartley Colliery disaster in 1862, when 204 men and boys were killed, the Queen gave the lead in donating subscriptions for the relief of the relatives of the victims, while the Bishop of Durham publicly praised the rescue workers for their bravery. However, such public and official alarm was not always the case, and Keir Hardie expressed his indignation in the House of Commons in 1894 at the failure of the House to express sympathy to the South Wales miners after the explosion at the Albion Colliery when 260 miners lost their lives. The colliers therefore, received scant attention from the rest of the population. If they were ever considered by outsiders, apart from pity during times of tragedy, they were the focus of curiosity, fear and disgust. They were regarded as a clannish set, cut off from the rest of the population by physical isolation and by the nature of their work and lifestyle, and having little concern with outsiders. The characteristic of the miners which most impressed outsiders was, in fact, their solidarity. 178 II There were great variations between the working condi• tions of the different coalfields in Britain and any assess• ment of the working situation therefore, has to include some generalizations. In examining these conditions, it may be seen that there were certain common or characteristic features in the actual working situation of the miners which served to distinguish them further from other working-class groups. Throughout all coalfields, there was a hierarchy of wor• kers ranging from the supervisors, deputies and overmen down to manual labourers. Leaving aside the supervisory staff, the most highly respected and wellpaid workers were those who worked on the coal face itself. The stone-men whose job was to blow down the roof to form roadways and galleries were considered to be at the top of the hierarchy, followed closely by the coal cutters and hewers.' These men alone worked on a piece-rate, and in fact they employed their own putters and fillers or haulage men on a daily wage rate. The face men and the haulage men together governed the attitudes of their community, for they dominated the hierarchy of workers. They were the most influential voices in the local lodges, and most trade union disputes revolved around their griev• ances. After these skilled and semi-skilled workers came the poorly paid and inarticulate lower orders in the scale — the manual labourers and the surface workers. Rex Lucas, in his study of Canadian coalmining, had ar• gued that social stratification centred upon this job struc- 12 ture. However, this stratification was weak since there 179 was no closed or formal apprenticeship system in coalmining whereby a select few would be allowed to reach the upper echelons of the job scale. Every healthy and willing boy could expect to become a hewer by his early twenties through the unique apprenticeship system which prevailed in the coal communities. The coal owners preferred to employ the sons of coal• miners rather than outsiders, for they felt that close family ties in the industry produced more knowledgeable and reliable pitmen. Preference was given to those who already had mining connections for the more highly paid and skilled work. Some form of selection may be identified here, for outsiders were discriminatedagainst by being relegated to more menial tasks. A local boy however, on leaving school, would be attached to his own father or relative in the pit, and he would gradually work his way through all the various types of work, up the job scale. There was therefore a high degree of internal recruitment of labour to the mines which took the form of a passage through all the different phases of work, from the lowliest, menial tasks, up to the most highly skilled and well-paid positions at the coal face. This informal apprenticeship system was open to all sons of miners, and the career of George Parkinson described below was typical of those described by the miner autobiographers. This is what a miner's son might expect in his working life: On that level of life, I passed from childhood to manhood through the ordinary curriculum of the northern pitboy's lot. I graduated successively 180 from the starting-point of a doorkeeper in the mine at nine years of age, through all the stages of a miner's toil and its dangers, till at 21 years of age I took my degree as a coal hewer, this being the highest unofficial position attainable at the cost of the hardest from of mining labour known. Like an apprentice completing his "time", so the "putter", or conveyor of coal, becoming a hewer, has reached his highest level, and in the old pit phrase, "He's now a man for hissel'." 13 Although there was a form of apprenticeship in the mining community expressed by means of the occupational hierarchy, Henry Pelling has argued that there was no social cleavage within the mining community. Though the highest paid crafts• men who worked on the face were respected by the community as having reached the top of the occupational scale, there was no labour aristocracy of E.J. Hobsbawm's definition with its formal, selective entrance requirements, and lower middle class overtones. Hewers and face workers were the highest paid pitmen but their only qualifications were their strength and age. There was therefore, "the absence of social cleavage such as might apply where a labour aristocracy 14 existed." The degree of promotion depended upon a man's strength and there would be some weaker men who never entered into the promotion race. They spent their working life in less well-paid surface or underground jobs, working alongside immigrant labourers. However, their careers were not typical of the normal work cycle of the miners. Their jobs may have been regarded as inferior by those at the top of the hier• archy, but it is difficult to prove that a strong social gap or tensions emerged between them and more highly paid workers. 181 Family circumstances varied enormously, according to the number of dependants, wage earners and paying lodgers, indicating that social stratification was weak in the coalmining commu• nities. A man might serve his apprenticeship and graduate into the mining elite, but he lived in the same house, drank in the same pub, and, under a wage system whereby earnings were divided up by a team of workers according to the individual's labours, no social pretensions could be assumed. Earnings, and therefore social status, could be estimated by all in the close working and living conditions of the mining com• munity. Status symbols, for instance, held little sway. The miner, moreover, was bound in time to be relegated to a less strenuous but poorly paid job once his strength began to fail him. This expectation operated against his opening up a social rift with his inferiors in the job scale, since he would not be able to maintain it throughout his lifetime. If we examine the ages of workers in the coalmining industry, the typical career of the coalminer described above, can be traced. Table I taken from the Census Report of 1891 shows the numbers of coalminers in various age groups in Eng• land and Wales, in that year. TABLE I To show the numbers of coalminers at eight groups of ages. 1891. 15 Total 10- 15- 20- 25- 35- L5- 55- 65- Coal Miners 31,518 94,312 85,175 126,785 86,366 54,327 26,801 8,559 513,843 182 This table includes workers in all phases of coalmining. There is a large increase in the numbers of miners in the age group 25 to 34 years, and after this, the numbers steadily decline, so that there are far fewer coalminers over the age of 55 years than there are under the age of twenty years. This table indicates that coalmining was primarily a young man's occupation, and the rate of retirement and death normally escalated after 55 years of age. In Table II, the occupation is broken down even further to show the number of miners in the three main categories of coalmining — coal face, work, haulage and maintenance, and surface work — at various ages in 1911. The table shows figures both for England and Wales, and for our model, the Administrative County of Yorkshire. TABLE II To show the numbers of coalminers at seven groups of ages for England and Wales, and Yorkshire. 1911. 16 Occu• pation 10- 15- 20- 25- 35- 45- 55-64 England and Wales W orkers at the face 7,249 43,970 77,841 155,717 115,41C 56,405 39,901 Other Worker Under ground 81,968 42,991 51,925 39,903 26,521 15,598 Workers on the surface 7,807 17,195 11,164 17,948 14,788 11,577 8,168 York -shire workers at the face 96 2,991 11,085 25,854 20,006 11,416 5,318 183 TABLE II - continued Occu• pation 10- 15- 2fi- 25- 35- 45- 55-64 Others under ground 3,559 16,452 6,998 6,848 ^,575 2,732 1,390 Workers on the surface 1,996 2,851 1,771 3,054 2,448 1,810 1,169 On both the national and the county level, it can be seen that the numbers of hewers increased with age among the younger workers, and more especially in the age period 20 to 34 years. The huge decline in the number of other wor• kers underground after the age of 20 years and the rapid increase in the number of hewers at this age, indicates that the process of promotion from haulage to face work was at work here. The number of surface workers in the age period 20 to 24 years falls in both cases below the number of ju• veniles and older men in this category of work. At this age a young man was probably promoted to more highly paid work underground. After the age of 25 years, the number of sur• face workers was swelled by those miners who had been injured underground and were confined to less strenuous jobs on the surface, and those unskilled immigrants who were too old or too far removed from mining to be taught more specialized underground work. It may be noted from this table that boys and youths began their careers primarily in underground sup• port work, which was usually connected with transport, main• tenance or ventilation. The earliest age at which work 184 commenced was twelve years, though the minimum age for pit work had been raised to fourteen years in 1911. Those who began work at this early age perhaps combined some part time schooling with their job. The actual working conditions that this hierarchy of workers experienced have been amply described in secondary sources, but it is the distinguishing features of pitwork that are of importance here. The difficulties presented to the miners by the working environment "serve to distin- 17 guish them in some ways" from other occupational groups, and "it is invariably said by the miners that pitwork can never be other than an unpleasant, dirty, dangerous and •I Q difficult job." If we examine the attitudes of outside observers to the miner's work, and the reflections of the miners themselves upon their jobs, it can be seen how the miners were distinguished from other occupational groups by the nature of their work and its environment. The first aspects of"coalmining tobe considered are the special peculiarities of the physical working situation. The surroundings of the underground workers were constantly moving as the earth settled over the caverns and tunnels crea• ted by the miners. In this respect the environment can be described as being dynamic and unpredictable. Unlike other occupations.working conditions were constantly changing, and planning therefore could not be uniform or standardized. No two coal faces were ever alike and, indeed, one coal face could go through many phases of change, from rolls in the 185 floor or roof strata to faults where the coal might disappear completely. The roof or floor might become wet, and a rela• tively safe working area might suddenly become uncertain or dangerous. The uncertainty and unpredictability of the working situation affected the attitude of the coalminer to his work, and required a high degree of alertness and sensitivity to changing conditions on the part of the miner. This served to draw the miners more closely together for, "the solidarity and independence of the miners... must in part be due to feelings engendered by working in a world of their own faced 19 with an ever-present sense of danger." Other more stri• king distinctions concern, "... the peculiar nature of the environment... compared with a factory or other place of work. The miner descends into a world where the most obvious features are darkness, dust and a sense of isolation. In many cases these conditions are coupled with excessive heat, 20 water and cramped working conditions." These "dark, dirty and dangerous" aspects of coalmining were the reasons why the miners had "a psychology peculiar to their trade and why non-mining people often regard miners with an ambiguous mix- 21 ture of respect rand rejection," Coalmining encompasses conditions of extreme variety. Seams may be narrow so that men can never work in a standing position? the atmosphere can be dry, dusty and excessively hot; or conditions may be wet and slippery. Whatever the peculiar conditions of the mine, there were certain diffi• culties that the miner had to learn to overcome in his 186 everyday work. One feature common to all coalminers, was the constant battle against darkness and its limitations. It is understandable that the miner felt himself to be distinct from other industrial workers, and that outsiders regarded his work as marking him off from other occupational groups. Although working conditions improved towards the end of the nineteenth century, with the implementation of various safety feature, Paul de Rousiers was still able to write from his observations in the Lothian coalfield in 1893 that "their work is very different from that of the factory hand tending a machine without any muscular fatigue in a large and well- 22 ventilated building." By studying the experiences of observers who actually visited the pits and watched men work, we can see how pit work was regarded by non-miners. The first major obstacle to be overcome by the visitor, was the actual descent of the shaft. In 1835, John Holland noted in his experiences that it was in descending various collieries that "sensations bordering 23 on the awful are inevitably experienced." y The coal face could be anything up to five miles from the bottom of the shaft, and the collier had to travel this distance on foot before his working day began. Travelling the underground-roadways on foot was an art in itself, and was one that George Orwell had difficulty in mastering. His description of this operation is one of the most graphic of any stranger underground. The difficulties ' he encoun- 187 tered reflect those of any newcomer to the mine and are quoted in full to demonstrate a further specialized condi• tion of the miner's occupations • Usually it is bad going underfoot - thick dust or jagged chunks of shale, and in some mines where there is water it is mucky as a farmyard. Also there is the track for the coal tubs, like a miniature railway track with sleepers a foot or two apart, which is tiresome to walk on ... At the start to walk stooping is rather a joke, but it is a joke that soon wears off. I am handicapped by being exceptionally tall, but when the roof falls to four feet or less it is a tough job for anybody except a dwarf or a child. You have not only got to bend double, you have also got to keep your head up all the while so as to see the beams and girders and dodge them when they come. You have, therefore, a constant crick in the neck, but this is nothing to the pain in your knees and thighs. After half a mile it becomes (I am not exaggerating) an unbearable agony. You begin to wonder if you will ever get to the end - still more, how on earth you are going to get back. Your pace grows slower and slower. You come to a stretch of a couple of hundred yards where it is all exceptionally low and you have to work yourself along in a squatting position. Then suddenly the roof opens out to a mysterious height - scene of an old fall of rock probably - and for twenty whole yards you can stand upright. The relief is overv/helming. But after this there is another low stretch of a hundred yards and then a succession of beams which you have to crawl under. You go down on all foursj even this is a relief after the squatting business. But when you come to the end of the beams and try to get up again, you find that your knees have temporarily struck work and refuse to lift you. You call a halt... Your guide (a miner) is sympathetic. He knows that your muscles are not the same as his... finally you do somehow creep as far as the coal face. You have gone a mile and taken the best part of an hour; a miner would do it in not much more than twenty minutes. Having got there, you have to sprawl in the coal dust and get your strength back for several minutes before you can even watch the work in progress with any kind of intelligence. 24 Orwell was also highly impressed with the work performed by the miners, under conditions which he compared to his 188 mental impression of hell. Under these conditions he watched terrific feats of work being performed by the fillers. These men could each load between ten and fifteen tons of coal 25 per "day on to the conveyor belts or into tubs. -\ It is impossible to watch the "fillers" at work without feeling a pang of envy for their toughness. It is a dreadful job that they do, an almost super• human job by the standards of the ordinary person. For they are not only shifting monstrous quantities of coal, they are also doing it in a position that doubles or trebles the work. They have got to remain kneeling all the while - they could hardly rise from their knees without hitting the ceiling ... And the other conditions do not exactly make things easier. There is the heat - it varies, but in some mines it is suffocating and. the coal dust that stuffs up your throat and nostrils and collects along your eyelids... But the fillers look and_work as though they were made of iron. 26 The miners had to adapt to cramped working conditions, and in fact became expert at working in a kneeling or lying position. Those miners who wrote in their autobiographies of the experiences they encountered when they were first learning the miner's trade describe the specializations and adaptations required by mining. The environment in which the coalminer laboured necessitated the development of special skills, strength, and attitudes to work, and an in• tuitive avoidance of injury. B.L. Coombes who entered mining in South Wales from an agricultural background found that: The need to watch where you step, the difficulty of breathing in the confined space, the necessity to watch how high you move your head, and the trouble of seeing under these strange conditions are all confusing until one has learned to do them automatically. My mate lay on his side and cut under the coal. It took me weeks to learn the way of swinging elbows and twisting wrists without moving shoulders. 2? Of the end of his first shift of work he wrote: How glad I was to drag my aching body toward that circle of daylight! I had sore knees and was wet from 189 the waist down. The back of my right hand was raw and my back felt the same. My eyes were half closed because of the dust and my head was aching where I had hit it against the top, but I had been eight hours in a strange, new world. 28 The hours worked by the miners were a source of contro• versy, and from the 1860's to 1908, the Miners' Federation of Great Britain was committed to a policy to secure an eight-hour day. Apart from the obvious advantages of spen• ding less time underground in the conditions described above, the Federation was interested in keeping coal production down to a level whereby the market would not be swamped. Ben Pickard, the Yorkshire miners' leader fought ardently for shorter hours, for the sake of safety and health. In 1891, he addressed the Joint Conference of Coal Owners and the M.F.G.B. in the following ways The long hours our men have to put in from the time they leave their homes to engage upon their work in any shift is on the average longer than in any other trade or occupation in the country. The average is from five in the morning until two or three in the afternoon, which means 10i to 11 hours actually engaged either in getting to their work or being engaged at the coal face.... Whilst these men on the surface (in other occupations) are breathing pure air, being supplied with warm food and drinks, with their half-hour to breakfast and their hour to dinner, with such intervals in their toil, our miners are hurrying as if for life or death from home to the pit bank, and when they descend the mines the only pure air they possess during that day is what they take down with them. From the time they enter the mine they are breathing impure air, risking their lives every moment they are underground, and their toil is more dangerous and exhaustive than any other work known on the surface. We have more permanently disabled men than any other trade, and there is not the slightest doubt that we have more killed, seriously injured, and non-seriously injured than half the trades of the country put together. It has just been ascertained 190 that a great portion of the accidents resulting in persons killed and injured occurred during the later hours of the shift worked. 29 It was this last fact that eventually helped to win the official eight-hour day for the coalminers in 1908, which reduced the average working day for the miner from between fifty minutes and one hour. Working conditions were therefore, of an exceptional and distinctive nature for the coalminers. They acquired special skills, and adapted their bodies to working in close situations so that the actual work involved in hewing and transporting coal underground seemed to be second nature to them to outside observers. However, the actual environmental conditions such as bad air, dirt, poor lighting and the diseases and injuries that they promoted, could not be over• come so easily and the miners therefore deserved sympathy from outsiders, John Brophy found in his experiences in mining that the coalminer withstood hardships out of necces- sity, but this did not make those hardships any easier to bear. To be a successful miner was simply a question of having the right attitude to the job. This set him apart from the newcomer into mining: An experienced miner would often work calmly on under conditions that would terrify a novice. This was not because he liked taking chances, but because he had to work steadily, with as little lost time as possible, to get out a good day's production. He had to develop something like a sixth sense that would tell him when the chances were going against him, and never miss that warning or his career in mining would be a short one. 30 191 III The coalminer did not escape unharmed in his lifetime of labour in this environment. He expected to have his health impaired, or to succumb to injury at some time in his career, as a direct result of the conditions already described. We must now consider the effects of these conditions upon colliery safety and the health of the miner. The nature of the miner's work place was such that he had to be aware at all times of the dangers that might befall him. Roof falls, floor movements, fires, flooding and poi• sonous gas were ever present threats. The high accident rate of the industry indicates the unpredictable nature of under• ground work. To combat the dangerous nature of his job, a coalminer developed a sensitivity and knowledge peculiar to his occupation: A man will gently tap the roof with the head of a pick-shaft. The sound will tell him how safe it is. He must distinguish between a prop that is merely creaking and one that is about to break. The distant rumbling of a runaway tub, the sligh• test change in the movement of the air, a dusti• ness in the atmosphere, the mighty belch as the floor heaves upwards, or a trickle of stones from the roofj each will bring a miner's senses to concert pitch. 31 However, accidental deaths from explosions, asphyxiation, flooding, and (most wasteful of all of life), roof falls, occurred to a tragic degree. If death rates through:violence, are considered, mining was, with the exception of seafaring, the most dangerous occupation in Britain. J.S. Haldane's researches into the mortality of coalminers demonstrated that the miners had a higher than average rate of death due to accidents. Table III below draws upon his figures. 192 TABLE III To show the annual death rates from accidents, -per 1.000 living in Britain, in age groups. 32 15 - 25 25 - 35 35 - 45 45 - 55 55 - 65 1849 - 53 All Males 0.9 1.0 1.15 1.4 1.6 Coalminers 5.7 5.3 6.2 6.9 5.9 1910 - 12 All Males 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.8 1.1 Coalminers 1.3 1.2 1.6 . 1.9 2.3 (Notes the figures in the later time period include those retired males as well as occupied males.) The wide variation in the figures for coalminers between these two dates indicates that the accident rate was decli• ning considerably, due to the introduction of safety legis• lation in mining. However, the rates for the coalminers were still more than double those of the national rates in the later period. The figures for the Midlands coalfields during the earlier period were considerably less than the national rates for coalminers. Thus, deaths by violence per one thou• sand coalminers in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire, and Leicestershire combined ( total of 33»000 men) were as follows for each year from 1851 to 1853*- all accidents —3.4j explosions — 1.1? roof falls — l.Oj and other accidents - 1.3 per thousand. 33 In the Black Country, where 32,500 miners worked in these years, the all- 34 accident rate was 7.1 per thousand employed. J- It was the small scale or individual tragedies from roof falls which claimed the greatest annual toll of life. For instance, between 1903 and 1912 the annual death rate 193 per 1,000 coalminers in certain types of accidents was as follows: explosions — 0.17; falls of ground — 0.74; Shaft accidents— 0.11; miscellaneous —0.44; above ground (all causes) — 0.78; and, under and above ground (all causes) 35 — 1.33. It was therefore, those accidents which went unnnoticed by the public which were the most destructive of life. Deaths in coalmining usually caught the attention of the public when they occurred in disaster proportions, and it was these accidents that were recorded in mining balladry and which formed the basis of the folk-lore of the miners. "These major disasters led to enquiries, occasioned most comment, made the public more keenly aware of the unusual dangers of the miners' occupation and conscious of how different were the conditions under which the collier laboured as compared 36 with other workers." v Table IV records some of the more notable colliery disasters in Britain, which prompted the sympathy of the public. Those which occurred in Yorkshire are indicated. TABLE IV To show the principal colliery disasters in Britain. 1856 - 18W.37 Name of colliery Date Number Dead Lund Hill (Yorkshire Feb. 1857 189 Risca Dec. 1860 130 The Oaks (Yorkshire) Dec. 1866 361 Ferndale Nov. 1867 178 Swaithe Main (Yorkshire) Dec. 1875 143 Blantyre Oct. 1877 207 Haydock June, 1878 189 Abercarne Sept. 1878 268 Risca July, 1880 120 Seaham Sept. 1880 164 Pendlebury June, 1885 178 Llanerch Feb. 1890 176 Thornhill (Yorkshire) July, 1893 139 Albion Coll., Pontypridd June, 1894 290 194 The most devastating accident in British coalmining history occurred in 1913 at Senghenydd in South Wales, when 439 men and hoys were killed at one time. Between I856 and 1880, an average of one thousand miners died annually under violent circumstances in the pits. With increased numbers of miners at work at the turn of the century, this annual figure rose in some years to 1,500. In 1910 alone, 1,818 miners were killed. Four miners died each day, on average, in the British coalfields between 1880 and 1910. However, these figures do not indicate the every day dangers that the miners had to face, so impressively, as do the figures for non-fatal accidents. Under the 1906 Notice of Accidents Act, the following numbers of injuries were reported in the United Kingdom, as causing disablement for periods 39 longer than seven days. J7 1908 - 143,258 1911 - 168,360 1909 - 154,740 1912 - 152,302 1910 - 160,638 1913 - 178,962 These figures represent between 14 and 15 per cent of the total number of employed in mining. They do not record minor accidents which caused disablement for less than one week, and probably not all accidents were reported. It is certain, however, from these figures that the miner had to expect some injury to befall him during his working life, and that, " the families of the miners live at all times under the shadow of calamity, great or small." In times of accident, the colliers formed their own rescue teams, and consequently the majority of miners were 195 aware of the destructive effects of an explosion, flood or roof fall, either through personal experience or hearsay. No miner who witnessed or heard the details of a tragedy could remain unmoved, and the importance of disasters lies in their impact upon the miners and the mining community. There are many descriptions from observers and investigators of the effects of explosions, which leave little to the imagi• nation. One such description of a fire-damp explosion in the Colliery Manager's Handbook of 1896 perhaps throws some light upon the official attitude to tragedies, on the part of the management. Here, the waste of human life was granted the same importance as the destruction of material objectss In its destructive progress (the fire-damp explosion) everything presenting an impediment, unless strong enough to resist the blast, is hurled to one side or overthrownj doors, air-crossings, trams, horses, men, the timbers for securing the roadways, etc., usually offer no obstacle to the fury of the ex• plosion. The road timbers being knocked down the roof falls in, and the ventilation is arrested. In other parts of the roadways the timbers are consi• derably charred and deflected from an upright posi• tion: their altered state and appearance pointing almost as certainly as a finger-post in the direc• tion of the blast. Too often the evidence of such mute objects is all that is to be obtained, for those who escape the violence of the explosion are poisoned by the after-damp, and not one is spared to throw light upon the calamity. 41 A more sympathetic description is afforded by John Holland of the Felling Colliery disaster in Durham. The explosion occurred in May of 1812, but the 92 dead were not finally recovered until September: Mr. Hodgson (Rev.) details with much minuteness the circumstances in which the bodies of the sufferers were respectively discovered - sometimes buried beneath the fall of roof, but mostly lying exactly in the position in which they appeared to have been thrown at the moment of the explosion. In one place, twenty-one bodies lay together in ghastly confusion: some like mummies, scorched as dry as if they had been baked. One wanted its 196 head, another its arm. The scene was truly fright• ful. The power of the fire was visible upon all; but its effects were extremely various; while some were almost torn ot pieces, there were others who appeared as if they had sunk down overpowered with sleep. 42 The last mentioned had been overcome with carbon-monoxide poisoning, or the deadly "after-damp". W.N. and J.B. Atkinson, who performed post-mortems on many bodies from mining disas• ters in an official capacity, found, among others crushed and mangled by roof falls and explosions, those who had died from poisonous gas. For instance, from the Usworth explosion, Durham, in 1885: "Thomas Wetherall. After-damp cause of death. The hair was slightly singed where it was not covered by his cap which was on. Front teeth were loose and quite pink in appearance (a remarkable fact). Clothing not torn in any way. No fractures or dislocations. Body much putrefied." J The recovery of bodies such as this was obviously a painful process for the surviving miners. 3.L. Coombes who acted as an ambulance man and first-aid man in the pits, commented that the frequent contact with death and injury had its effects. He admitted feelings of apprehension for his own safety: " I cannot check the feeling that some day I shall be just that important second too late when jumping back from a stone which is falling, or will be just a yard too near a tram when the rope snaps." The miner learned to avoid predictable accidents, but the nature of the working environment was such that freak accidents occurred, and these promoted feelings of fear among the miners and their families. In a study of a North Ameri• can mining community, Rex Lucas found that, "despite group 197 support, group control of behaviour, and a feeling of mastery- over some threats, each miner faced anew each day an uncer- tain, unpredictable, and threatening situation," J and, "the miners, their families, the townspeople, the mining com• pany, and union were all alert to the threat of death and 46 injury in the mine." Indeed, perhaps the most important aspect of a disaster, was its effect in welding the mining community together under a common sorrow. Tragedy had a unifying effect on the towns• people, as noted by G. Ridley M.P. when he reported on the South Normanton colliery explosion of 1937 to the House of Commons. Eight colliers had died. I had never quite realized before, and I think that the house as a whole cannot realize, the long shadow which is cast by a mining disaster. I visited in the course of the day, a man in the middle thirties, a normal, healthy, virile man who had, 48 hours before, been within 50 yards of the disaster. In that 48 hour Individual accidents as well as great disasters had a similar effect on the miners for: ... what are fire and flood compared with the daily toll over two centuries: the sudden silence in the mine and the mournful groups with the still body on the rough ambulance? These things have brought suffering and broken hearts, but they have welded these people into a unity which is more than econo• mic. They have brought an instinctive understanding to all miners and all workers in all lands, and created a sense of solidarity which no amount of education could have given by itself. 48 198 The working conditions of the coalminer not only pre• sented him with safety problems, but also had an adverse ef• fect on his health. It was in the realms of industrial disease that perhaps the greatest death toll lay. Disasters could be tabulated in statistics, but death from disease could not be assessed so easily., Opinion has therefore divided on the extent of the harm to health which adverse working conditions engendered. The 1842 Royal Commission into Children's Employment was quite emphatic that work in the coalmines resulted in "cer• tain positive diseases, partly the direct result of excessive muscular exertion, and partly the result of such exertion combined with the unhealthy state of the place of work." ^ The Report identified the symptoms of these diseases as loss of appetite, stomach and back pains, ftausea, liver troubles, rupture and boils. Most miners aged prematurely, were asth• matic by the age of thirty, and many contracted tuberculosis, while rheumatism and inflammation of the joints were common complaints. This pessimistic view was assumed by the miners them• selves and those sympathetic with their lot, and is also supported by. some official data and statistics. Those miners who recorded their life stories were most bitter about the ill-effects of mining on health. Silicosis was a parti• cularly strong bone of contention. For many years the coal owners refused to recognize this disease or its cause, but Arthur Horner was bitterly aware of its effects: 199 Ever since I was a boy, I can remember the men cho• king themselves to death after long years in the mine. Nobody who hasn't lived with the miners can under• stand what the toll of this disease meant. Go to the graveyards of West Wales and look at the tombstones and see how it decimated the young manhood of the Welsh valleys. There was the case of the Glyn Neath :, football teami all eleven of them, miners working in the anthracite pits, died from silicosis. 50 Statistics and official investigations can also be cited to support these individual views. A pessimistic attitude was taken by the commissioners of the 1904 Investigation into Physical Deterioration. The Report commented on the entry of boys into mining that, "it does not matter to the managers whether they are scrofulous, rickety, phthisical or anything else - they get them into the pit. Dr. Young also instanced the coalminers as a class liable to degene- 51 ration." George Rosen, who gathered together evidence from various doctors* investigations into miners' diseases from as far back as the seventeenth century, concluded that the health of miners was impaired because of working conditions, and that mortality rates were adversely affected. Before 1850, he said that the mean duration of life for the miners was less than the average duration of life for the rest of 52 the population. Although health conditons improved somewhat in the second half of the century with the amelioration of conditions in the mines, the coalminers* death rates were still higher than average among older men and youths. Table V compares the mortality rates for coalminers generally and for those in the West Riding, with the national mortality rate which is taken as a base of 100. 200 TABLE V To compare the mortality rate for coalminers with the national rate. 1908 53 AGES 65 and 15 20 25 35 45 55 upwards Occupied males 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 Coalminers generally 150 111 86 77 94 119 143 Coalminers in West Riding 115 92 ?° . 77 89 126 138 The age period from 25 years to 54 years appeared to he quite healthy years for coalminers, when compared to the average for all occupied males. Yet, the miners suffered worse health in their early working life and after 55 years of age when the death rates were comparatively higher than the national rate. Rosen concluded that most deaths in miners were due to respiratory and chest diseases, especially bron• chitis and pneumonia. From the seventeenth century autopsies had discovered the presence of a thick, black macous substance in the lungs of the miners who had died from respiratory diseases. Medical knowledge, however, was limited in this early period of coal• mining, and the causes of miner's "black lung" were not con• vincingly identified by early physicians. Rosen is never• theless emphatic about the adverse effects of breathing in coal dust, and attributes these early cases of lung deterio• ration to pneumoconiosis. His conclusions from his study of health and the coalminer are that: In the first place, it is evident that all miners suffered most from various pulmonary diseases. In consequence of the prevalence of these morbid 201 conditions, the rates of mortality were generally higher among miners than among non-mining males, although an excessive divergence in the mortality rates of the two groups did not become very apparent until the fourth decade of life. 5L One final disease which was peculiar to miners, was the eye disease, nystagmus. This was caused by poor illumination, and could be severe enough to prevent a miner from working. In 1908, 460 cases of nystagmus merited compensation, while in 1910, "this figure had risen to 1,618, and again to 6,000 cases in 1913. By 1922, the wide prevalence of nystagmus was recognized, and it was estimated that 50 per cent of all coalminers suffered from this, with dizziness and other head complaints to some degree, There can be no doubts about the detrimental effects of coalmine work upon the miner's health. Yet this has been disputed and evidence has been produced to support a favourable view of work in the mines. Sir Richard Redmayne, a Chief Inspector of Coal Mines, suggested in his autobio• graphy that although mining was dangerous, coalminers on the whole provided the healthier section of the community. In 1892: ... the general manger of some collieries., said before the Royal Commission on Labour: "Coalmining is not an unhealthy occupation. The atmosphere in which the miner works is temperate, and of necessity fresh and comparatively pure. The coalminer is not liable to ... wet and dry... He is liable to accidents of various description:, but he added that there was a consi• derable number of workmen between the ages of 55 and 70 still following their occupations. 57 But the Coal mine mangers doubtless tolerated social evils . more easily than their employees. E.H, Phelps Brown maintains that the coalminers were 202 healthier than tin miners, potters, seamen, unskilled labou• rers, builders and textile workers. The differences in stan• dards of health were due, he writes, to better income, diet and housing, recreation, a healthy physique demanded by mine- work and the fact that the miners insured themselves for the provison of medical care. ^ Statistics can also be used to support this contention. J.S. Haldane investigated the causes of death among coalminers and concluded that as an occupational group, they were far healthier than might have been expected. Although death rates among coalminers had once been higher than average, they had improved out of all proportions as a result of in ovations in, mining such as improved ventilation systems. He provided the following figures to support his statement: TABLE VI To show the annual death rates per 1.000 living. Iby ages, at two periods. 59 AGES 15 - 25 25 - 35 35 - 4-5 45 - 55 55 - 65 1) 1849 - 53 All males 8.1 10.1 12.7 18.9 31.8 Coal Miners 14.5 14.5 17.2 26.3 44.0 2) 1910 - 12 All males 2.85 4.7 7.9 14.6 30.1 Coal Miners 3.5 4.4 6.7 12.6 30.1 (Note: the figures in the later time period include retired as well as occupied males.) This table demonstrates that a significant improvement had occurred in the death rates of coalminers during this period of time. In middle age, from 25 years to 54 years, 203 we see once again that the miners had a relatively low rate of death in the later of the two time periods. Haldane attri• buted a higher death rate for miners among the younger men to a higher than average accident rate, and among the older men, to the prevalence of lung diseases in old miner. But on the whole, he suggested that coalminers were not unhealthy. Indeed, he produced figures to suggest that annual death rates from lung diseases were considerably less than average for miners before old age was reached, thus denying Rosen's evi- 60 dence. It must be borne in mind however, that J.S. Haldane's investigations came under the auspices of the coal mine owners and his biases combined with a general inefficiency in recor• ding deaths from specific causes, may have affected these figures. Collis and Greenwood both maintained that the coalminers had a lower death rate than might be expected, especially when compared with other occupational groups. Thus, their life expectancy was slightly higher than factory workers and workshop employees. TABLE VII To show the expectation of life at the age of 20 years in certain occupational groups, based on mortality figures for 1900 to 1902^ 61 Life expectancy Occupation in years Clergy 4?,1 Agricultural labourers 46.2 Clerks 43.2 Coal Miners 43.2 Cotton manufacturers 41.4 Carpet manufacturers 42.2 Shoemakers 42.6 Tailors 42.3 Printers 42.1 204 It can be seen therefore that a conflict exists between those who take the part of the coalminers and argue poor health due to working conditions, and those who regard coal• mining as being no unhealthier than other occupations. It is a controversy from which no definite conclusions about the miner's health can be drawn, as convincing evidence has been put forward on both sides. Even today, a controversy rages in the United Kingdom between the National Union of Miners and the National Coal Board over the effects of coal and stone dust on the miner's health, and where the fine distinction between bronchitis and pneumoconiosis should be drawn. Problems which face today's observer, when attemp• ting to identify the exact extent of industrial disease, are multiplied when an assessment is attempted of ill-health in the past. Perhaps the most important conclusion which can be drawn is that, despite the controversies over the actual extent of disease, the miners genuinely did regard themselves to be at a disadvantage in this respect. They believed their work to be abnormally unhealthy, and the question of disease provided one of their major grievances. The effects of this belief was to further alienate the coalminers from the coal owners, and to strengthen solidarity within the mining communities. Here was a further reason, combined with grievances over safety conditions, why miners should feel themselves to be distinct and separate from other occupational groups. 205 IV The working conditions of the coalminers and the resul• ting accidents and impaired health had certain unifying effects upon the coalminers as an occupational group. Furthermore, certain attitudes developed from this specialized working situation which were distinctive of the coalminers. These attitudes alone could provide the topic for a whole new thesis, but in this instance space permits only a brief survey of the effects of his occupation upon the coalminer. The coal mine obviously dominated the working lives of the majority of men in the coal towns, as there were few other employment alternatives. It is to the work of the coal• miner that we must look for the key to his attitudes and characteristics, and it was in the coal mine that his social contacts, and his outlook on life, were moulded. Once a man became a coalminer, he became a member of a geographically, socially and culturally isolated group — he acquired its particular norms and attitudes. These attitudes developed primarily from the peculiar nature of the coalminer's work, and were dominated by a sense of unity, exclusiveness, and sharing in a common struggle in life and work. Lubin and Everett have identified what they term a "group mind" or "group mentality" among the miners, emerging from their shared living and working conditions, and their preoccupation with a common past. Because of the lack of diversity of activi• ties for the coalminer in these single industry towns, every• one shared the same preoccupations. 206 The coalminers were aware of their common problems, and also the distinctiveness of these problems from those of other } occupational groups. There developed from the working situa• tion a unique solidarity, a necessarily high degree of coopera tion and a mutual trust between the coalminers. This was recognized by the Census investigators in 1911 who stated that, "far more than most other industrial workers, miners were bound together by the peculiar nature of their work: and because they were all involved in the same discomforts and dangers, and worked underground either in pairs or in highly disciplined teams, they developed a unique camaraderie. The dangers presented by coalmining called for complete cooperation between the miners for their own safety, and for the safety of the whole group. Each man carried a great burden of responsibility for his fellows, and from this there grew a unique interdependence in the pits. Sigal found this at work in his study of a pit in the Barnsley area. "At first, as far as I can tell, the two most requisite skills are the willingness to endure at a consistently high level of physical expenditure, and an inherent sensitivity in the arts of cooperation.... For the seven or more hours daily which the collier must spend down in pit, he is united to his mate by devilish bonds of occupational marriage." ^ Moreover, this close working situation led to ties of friendship and mutual understanding. The collier B.L. Coombes worked in the same pit with a companion for many years where, "we learned to lift together automatically, to change our working positions to suit each other without saying a word, 207 and to vary our jobs so that the change should give some rest. For some years we shared our troubles and joys, good weeks and bad, fears and ambitions — we were real "butties". The cardinal sin in the pit was for a man to be lazy. Failure to complete his quota of work meant that the whole production of the team was held back. If a man was unable to keep up the pace of work, through illness or old age, then he would expect his colleagues or working sons to help him out. If, however, a man consistently fell behind through laziness, then the team would exclude him from their ranks. In mining circles, this was a cause for shame, for it worked against the image of the manliness of the miner, and also went against the cooperation essential to the working situation. The majority of the coalminers in a pit were known to every other working man in that mine, either through repu• tation or actual working experience. Each man was classified according to his ability and worth as a worker, and it was of importance to the miner that he ranked highly in the opi• nions of his workmates. Antagonisms could not be allowed to develop in the pit, as this might influence safety. This called for harmony in social relationships too, for a man's work contacts were often his social and leisure contacts also, for " the team of colliers, within this system of mutual dependence, is the hub of the social structure of coalmining." The unifying effects of disaster and distress in the coalmining community, which encompassed the workers and their families, has already been remarked upon. Indeed, the friend• ship which emerged in the working situation was put into 208 practice and channelled into rescue operations during times of tragedy, and this combined with the community feeling of sorrow to further a sense of cohesion for, "there is a definite community of misfortune, a fellowship of poverty, a Guild of Grief. Men have sometimes wondered why it is that the miners in their unions are so clannish; and they have marveled too at the nature of this welding and of the strength it repre• sents. Well, they need not wonder more. It is of the mine, 66 its dangers and its need." If a man were killed in the mine, his workmates tradi• tionally left their work for the rest of the day as a mark of respect. In times of more serious disaster, the miners' code of honour deemed the rescue of trapped workmates to be a "sacred duty." ^ Rescue work continued if possible until the last body had been found, despite the threat to the rescuer's own life. Mining lore abounds in tales of heroism and courage displayed by the rank and file in the coalfields in their loyalty to trapped workmates. There existed also a unity among the miners in their struggle for better conditions, and in their protracted war• fare with the colliery owners over questions of hours, pay and conditions. The solidarity of the miners in unionization and their higher then average propensity to strike is well known, and will not be discussed here. However, it must be mentioned that the miners were aggressive when their known and accepted working conditions or wages were threatened, and it was in the realms of tangible working and living 209 grievances that they were involved, rather than in politics. G.D.H. Cole explained the coalminers' struggle to better their own conditions, and the solidarity that this engendered in the following way: The miner not only works in the pit: he lives in the pit village, and all his immediate interests are concentrated at one point. The town factory worker, on the other hand, lives often far from his place of work and mingles with workers of other callings. The townsman's experience pro• duces perhaps a broader outlook, and a quicker response to social stimuli coming from without: but the miners* intense solidarity and loyalty to their Unions is undoubtedly the result of the conditions under which they work and live... their isolation ministers to their own self- sufficiency and loyalty one to another.... They are narrow and slow to understand others or to feel the influence of outside public opinion. 68 Once the coalminers had fixed upon a course of action, they pursued their aims aggressively. They were keenly aware of the past, and the common knowledge of past struggles with coal owners served to bind them together more closely. Stories of strikes and lock-outs had become fixed in mining lore, and this contributed to the strong influence of traditionalism among the miners. This brings us to the final way in which the work of the coalminer served to strengthen solidarity. The physical isolation of the coalmining communities and the impossibility of transferring the technical skills of the miner to other crafts, meant that a traditionalism emerged in coalmining whereby sons naturally followed their fathers into the family trade, and an attitude of resignation emerged, so that the numbers who left the coal trade were small. George Hitchin wanted to leave mining \ . but was forced to 210 stay, because no-one among his family or friends could give the slightest guidance. In this respect, he says he was 69 suffering from, "social and economic claustrophobia." The mining class therefore became self-perpetuating because of its geographic isolation and the traditional attitude to the mining trade. The physical difficulties of leaving mining combined with a conservatism, a lack of initiative and force of habit, inherent in the mining class, meant that families devoted themselves to coalmining and were united in a resig• nation to this vocation. As well as the tremendous unifying force of working conditions, certain attitudes came out of the working situa• tion which were characteristic of the mining class. Firstly, the coalminers were basically conservative in outlook. Their hostility to innovations in the mine, such as the introduc• tion of machinery, demonstrated their basic distrust of change and their desire to perpetuate conditions as they knew them. This conservatism can be identified in the folk-lore culture, balladry and superstitions of the coalfields, for, "... the traditional ballads and songs of the coalfield are the product of a slowly evolving conservative industry which lacks the sudden invigorating experience of rapid technological change." Furthermore, the isolation in which the miners lived combined with an awareness of a long history, fostered an oral tradition largely revolving around stories and songs of strikes, dangers and disaster, "for that which is traditional and conservative flourishes best where workers live in 211 71 isolation, with limited occupational opportunities." ' The superstitions of the mining classes were concerned with the question of safety, and a great deal of attention was given to dreams and premonitions of disasters. "This type of work, with at least four times as many accidents as in other industries, must he a breeding place for all kinds of 72 superstitions and premonitions." ' Some of these supersti• tions appear to be illogical — for instance, a miner would return home for the day if he passed a woman on his way to work. If ;,a man did not awake at his usual time to rise for work, then he would not go to the pit that day even if he could still get there on time. There must have been strong reasoning behind the superstition discovered by a Commissioner of Mines in 1844, for this particular habit has persisted among some miners until today: I found during casual visits to their cottages from time to time after the hours of labour, some hundreds of men in the act of washing; the backs of every one of them were quite black, and every one of them gave the same reason in the same words for not washing his back, namely, "that it would weaken it". The univer• sality of this habit was allowed by all the managers and persons in authority, whom I questioned upon the subject. 73 The existence of such beliefs suggest that the coalminers did fact feel fear because of their jobs and despite the maxim "familiarity breeds contempt," it might be inferred from the persistence of such superstitions that the miners never really overcame their fear as time and experience passed hy. Secondly, the coalminer felt a great deal of pride in his working ability, mingled with feelings of exclusiveness. 212 His pride originated from two sources. He realized that his job was difficult and dangerous and drew upon great reserves of physical strength. He felt that no non-miner could match his skill. In the second place, his pride was also an attempt at self-assurance and a reaction against the inferior status that the miner had been given in the past. The miner's task was indeed one which only a well trained and experienced coalminer could perform. He was uniquely responsible for his life and the lives of his workmates. He was aware therefore of his own specialized skills, but was also aware of the contempt with which his class was regarded by outsiders. The French observer Paul de Rousiers believed that mining made no call upon the imagination or brain power, 74 and that the collier depended purely on sheer muscle power. But one Scottish 'colliertold Robert Haddow in the 1880's: Just now any strong stick of a fellow can come into a pit and hash and smash and call himself a collier; but if all the men in the pit were such, then the pit would go to wreck and ruin. This is a point on which we have a very keen feeling, and it would be useless to disguise the fact that the introduction of untrained men - mostly Irishmen - into the pit, is what keeps the calling of a collier at so low a level. 75 The coalminers felt that only those who were born to mining were capable of learning the trade, and that outsiders were a hindrance and a danger in the pit. The influx of outside labour into mining at the end of the nineteenth cen• tury caused a considerable degree of anxiety to the miners, and there was a general call from the unions to the coal owners not to employ men from other occupations after the age of 16 years. In 1890, Frank Hall of Yorkshire voiced 213 this alarm when, addressing a union meeting, he was reported as saying: Since the coal trade had improved, their pit hanks had presented a similar spectacle to what they did in 1872, and they were again "being visited by farm labourers. He did not say that out of any disrespect to their agricultural friends, but, he did say "Every man to his trade". Let agricultura• lists therefore stick to the land and they as miners would stick to their trade in the coal pits. 76 The hostility that the miners showed towards outside labour, which was expressed through their unions, was effec• tive in keeping the numbers of foreign immigrant miners low. (There was a fear among British miners that if foreign labour was employed, then problems of communication would arise — a dangerous situation in the coal pits.) The num• bers of North American and European miners enumerated in the coal pits of England and Wales were as follows from 1861 to 1911:- 77 1861 — 36 1891 — 109 1871 -- 11 1901 — 559 (319 from the 1881 — 51 United States) 1911 — 882 The numbers of foreigners in British pits were therefore negligible until the turn of the century, when American mine- workers, in particular, began to enter British mines. Finally, the miners were notoriously carefree in their attitude to leisure, and the recreational pursuits of the miners were frivolous in the sense of giving "no thought for the morrow". Their "live for today" attitude emerged directly from their work. The ever-present threat of death or injury, and the insecurity of employment, either through injury or 214 the reduced state of the market for coal, led them to make the "best of life while they were able. This was characterized by the carefree, spendthrift attitude of the majority of miners. Involved in this active pursuit of leisure was ab• senteeism from work. Absenteeism served a dual purpose — it acted as a strain-reducing mechanism at times when a miner felt himself to be a liability to the safety of his workmates; and when a miner working on piece-rates felt that he had earned all he needed, he would take time off from work to pursue more pleasurable activities. It is to the question of how the coalminer spent his time when not at work that we must now turn in a new chapter. Aspects of working life and its effects upon the community and upon the attitudes of the mining class have been discussed. We must now examine in more detail, what effects the working situation had upon the coalminer in the social sphere. FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER VI 1 G.A.W. Tomlinson, Coal-Miner (London, 1937)» p. 84 2 F. Machin, The Yorkshire Miners Vol. I. (Barnsley, 1958), p. 4 3 IMd., p. 3. 4 Ibid., p. 3. 5 C.R. Fay, Life and Labour in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1920), p. 185. 6 Machin, Oy. Cit.. p. 24 7 J. Holland, Fossil Fuel. The Collieries and the Coal Trade of Great Britain (London, 1st Edition, 1835), p. 242. 215 8 J. Wilson, Memories of a Labour Leader. The Autobio• graphy of John Wilson (London, 1910). P. 95. 9 Ibid., p. 96. 10 J.E. Williams, The Derbyshire Miners (London, 1962), p. 442. 11 See The Derbyshire Times. March, 1912, cited in Ibid., 12 R.A. Lucas, Minetown. Milltown, Railtown. Life in Canadian Communities of Single Industry (Toronto. 1971), P. 390. 13 G. Parkinson, True Stories of Durham Pit-Life (London, 1912). p. 1. 14 H. Pelling, Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian Britain (London, 1968), p. 47. 15 The Census Report for England and Wales. 1891» Summary Tables, B.P.P. 1893 - 94, CVl. Table 5. PP. xxii - xxiii. 16 The Census Report for England and Wales. 1911; Summary' fables, B.P.P. 1914 - 16, LXXXI. Table 50. p. 144 and Table 6, p. 59 17 N, Dennis, F. Henriques, and C. Slaughter, Coal is our Life (London, 1956), p. 44. 18 Ibid., p. 38. 19 W.H. Scott, E. Mumford, I.C. McGivering, and J.M. Kirkby, Coal and Conflict. A Study of Industrial Relations at Collieries (Liverpool, 1963). P. 23. 20 Ibid., p. 22. 21 G.B. Baldwin,, Beyond Nationalization. The Labour . Problems of British Coal (Harvard, Mass., 1955), p. 1. 22 Paul de Rousiers, The Labour Question in Britain (London, 1896), p. 122. 23 Holland, Op. Cit.. p. 235. 24 G. Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London, 1937), pp. 27 - 29. 25 See N. Dennis et al., Op. Cit.. on working output, pp. 38 - 40. 26 Orwell, Op. Cit.. pp. 24 - 25. 216 27 B.L, Coombes, These Poor Hands (London, 1939), p. 34. 28 Ibid., p. 38. 29 R.P. Arnot, The Miners. A History of the Miners' Federa• tion of Great Britain. 1889 - 1910. Vol. I. (London, ~~ 1949), PP. 142 - 143. 30 J. Brophy, A Miner's Life (Madison and Milwaukee, 1964), p. 41. 31 G. Hitchin, Pit-Yacker (London, 1962), p. 72. 32 J.S. Haldane, "Coal Owners' Research in Health and Safety, from Historical Review of Coalmining, (London, 1924), p. 267. 33 P.E.H. Hair, "Mortality from Violence in British Coal Mines, 1800 - 1850," Economic History Review. 2nd Series, Vol. 21, No. 3, (1968), p. 546. 34 Ibid.. p. 546. 35 E.L. Collis and M. Greenwood, The Health of the Indus• trial Worker (London, 1921), p. 181. 36 Machin, Op. Cit., p. 21. 37 C. Pamely, The Colliery Manager's Handbook (London, 1896), p. 779. 38 R.P. Arnot, The Miners: Years of Struggle. A History of the M.F.G.B. from 1910 onwards Vol. 2. (London, 1953), P. 23. 39 Ibid., p. 23. 40 Ibid., p. 23. 41 Pamely, Op. Cit., p. 420. 42 Holland, Op. Cit.. See pp. 263 - 265. 43 W.N. and J.B. Atkinson, Explosions in Coal Mines (London, 1886), p. 94. 44 Coombes, Op. Cit.. pp. 258 - 259. 45 R.A. Lucas, Men in Crisis. A Study of a Mine Disaster (New York, 1969), p. 19. 46 Ibid., p. 4. 47 Williams, Op. Cit., p. 799. 217 48 J. Lawson., A Man's Life (London, 1932), p. 199. 49 The 1842 Children's Employment Commission, First- Report, p, 187, cited in Machin, Op. Cit., p. 7. 50 A, Horner, Incorrigible Rebel (London, i960), p. 142. 51 Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration 1904, Vol. I, Report and Appendix, B.P.P. 1904, XXXII, p. 29. 52 G-. Rosen, The History of Miners' Diseases (New York, 1943), pp. 212 - 213. 53 Ibid., p. 241. 54 Ibid., pp. 224 - 225. 55 See Williams, Op. Cit., p. 479 and p. 803. 56 See Sir R. Redmayne, Men. Mines and Memories (London, 1942). 57 The Royal Commission on Labour. B.P.P. 1892, XXXVI, Part (i), p. 166, cited in J. Hart, "Nineteenth Century Social Reform: A Tory interpretation of History," Past and Present. No. 31, (July, 1965), pp. 39 - 61. 58 See E.H. Phelps Brown, The Growth of British Industrial Relations (London, i960, pp. 35 - 36. 59 Haldane, Op. Cit., p. 267 60 Ibid., p. 268. 61 Collis and Greenwood, Op. Cit.. p. 74. 62 Cited in R. Gregory, The Miners and British Politics. 1906 - 1914 (Oxford, 1968), p. 3. 63 C. Sigal, Weekend in Dinlock (London, i960, pp. 172 - 173. 64 Coombes, Op. Cit., p. 68. 65 N. Dennis et al., Op. Cit.. p. 45. 66 From R. Dataller, From a Pitman's Notebook cited in I. Lubin and H. Everett, , ;The British Coal Dilemma (New York, 1927), p. 197. 67 See R.A. Lucas, Men in Crisis. 68 G.D.H. Cole, Labour in the Coal-Mining Industry. 1914 - 21 (Oxford, 1923), P. 7. 218 69 See Hitchin, Op. Cit., pp. 88 - 89. 70 B, Lewis, Coal-Mining in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London, 1971)» P« 30. 71 Ibid., p. 31. 72 F. Zweig, Men in the Pits (London, 1948), p. 69. 73 R. Challinor and B. Ripley, The Miners' Association (London, 1969), P. 51. 74 See Paul de Rousiers, Op. Cit. 75 R. Haddow, "The Miners of Scotland," in The Nineteenth Century. Vol. XXIV, (July - Dec, 1888), p. 362. 76 A. R. Griffin, Mining in the East Midlands. 1550 - 194-7 (London, 1971), p. 114. 77 See General Reports to the Censuses for 1861 to 1911 in B.P.P. 219 CHAPTER VII THE COALMINER - HIS SOCIAL LIFE The purpose of this chapter is to examine the social and cultural pursuits of the coalminer outside of the hours of work, and to determine how these activities reinforced that cohesion among the miners, described in the previous chapter. A conflict of opinion exists as to the integrity and the extent of the cultural level in the mining communi• ties, between those who saw the coalminers as a rowdy, illi• terate and pleasure-seeking rabble, and those who have identi• fied an extensive movement towards self-improvement among the miners. Both of these observations are valid and it would appear that the miner's social life was influenced to a great extent by the working conditions already described. Coalmining society was a male-orientated society, both in the occupational and social spheres. With few opportunities for female employment, the role of the man as breadwinner was reinforced. Through his occupation, he represented the family to the outside world, and the status of the family depended upon his ability as a worker. We have already seen how the coalminer worked hard. In the same spirit, as though to relieve the tensions of work, he was infamous for his energetic leisure activities. Recreation, like work, was a male preserve, and women were rarely found in either of these pursuits. Home and family life might centre around the woman, but employment and leisure were exclusive to the man. John Holland's summary of the recreation peculiar to the coalminers, written in 1835, resolves the conflict of attitudes 220 about the high or low cultural level of the miners, by sugges• ting that there was a combination of both levels: ... those persons only who are acquainted with the labours of the late Rev. John Wesley and his zealous coadjutors, in preaching at the risk of their lives among the colliers of Kingswood and elsewhere, can have any just notion of the state of ignorance and bruta• lity which prevailed. Their sports and pastimes were mostly of that barbarous description of which happily few traces at present remain, such as bull-baiting, cock-fighting, boxing, etc. On the other hand, a taste for music largely prevailed, there being found among the pitmen not only those who could play upon the more common instruments, but in some of the hamlets entire bands were made up. It may be added that some of these grimy men are consi• derable readers of books not always found in the hands y of workmen, such as metaphysical treatises, etc. On religious subjects,many of them are exceedingly well informed, 1 Tastes varied in ..all mining 1 ^..communities between low or vulgar pastimes, and more elevated cultural pursuits. But wherever the miner sought his outlet, he had no half• hearted feelings and, just as in his work, he pursued his interest with intense energy. I Because of the nature of the coalmining community where the mine dominated the village or town, and the community was not characterized by diversity of occupation or social class, a man's workmates were often his social contacts also. This close social relationship combined with the mutual under• standing and cooperation of the working relationship, served to strengthen the bonds of solidarity between the miners: 221 Solidarity, despite the division into interest groups among the miners in a given pit, is a very strongly developed characteristic of social relations in mining; it is a charac• teristic engendered by the nature and organi• zation of coalmingj it is a characteristic that has been given added strength as a result of the high degree of integration in mining villages. 2 Just as in the working situation, the miners tended to stick together during their leisure hours, and recreational activities were of a gregarious nature. The miners preferred to enjoy themselves in groups, which were made up of their workmates, and from which women were excluded. The activities of these groups were pursued with a high degree of intensity, which was engendered by the working conditions already des• cribed. The miner's "live for today" attitude in,their lei• sure pursuits was a direct reaction to the fear and uncer• tainty presented to them by their work. As late as 1956, in the social survey of a Yorkshire colliery town, it was found that "insecurity... is the most important single factor which has moulded and still moulds the miner's way of life in those hours when he is not at work." ^ Certainly J.E. Williams found a streak of Epicureanism in the miner's philo• sophy, which he attributed to the uncertainty of colliery life. It was widely believed that the colliers' favourite pur• suits included gambling, drinking, fighting, poaching and cock-fighting to the exclusion of all else, because these were the activities which attracted the greatest public atten• tion. It was these activities which earned the miners their unsavoury reputation, and these will be discussed first. 222 Although the coalminer did invest in medical insurance and benefit schemes through his union, he was more well known for spending heavily on pleasure activities. It was believed by some that, aside from the dues deducted by the union, saving for times of distress was a wasted effort. Instead the miners preferred to spend any pocket-money they had as quickly as possible, in the uncertainty of "what tommorow might bring." Pay-night was indeed the occasion of excessive drinking, feasting and gambling, after which frugality and abstention would necessarily prevail until the next pay was earned. In 1883, Keir Hardie wrote of these carefree spending habits of the coalminers in his journal, the Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald; Hungers and bursts are the rule. On a cash night, a load of- provisions will be brought in. Jelly, biscuits, fancy bread, etc., are all spread out at once and everybody has a feast. Then for a day or two previous to the next cash day they are in semi- starvation. This is the story of hundreds of. our miners at the present day. 5 Gambling was a favourite pastime of the miners. One explanation was that mining itself was a gamble, and the miners enjoyed taking risks in their leisure time also. It was partly an attempt to escape the limitations of the miner's life, and partly a desire to assent, oneself in competition. Gambling took the form of betting on horse-races, whippet races, cards, dominoes, pitch-and-toss, and cock-fights. It was a cause of great concern to many, especially those who were involved in the .temperance movement, and to the members of the religious sects, who saw gambling and drink as the ruination of a great number of miners. In the 186;0's, an irate ^witness sent the 223 following letter to the Barnsley Chronicle commenting upon the social scene in a South Yorkshire colliery village: Sir - In your last week's issue there was a short letter from Mapplewell... on "cock-fighting", etc. Whilst the thing is on hand I may as well give the Mapplewell rascals a little more of the benefit of their character. I was glad to see you thrashed them so savagely, but that thrashing did not pre• vent another cock-fight on Monday last when the notorious blackguard Job Pell lost his cock and his sovereign, and for the benefit of the curious I may. add that there is another cock-fight next Monday. 'I hope on that occasion the police will not be duped but will be in at the commencement. But there are other things done im Mapplewell as bad as cock-fighting - Sunday gambling for instance. A few weeks ago I was returning from the Sunday school at noon, when congregations were dispersing, and in the most public place in the village, only a few yards from the high-road, were congregated twenty or thirty lads tossing and betting, and cursing and swearing most horribly. This is a common occurrence only they get outside the village, generally on Sunday. But any other day they may be seen on the public roads carrying on their abominable practice. For the last few Sundays forty or fifty have been assembled in one place to the great disgust of all decent people. We must not, however, overlook the snares and temp• tations they are exposed to especially at the colliery pay when they have more brass than brains. Three new "publics" have been opened during the last two years and thither the silly fellows go. Out of one of these dens of sin I have seen some of our adult Sunday scholars come - drunk. These places are the pests of the village, and yet I am told that another licence will soon be applied for. The religious bodies have done much good and the Temperance Society numbers some twenty reclaimed drunkards in its ranks. But there is so much to do. D.E.F. 6 Poaching was perhaps connected with gambling in that both risk and excitement were involved. Coalminers were inveterate poachers, for this was one way to change their environment, to supplement their food supply, and 224 to score a minor victory over those landowners who belonged to the superior class. G.A.W. Tomlinson also linked this with "a deep love of the land that generations of pitwork has 7 not destroyed." ' But it was drinking that provided the central interest of the pleasure-loving coalminers. There were strong social obligations to drink in the coalmining communities where teamworkers were under heavy pressure of opinion to join in such a gregarious activity. Heavy drinking was traditional and social pressure made it almost impossible to break away. The central focus of leisure time, was the pub. A typical example of the miners' pub was the one described by A.R. Griffin in the miners' row at Selston, Nottinghamshire, where a miner's cottage had been converted into a drinking room: "Such places, while differing little from the houses of the miners, offered a bit more room, a chance to smoke a pipe, to talk, to drink, to listen to the newspaper being read, to play dominoes, or some other game, to gamble and to get away iQ- from the family for an hour or tw®." A less docile descrip• tion is afforded of Lambton in North Durham by the Methodist, George Parkinson: The only place for social gatherings or recreation was a public house, formed by uniting two cottages, which with a fenced cockpit, and quoitground at the front, and quiet place for "pitch-and-toss" just around the corner provided opportunities for votaries of these sports, which with the tap room as their centre, were often accompanied by drunken brawls and fighting, with all the demoralizing influences arising therefrom. 9 225 This aggressiveness which accompanied a drinking spree was often directed against other occupational groups. For instance, John Wilson writes of the bitter feuds that were waged between the miners and other workers when they congre• gated in Durham at weekends; On Saturday nights, when turning-out time arrived, there was sure to be a running fight, commencing at the Market Place and extending to the gate at the top of Gilesgatej and woe to the straggling or belated miner if caught by the weaver bodies. They would have got the same measure meted out to them as they would have given to any of the weavers if found at the same time of night in one of the neighbouring villages. 10 Before his conversion to Methodism, John Wilson led an irresolute youth. He describes how, "Sherburn Hill at that time was the gathering ground at the pay week-end for gamblers, drinkers and fighters from the neighbouring collieries" ^ and he was in the "front rank" of these. Similarly, in South Wales, the grandfather of Arthur Horner found the need every six months to "break loose, and go on the drink, usually 12 ending up with a fight on the Iron Bridge at Merthyr." The rates of prosecutions for drunken offences were consistently at their highest in the mining areas, when com• pared to other areas. In 1865, the Derbyshire Times published the following figures for prosecutions, comparing the Midland coalmining counties with a group of agricultural counties. 226 TABLE I To compare -prosecutions per 1.000 population for drunkenness in five mining counties and a group of agricultural counties, for the year ending September 20th. 1864. 13 Number proceeded Number convicted against, per per 1,000 County 1,000 population population Derbyshire 2.4 2.1 Nottinghamshire 3.4 2.7 Staffordshire 5.2 4.2 Warwickshire 2.1 1.8 Leicestershire 2.0 1.4 Averages of these 3.0 2.4 Averages in a group of agricultural counties. 1.9 1.7 Later, in 1891, the national figures for prosecutions showed that, "the rate was far higher in.seaports and mining counties than in London or manufacturing counties, whereas agricultural counties, the home counties and pleasure towns 14 registered the lowest rate of all." Between 1891 and 1900, the annual arrests for drunken• ness per 100,000 population again showed the mining counties to be the most intemperate. Of these however, the West Riding registered a lower rate of arrests, viz., 1891 - 1900 Annual arrests per 100,000 pop. 15 Durham 2,228.8 Northumberland 1,543.8 South Wales 1,012.9 West Riding 644.1 (Note: the figures for the West Riding are tempered by the existence also of a large agricultural and textile manufacturing population.) However, it might be noted that despite the high degree of ^drunkenness exhibited in the mining counties by the large numbers of prosecutions, the death rate from alcoholism and 227 related diseases was low among the coalminers. Collis and Greenwood demonstrate this phenomenon with the following figures: i6 1900 - 1902 Standard mortality of all males from alcoholism in England and Wales 100 Dock labourers 167 Coalminers 51 They explain this unexpected pattern of high convictions but few deaths from drinking, by the working conditions of the coal miners. They spent long hours in the mine, either at work or travelling underground when, because of the strict supervision of sobriety in the mine, they were separated from all access to alcohol. They therefore indulged in shortened periods of heavy drinking when compared to other occupational groups, such as the dock labourers, who drank all through the day, and especially at meal breaks. The miners caused a greater social nuisance during their drinking sprees, but in the long run, they did less damage to their health. The colliers probably did most harm to their reputations when they looked for their amusement in the neighbouring towns. On these occasions, outsiders witnessed their behaviour at its worst, and the low regard in which they held the miners v/as reinforced. The following ballad written by Henry Robson (1775 - 1850) about the North Eastern pitmen was a great favourite among the colliers for many years. Entitled The Colliers' Pay Week, it describes the Saturdays after pay-day when the colliers would descend upon Newcastle: 228 At length in Newcastle they centre, In Hardy's, a place much renowned, The jovial company enter Where stores of good liquor abound. As quick as the servants could fill it - Till emptied were quarts half a score - With heart-burning thirst down they swill it, And thump on the table for more. With boozing and laughing and smoking, The time slippeth swiftly away: And while they are ranting and joking, The church clock proclaims it mid-day. And now for black puddings, long measure, They go to Tib Trollibag's stand, And away bear the glossy rich treasure, With joy, like curled bugles in hand. And now a choice house they agreed on, Not far from the head of the Quay, Where they their black puddings might feed on, And spend the remains of the day, Where pipers and fiddlers resorted To pick up the straggling pence, And where the pit lads often sported Their money at fiddle and dance. 17 These instances were repeated in many of the bigger towns in close proximity to the coalfields, and obviously left an unfavourable impression with the majority of the non-mining population. In 1861, for instance, we have the following detailed account from the Barnsley Record of a visit to London by colliers of the Barnsley area. Their behaviour elicited a reaction from the London Telegraph in an article entitled "Invasion from the North" — an understandable reaction from those who were not "au fait" with the miners* norms of beha• viour, and who witnessed the following: Having embarked the largest portion of the living freight at the village station with a considerable supply of provisions, together with ales and spirits, and some wine and cigars, a second start was made... and reached Sheffield about six o'clock, where the train had to undergo a short "quarantine" of about 20 minutes, during which time a most vigorous and determined attack was made upon the 229 provisions and eatables, the bags and bottles in most instances being nearly depleted,,.. No sooner was the station reached (at Grantham), however, than the carriage doors were opened and the occupants "rushed like a torrent" into the small room where the counters were laden with pies, sandwiches, and confectionery, and soon all were swept away as with the force of an avalanche, that rendered the two or three waiters entirely helpless. Shillings and half-crowns were thrown down in Wild confusion in payment, and spirits were taken from the counter promiscuously, and demands for bottles were shouted out in all directions. Money was evi• dently no object in comparison with creature comforts, and all were willing to pay for whatever they could obtain, price being out of consideration. (Next stop was Hitchen)... No invitations to leave the carriages were at all necessary, for before they had entirely stopped the male refreshment room was closely packed, and the three ladies behind the counter looked bewildered with astonishment at the number of guests that had so suddenly and unceremoniously dropped in. Everything eatable was at once taken possession of... 18 The annual colliery outing was in fact one of the few highlights of the social year which was shared by the whole family. Special trains would be commissioned, subsidized usually by the colliery companies, to take the majority of the mining community to the seaside. These outings served to foster community feelings, and to provide a break from the monotony of the colliery environment. -.When John Brophy was a boy in St. Helens in the 1880's the annual outing was to the seaside town of Southport, where thousands from the mining villages would gathers Each delegation brought a band, and there was much martial music. Between numbers, speakers addressed the crowd around each bandstand on the problems of the union... people bathed in the surf and amused themselves on the sands. When they grew weary of that they would go to the nearby pubs to chat with friends over mugs of ale. Southport was only an hour by train from St. Helens, so whole families went early in the day and stayed until dark, both for a good time and to demonstrate the solidarity of the union. 19 230 In defence of the coalminers, Robert Haddow said that those miners who spent all their leisure time in the pub were in a minority, and even on pay-night, when the worst ex• cesses were reached, only half of the miners were involved! He brings to the fore the rather more harmless entertainments 20 pursued by the coalminer. Sport played a large part in the miners' lives and after 1900 came the more extensive development of sports fields and recreation grounds. Cricket, football and quoits (the forerunner of bowls) became popular sports, and each colliery village had ,its: own sports teams. Competitions between mining villages in these games, as well as darts, draughts and dominoes,.'provided Saturday and Sunday entertainments. This competitive spirit was also found in the coalminers' intense love of gardening. Many miners took graat pride in the cultivation of their gardens or allotments, flowers and produce being entered into horticultural shows and competitions. Some went so far as to keep pigs and chic• kens, which can be related to the agricultural roots or back• ground of many coalminers. There v/ere certain other activities which were communal affairs and as such helped to reinforce a community spirit. One such occasion was the annual gala day, which was insti• tuted towards the end of the nineteenth century. Some of the coalfields, or even individual townships would celebrate their own gala day — a loud,, colourful, circus-like form of enter• tainment which usually involved sports, sideshows, processions, drinking, brass bands, and on a more serious note, prominent speakers from the world of politics or trade unionism. 231 The focus of community social activities was the Working Men's Club or Institute, Most communites possessed a club of this nature before the First World War. After the Mining Industry Act of 1920, Miners' Welfare Halls were introduced, being built either by the colliery owners or the miners' unions. Both were the venue for community teas, concerts or dances, and would also be used for classes in ambulance and rescue work, lectures, and for private reading. On, a more serious level, both Abe Moffat and Robert Haddow were anxious to point out that the miners had their own higher level cultural pursuits, despite the unfavourable reputation acquired hy the coal communites. Moffat pointed out that his home town in Scotland was typical of other colliery towns in its possession of a brass band, a choir, a drama group and a Burns Club, for the study of the poetry of Robert Burns. Music was very popular among the miners and was ameans by which the miner could elevate himself above the humdrum monotony and drabness of his working and living situation. Penny readings, lectures, concerts, and so forth are provided less or more liberally? but the readings and the lectures he does not care much for; the concerts are more in his way, for he is fond of music, and is often a good musician. In almost every village a band may be found, and some of them have a high reputation for excellence. I know of at least one colliery village that has a very fair Choral Union, the conductor of which is a miner, the orchestra all miners, and the chorus nearly entirely made of miners and miners' sons and daughters. 21 There is evidence to show the existence in the coal mining communities of certain elements who involved themselves in the 232 pursuit of material pleasure and who • were in fact responsible for the general belief that the miners led immoral and irre• solute lives. On the other hand, there were those who made concrete efforts to elevate the tenor of the communities, and who were involved in self-improvement through cultural activities, religion or education. It is impossible to assess the degree to which either of these types prevailed over the other. We can only conclude that the image of the low morality of the coal towns, held by outsiders, was not en• tirely true, and that this dissolute tone was tempered by serious attempts to raise the cultural level of the community. But whatever the pursuit of the individual miner, leisure activities were gregarious, and he contributed to the cohesion of the mining community through his actions, for these acti• vities were not pursued in isolation. II We must now turn to a brief examination of those acti• vities pursued by the miner outside of purely leisure interests. An attempt is made to assess the extent of the temperance, religious and educational movements on the one hand, and on the other, the extent of crime. Once again, in the realms of religion and education, it will be seen that there exist great variations of opinion of the general level of these two movements. On the question of temperance, there is no doubt as to the existence of bodies of men who were dedicated to the 233 elimination of drunkenness from the mining communities. Though they were greatly outnumbered by those they wished to convert, they pursued their cause with missionary zeal. The temperance societies were on the whole connected with the nonconformist churches, and the teetotallers played an in• tegral role in their religious revivals. We find evidence of the energetic labours of the teetotallers who belonged to the mining population, throughout the period with which we are concerned. The mine owners were interested in temperance as a means of producing more disciplined men, in a job in which cooperation was so necessary. But by 1877, the colliery owner J.W. Pease still found that the largest percentage of accidents occurred in his Durham mines, on Mondays and Tuesday, when the men were 22 still recovering from their weekend drinking sprees. Those trade union leaders who were motivated by religious convictions, were also involved in the temperance movement. Keir Hardie wrote extensively on this subject. Also, in 1904, Harvey, the Derbyshire miners* leader told an audience at a Primitive Methodists' bazaar that: One thing working men had to be told was to keep their mouths from going into pint pots so often as they did. The gambling spirit of the age was an evil that would have to be attended to, and when men would not give themselves so much to pleasure, would not devote all their time to football and other things, but would sit down and think for ten minutes, then there would be no need for public meetings to teach them how to vote, because their common sense would teach them. 23 The temperance movement in the coal communities therefore usually had a religious background, as well as being motivated 234 by a reaction to the high degree of drunkenness in these communities. Religion was of a vigorously evangelical nature in the coalfieds. Typically of the miners, those who professed religion .did not do so in a half-hearted-way,and the mining communities produced a number of men who took up some kind of missionary work. There is some division among observers about the actual extent of the numbers who were actively involved in the reli• gious movements in the coalfields. Zweig noted as late as 194? in his survey of the coalfields that only ten per cent of the men in the colliery towns attended church, and that religion appealed more to women. A survey undertaken so far into the twentieth century perhaps has little bearing upon such a flexible factor as church attendance, in the period with which we are concerned. However, Paul de Rousiers who conducted a similar survey of the coalfields in the 1890's found that religion affected only a minority of people in a serious way. He noted that young people rarely attended church, though church attendance usually increased after mar• riage. Most families possessed a family Bible, but Bible reading was not much practised. There was a respect for religion and it was treated seriously, even if it was not actively practised on a wide scale. On the other hand, the 1956 survey of a South Yorkshire colliery town, conducted by N. Dennis et al. discovered that the Methodist churches were well attended at that time, and also that before 1914, one Methodist church they investigated, 235 had boasted a regular congregation of 600. In the 1860's, the Barnsley Chronicle reported on the Mapplewell and Stain- cross Feast and Hospital Sunday, a festival organized by the New Connexion, Primitive Methodist and Weleyan Churches. Collier volunteers had erected a stage from which the Barnsley Choral Society, boosted by other village choirs sang extracts from Handel's '"Messiah" and other religious pieces. The whole revival lasted for three days, during which there were prayers, singing and sermons. "It was computed that no fewer than from three to four thousand people were on the ground during the II (first) afternoon. Perhaps some of these witnesses had been drawn to the festival by other less spiritual attractions, for the newspaper reported that "Altogether, the feast has been rather quiet, but there has been no lack of cricket, 24 football and other sports." Throughout the Barnsley Chronicle and Barnsley Record newspapers from the 1860's to the late 1880's, we find refer• ences and reports of many different Nonconformist churches, the most prominent being the Wesleyan Chapel, the Primitive Methodist Chapel, the United Methodist Free Church, the Wesleyan Reform Chapel, the Salem Chapel, and the New Connexion Church. These chapels had been built by the miners themselves in most cases, and were equipped with their own Sunday Schools. Further evidence of the widespread existence of Nonconformist chapels is given by J.R. Leifchild who wrote in 1856 that each colliery village had a number of dissenting chapels of various sects, which were all well-attended. 2^ 236 However, it might also be noted at this point that in her study of atheism in England from 1850 to 1950, Susan Budd concluded that the coalminers provided the largest occupational group with members within the ranks of the Secularists and Freethinkers. She explained the allegiance of many coalminers to atheism as being a reaction to the injustice of society which frustrated attempts at social betterment and kept their status low. We must conclude that although it is difficult to deter• mine the actual numbers of regular church-goers, because of the division of opinion and contradictory evidence on this subject, those persons who were committed to religion, were fanatical in their beliefs and actions, and the church as it existed in the coal communities, was energetic and influen- tail in many facets of the life of both believers and non- believers. It was the nonconformist sects which flourished most strongly throughout the coalfields. The Primitive Methodists dominated the religious scene in Durham and Northumberland, the Wesleyans dominated in the West Riding, while in South Wales the Baptists and Congregationalists were most influen- tail. In all coalfields, the Church of England had but a weak allegiance from the collier population. The coalmining population were often physically separated from the Anglican churches because the colliery villages had grown up around the mine, and were not necessarily close to an Anglican church. The church could be many miles away from the new colliery community. Whereas the Church of England was slow to erect 237 new church buildings in the colliery communities, the noncon• formist sects quickly moved into the villages, and as a result of their eager missionary zeal, chapels and dissenting churches were built anew, or housed in existing cottages or available buildings, and the miners' souls were claimed for the non• conformist religions. Furthermore, the rejection of Anglican• ism was also connected with the question of class conscious• ness. Traditionally, the parson of the Anglican church was chosen by patrons, usually the landowners of the area, and the Church of England was considered to be in the hands of a superior class. The nonconformist church on the other hand, where preaching was more plain and practical, was considered to be more concerned with the poor. Simply, the nonconformist church appeared to offer more to the miner, and to be more concerned with his welfare — both spiritual and material — and the efforts of these churches in the realms of self-im• provement, trade unionism and education are ample testimony to their concern for the working man. Of the nonconformist sects, the Methodists have been the most influential in the coalminirgcommunities, in all aspects of life. The Methodist Church,played a great part in uplifting the miner, providing him with an education and a sense of social duty. "Methodism seems to have been best adapted to the miners' 27 mentality and their emotional and spiritual needs." ' Often, public facilities in the coalmining communities were either so poor, or even non-existent, that the chapel provided the focal point for cultural activities, and posed as a rival to the public house, George Parkinson noted the importance of 238 Methodism when he wrote, "Methodism was the only agency that taught them, enlightened them, and fed their hungry souls," :. and of the chapel in his village that, "though void of orna• ment and without architectural pretensions, that little un• assuming Methodist chapel was the only place of worship, and its Sunday school the only place of education, in the village 28 for more than 60 years." This situation was topical of many areas where the chapel was the first social centre, providing the first source of education and culture. The Methodists infused a self-respect and desire for self-improvement in a great many of the mining population. "He took to going to chapel, and finding it necessary to appear decent there he got new clothes, and became what is termed respectable. They took away his gun, his dog, and his fighting cock. They gave him a frock-coat for his posy jacket, hymns for his public house ditties, 29 prayer meetings for his pay night frolics." 7 The story of William Challenger of Kexbro near Barnsley illustrates how the chapel could radically change a man's life. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Kexbro was a rough, unGodly village, William Challenger, a miner since the age of seven years, who had been buried alive in the pit three times in five years, was typical of most residents in his excessive indulgence in swearing, drinking, singing, dancing and fighting. He had received no schooling. However, his life changed completely after his conversion to Chris• tianity in 1879, during a Methodist Revivalist campaign. 239 He was taught how to read and write at the Sunday school and at night school classes organized hy the chapel, and became the Steward of the newly formed Methodist Society in Kexbro, styled the Church of the New Connexion. He later became the Sunday school and Band of Hope Superintendent, a Class Leader, Local preacher and missioner, and his work not only involved house to house visitation in his home village, but he also conducted revivalist missions in the neighbouring villages. The first meeting place for worship was the club room of the public-house, where they became known as the "White Bear Methodies", though he and his followers later built their own chapel. Challenger's missionary work was of an evangelistic nature, and was aimed primarily to promote temperance. Al• though many of his ex-workmates victimized him and his followers for preaching against their ways, Challenger was personally responsible for the conversion of 5»000 people in his five years as a missioner and, "he did much to lift the people to a higher moral and spiritual conditions." J The energy of the religious movements was channelled into various activities such as cooperative movements, edu• cation, unionization, and various types of entertainments to attract the colliers to their ranks. .These included open revivalist meetings, feasts,suppers and teas with entertain• ments, lectures, bands and sports days. F.J. Metcalfe, an Anglican clergyman in Derbyshire in the last years of the nineteenth century accused the Methodists of interference in all facets of life in that, "their leaders are to be found in Cooperative Societies, or Hospital Committees, among Chapel 240 Trustees, and Deacons, in Teetotal Societies, members of Parish Councils, School Boards, and a variety of other places. 31 No-one can do anything but themselves." J There was in fact a strong link between the leadership of the Methodist church and local social and political organization, and the first union spokesmen were often Methodist lay preachers. After 1850, Methodism became much more democratic in organization, and various ways were offered in which individual talents could be exercised through the administrative system. T3hr@Mgh work in book-keeping, class leadership, stewardship, committee work, building administration and even lay preaching, the individual could develop talents which were readily applied to organization in Friendly Societies, Adult Education Move• ments, and more especially, trade unionism. "In the Methodist Society, they learnt earnestness, sobriety, industry and regularity of conduct. They stood out as men of character gaining in the respect of their fellows. They had learnt from Methodism, the methods of organising men and the art of 32 public speaking." Methodism was so strongly influential in trade unionism, that Wearmouth notes that out of eighty trade-union leaders of the late nineteenth century who owed their union careers to religious experience, seventy were Methodists. Especially influential in the union leadership of the North East Coal• field were the Primitive Methodists; Thomas Burt, the first coalminer M.P. was both a Northumberland trade unionist and a Primitive Methodist. To illustrate the connection further, other coalminers' leaders who were also Primitive Methodists 241 include John Wilson, William Crawford, Hepburn, Fenwick, John Johnson, and Peter Lee from Northumberland and Durham; Ned Cowey and Parrott from Yorkshire; Enoch Edwards, Albert Stanley and Sam Finney from the Midlands. The story of John Wilson is perhaps a typical example of how a man could aspire to higher things through the ranks of his chapel. Upon his conversion to Methodism, Wilson's whole life style changed completely. He read avidly and collected his own small library of books. He taught in the Sunday school, attended the discussion groups of the chapel's Improvement Society, and became a lay preacher. From church government, he became involved in local organization as secre• tary to the early cooperative society in his village. He lost his job in the mine through his involvement in trade unionism, which served to strengthen his commitment to poli• tics. He became the Secretary to the Miners' Association of Durham where he was elected to Parliament in 1885 on a Liberal ticket. The Wesleyan Methodists were generally praised for their moderation and respectability, whereas the Primitive Methodists or "Ranters" as they were often known, were blamed as the instigators of strike activity, and were usually the first to be evicted from their homes and dismissed from the pits. They were accused by the coalowners of using their religion as a cloak for spreading dissident teachings and conspiracies among their men. But it was not only in the realms of radicalism and social welfare that the religious sects were influential. They also 242 provided a moving force in the education of the collier population. In this respect, Wearmouth says sentimentally that Methodism "came to the miners not merely as a form of religious dissent, but also as a welcome ameliorative bringing 33 a ray of sunshine into their bleak and dismal environment." It is difficult to asses the level of education in the mining communities, though after the 1870 Education Act and a special Act of 1872 dealing with the education of children over 13 years of ,age employed in the pits, children in mining towns would have received a standard education. But earlier in the nineteenth century, the mass of miners had little provision for education, and in most cases had had to depend on the efforts of the Methodists to remedy this situation. Methodism had brought to the uneducated miners the preacher and the class leader, the Bible and the Methodist Hymn Book, the Sunday school and the Adult Discussion Group, and had taught them to read and think. Thus, the illiterates of the adult generation often attended their children's Sunday school to learn the rudiments of reading and writing. However, despite the worthy efforts of the Methodists in this respect, the nature of education in the coalmining areas is subject to dispute. It would appear that the coalminers were neglected in the realms of education, and therefore, as in the question of religion, there were those who were indiffe• rent to their education, and others who were imbued with a desire for self-improvement. The existence of adequate edu• cational facilities depended upon the generosity and enligh• tenment of the colliery owners, or upon the strength of the 243 organized miners, for it was by one of these two bodies that school buildings were provided before the end of the nine• teenth century. There were therefore great variations in the adequacy and inadequacy of public facilities and education in the colliery towns. An examination of the illiteracy rates for the coalmining areas suggests that the level of education was generally low, when compared to other areas. In 1863, in the South Wales manufacturing town of Monmouth, the illiteracy rate was 47 per cent, while in the Welsh colliery town of Merthyr Tydfil, the rate was as high as 64 per cent. The average rate for the coalmining areas of South Wales and Staffordshire at this time was over 45 per cent. In his survey of illiteracy, Hobsbawm concluded that in the late 1870*s the most illiterate indus• trial counties were those of South Wales, Worcestershire, Staffordshire and the Northern mining areas, and the indus- trail groups with the highest illiteracy rates, of over twenty per cent, were the unskilled and the coalminers. He names Easington, Bishop Auckland, Barnsley and Houghton-le-Spring as displaying some of the highest degrees of illiteracy. ^L Apart from this statistical material, we also have first• hand evidence of the inability of many miners to read or write, George Hitchin in describing his paternal grandfather said: More odd was his ability to read. Few people of his generation or station in life could read, and my maternal grandfather used an X when signing a document - an operation that scared him stiff. Of those who could read, few ever opened a book and fewer still possessed one. But Grandpa Hitchin went once a week to the Workmen's Club, whose committee, more as a gesture to culture than out of conviction, kept a few volumes in a glass-fronted cupboard. This was the library. 35 Before 1870 and compulsory education, literacy depended largely upon the Sunday School Movement, the S.P.C.K., and to a lesser extent, upon the Mechanics* Institutes, branches of which appeared in some of the mining communities. Some literate leaders emerged in the coal towns, but the mass of the mining population remained untouched by education. D.H. Lawrence, who was the son of a coalminer, wrote that his father attended a dame school where he barely learned to write his name. Lawrence's generation was sent at five years of age to the Board Schools, British Schools or National Schools. In 1890, he went to a Board School with other miners' sons. He found that there was a distinctive aversion to learning among the miners' children generally. "They hated even lear• ning to read and write. The endless refrain was: 'When I go down pit you'll see what sums I'll do.' That was what they waited for: to go down pit, to escape, to be men." As many as ninety per cent of these school boys, became colliers. Among adults too there was a sense of hostility to edu• cation, though some managed to overcome thiss In the eighteen-eighties Edward Carpenter, freed from his duties as an Extension lecturer (Univer• sity) , and living on his small holding at Mill- thorpe, used to go down to the mining villages of the West Riding with one or two companions. They would take up their stand on a heap of slag or broken wall and begin to speak. The miners would come round and stand or sit down with their backs to the speaker but after a little time would become interested. 37 There are therefore varying opinions as to the influence of adult education movements, and to the interest shown by the miners. 245 In 1889, the Technical Instruction Act was passed by which local authorities were empowered to set up classes in tech• nical training, Some men lacked the ability to profit from courses of this nature, others lacked the endurance to attend night school after a strenuous day in the pit. But the oppor• tunity was there for the miner who was interested in improving himself. However, a number of miners must have been interested in books of a technical nature as the Conversation on Mines a highly technical treatise on mining by William Hopton, had sold 23,000 copies to a mining readership by its Seventh Edition in 1883. In the Preface to the First Edition in 1864, Hopton said that many works had been written on mining, but were not understood by the miners who were generally "not well educated." But: the author, having had a practical knowledge of mines and miners from his youth has, therefore, a better knowledge of what miners require for their better information. The object of his writing the following pages on mines, by the way of a conversation between father and son, has been to make use of such words, and in such a manner, that the subject can be perfectly understood by miners. 38 In 1904, Harvey of the Derbyshire Miners' Association complained in the lack of interest in further education among the miners. He was reported in the Derbyshire Times as saying that: There was a good deal of attention given to football, cricket and recreation. He did not object to that but he did object to all leisure time being devoted to recreation and none whatever to mental study. He had made enquiries of the Librarian at Chesterfield, and found that educational subjects, philosophy, history, etc., did not form fifty per cent of the 246 reading at Chesterfield compared with fiction. He hoped the members of that lodge would act as missionaries. It was not necessary for them to go to South Africa. They could start at Shirebrook and he was sure they were needed. 39 The University Extension Classes at Chesterfield were eventually discontinued because of a lack of interest and support from the colliers, though the branch of the Workers' Education Association which was set up there in 1909 was more successful. In fact, this pattern was repeated elsewhere whereby the W.E.A. successfully ousted the University Exten• sion movement. The technical courses offered by the W.E.A. had greater appeal to the coalminers. In 1906, the W.E.A. was introduced to Yorkshire, indivi- daul branches being established in Wakefield in 1906, Castle• ford in 1909 and Barnsley in 1910. Education was based upon the tutorial system and essay writing, and the classes were linked with the universities of Leeds and Sheffield, and so were of a necessarily high standard. These universities had also opened mining departments, offering degree and diploma courses for those aiming for mining managerial positions. The atten• dance of courses offered by the W.E.A. could therefore lead to university entrance on a trade union ticket, or to the summer schools held at Oxford for working men. Furthermore, there was a steady stream of men from the coalfields who pur• sued their education at Ruskin College, or the London Labour College. (The latter was owned and controlled jointly by the National Union of Railwaymen and the South Wales Miners' Federation.) 24? In Yorkshire, a more far-reaching scheme was set up by the West Riding County Council in the early twentieth century whereby elementary mining classes were given at night schools in the principal colliery centres. By 1909, the regular attendance of these classes was 1,252 students, and by 1910, these special courses were being offered in ;'34 villages on the Yorkshire coalfield. Later, in 1922, the W.E.A. launched a new and popular Miners1 Lectures Scheme in Yorkshire. From the turn of the century therefore, there was an upsurge in activity in the field of miners* education and this tremendous activity in technical and cultural education ob• viously affected a great number of men, despite the reputation that the miners had for being ignorant and indifferent to education. The effects of self-help in education in the coalfields, amid a mass of generally ill-educated miners, can be seen by the emergence of numbers of men who were success• ful in public affairs. A great number of ex-miners reached Parliament, and Lubin and Everett fround that in the 1920*s more coalminers were qualified for technical appointments and brain working professions than any other group of manual 40 labourers. Jack Lawson wrote that some of those in his Methodist Society became "school-teachers, Headmasters, Univer• sity professors, managers, ministers, musicians, social wor- 41 kers, and public men and women," The coalfields produced many great individuals, including J. Keir Hardie, Sir George Elliot, Rev. Peter Mackenzie, who was a great moving force in Methodism, the author Richard Fines, and more recently, the politicians Will Lawson, Aneurin Bevan and Ness Edwards, 248 Northumberland alone produced from among its mining population the mathematician Dr. Charles Hutton, Thomas Bewick the artist and "illustrator of nature", George Stephenson the locomotive engineer, Joseph Skipsey the poet, and Thomas Burt, the "Father 42 of the House of Commons." The coalfields did therefore produce a number of excep• tional men. On the question of education, we must conclude from our evidence that on the whole during the nineteenth century the coalfields were centres of illiteracy. However, there were exceptions to this rule, and individuals could better themselves, usually through the agencies of the Non• conformist churches. After the turn of the century, there was a greater involvement in education, and the will to self- improvement, which had affected but a few of the collier class, and which had laid dormant among the greater part of the mining population, came to the fore and provided an impe• tus to adult education movements. One final activity outside of working hours which must be discussed in any study of the cultural level of a group, is crime. Here we find that the coalminers had an unusually low crime rate when compared to other occupational groups, despite the fact that convictions for drunkenness were the highest in the country, (see above). As early as 1856, Leif- child noted of the colliers that, "Beside other large indus• trial districts, their morality now stands high. Crime in our metropolis is four times greater in proportion than in the mining districts. The cotton and iron districts much excel 43 these in crime." ^ 249 The Census Reports support this observation on crime rates for coalminers throughout the period with which we are concerned. Table II below compares the numbers of prisoners from certain occupational groups in 1901. The convictions for offences by coalminers are out of proportion to their numbers when compared with other occupational groups. Even though coalmining was one of the largest employers of men at the turn of the century, convictions remained at a relatively low rate. TABLE II To compare the numbers of prisoners from certain occupational groups in England and Wales in 1901. 44 Occupation Number of prisoners Total employed Coalminers 542 643,654 Tailors 379 237,185 Boot and shoe makers 312 218,581 Bricklayers' labourers 438 97,779 Costermongers, hawkers, street-sellers. 458 61,339 Merchant service, Seamen, pilots, boatmen on seas. 551 97,881 Painters, decorators, glaziers. 469 160,387 Crime rates are an indication that there was a greater degree of responsibility and a higher morality among the coal• miners than among certain other occupational groups, and in• deed, the total number of male coalminer prisoners was but a tiny proportion of the prisoner population of England and Wales. 250 The preceding; two chapters have presented a brief exami• nation of the miner's life and work, and have pointed towards factors which fostered cohesion among the coalmining population. At the same time, it would appear from the defenders and attackers of the coalminers, that there were two levels of culture in the coal communities. There was both ignorance and education, both atheism and deep religious conviction, but all were united in a common struggle for survival in work, and by common experiences in life. Similarly, the coalminer himself had a dual personality. On the one hand, his work called for a hard, steely character, and a ruthlessness to pit himself against nature and the coal- owners, in order to survive and make his living. Apart from this aggressiveness in work, the colliers were noted for their rough and rowdy leisure activities. On the other hand, the colliers were also noted for their generosity to others less fortunate than themselves. Weekly collections for vic• tims of accidents and regular deductions from their pay for the relief of the aged and widowed were accepted as necessary corollaries of mining life. Their willingness to help their workmates who were in danger, and their neighbours who were in need of relief, is well known. Despite the fact, however, that there were certain dif• ferences; in all coalmine communities in leisure pursuits and in education, and despite the division of opinion among his• torians as to the quality of social life among the miners, one constant remains. Even though there were those whose life revolved around the public house and the gambling table, 251 and those who aspired to Mgher moral, spiritual or educational planes, no man lived or moved in a vacuum. All of the activi• ties discussed above were gregarious, whether they involved drinking sprees on pay-nights, or love-feasts and revivalist meetings organized by the Nonconformist churches. In the words of the investigators of the 1956 social survey, soli• darity was strengthened for, "A man's workmates are known to him in a manifold series of activities and contacts, and often have shared the same upbringing. The effect of a common set of persisting social relations, shared over a life-time by men working in the same industry and in the same collieries, tin. is a very powerful one." J FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER VII 1 J. Holland, Fossil Fuel, the Collieries and Coal Trade of Great Britain (London, First Edition, 1835). PP. 290 - 291. 2 See N. Dennis, F. Henriques, and C. Slaughter, Coal is our Life (London, 1956), pp. 79 - 80. 3 N. Dennis et al., Op. Cit.. p. 140. 4 See J.E. Williams, The Derbyshire Miners (London, 1962), PP. 58 - 59. 5 F. Reid, "Keir Hardie's Conversion to Socialism," A. Briggs and J. Saville, in Essays in Labour History Vol. 2., (London, 1971), p. 29. 6 The Barnsley Chronicle, circa 1863, from a Collection of Newspaper Cuttings and Articles from the Barnsley Chronicle and Barnsley Record, circa 1861 to 1889. (Articles are undated) MSS Cusworth Hall Museum, Doncaster, Yorkshire. 7 G.A.W. Tomlinson, Coal-Miner (London, 1937), p. 139. 8 A.R. Griffin, Coalmining (London, 1972), p. 137. 252 9 G. Parkinson, True Stories of Durham Pit-Life (London, 1912,), p. 10. 10 J. Wilson, Memories of a Labour Leader. The Autobio• graphy of John Wilson (London, 1910), P. 91. 11 Ibid., p. 84. 12 A. Horner, Incorrigible Rebel (London, I960), p. 11. 13 From the Derbyshire Times, 1865, cited by J.E. Williams, Op. Cit., p. 59. 14 B. Harrison, Drink and the Victorians. The Temperance Question in England 1815 - 1872. (London. 1971). "P. 315. 15 From E.L. Collis and M. Greenwood, The Health of the Industrial Worker (London, 1921). 16 Ibid. 17 A.L. Lloyd, Come all ye Bold Miners. Ballads and Songs of the Coalfields (London* 1952), pp. 33 - 34. 18 From the Barnsley Record 1861, Cusworth Hall Museum MSS Op. Cit. 19 J. Brophy, A Miner's Life (Madison and Milwaukee, 1964), p. 12. 20 See R. Haddow, "The Miners of Scotland," The Nineteenth Century, Vol. XXIV. (July - Dec. 1888), pp. 360 - 371. 21 Ibid.. p. 371. 22 B. Harrison, Op. Cit. 23 From the Derbyshire Times. 10th Dec. 1904, cited in J.E. Williams, Op. Cit.. p. 466. 24 The Barnsley Chronicle 1860*s Cusworth Hall Museum, MSS Op. Cit. 25 See J.R. Leifchild, Our Coal and Our Coal-Pits; the People in Them and the" Scenes Around Them (London, 1856). 26 See S. Budd, "The Loss of Faith. Reasons for Unbelief among Members of the Secular Movement in England, 1850 - 1950," Past and Present. No. 36 (London, 19§7), pp. 124 - 125. 27 F. Zweig, Men in the Pits (London, 1948), p. 168. 28 G. Parkinson, Op. Cit.. p. 9. 253 29 R.F. Wearmouth, Methodism and the Working Class Move• ments of England. 1800 - 1850 (London, 1947), p. 226. 30 See William Kenyon, The Bishop of Kexbro or, Incidents in the Life and Labours of William Challenger, Missioner in the Barnsley Circuit of the Methodist New Connexion (Barnsley, 1907), p. 60. 31 J. E. Williams, Op. Cit.. p. 78. 32 R. Wearmouth, Op. Cit., p. 227. 33 Ibid.. p. 226. 34 E.J. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men. Studies in the History of Labour (London, 1964), p. 314. 35 G. Hitchin, Pit-Yacker (London, 1962), pp. 15 - 16. i 36 D.H. Lawrence, "Enslaved by Civilisation," in Assorted Articles. (London, 1930), pp. 122 - 123. 37 J.F.C. Harrison, Learning and Living 1790 - I960. A Study in the History of the English Adult Education' Movement (Toronto. 1961), p. 249. 38 W. Hopton, Conversation on Mines, etc., between a father and son; to which are added questions and answers to assist candidates to obtain certificates for the manage• ment of collieries, A lecture on the atmosphere - its changes and explosive gases, tables of calculations, rules of measurements, etc. (Manchester, First Edition, 1864), p. 10. 39 From the Derbyshire Times 2nd July 1904, cited by J.E. Williams. Op. Cit.. p. 471 40 See I. Lubin and H. Everett, The British Coal Dilemma (New York, 1927). 41 J. Lawson, A Man's Life (London, 1932), p. 114. 42 See Sir R. Redmayne, Men, Mines and Memories (London, 1942). 43 J.R. Leifchild.- Op. Cit. . pp. 220 - 221. 44 From the Census Report for England and Wales. 1901; Summary Tables, B.P.P. 1902 - 1904, LXXXIV, Table XLIII, p. 244. 45 See N. Dennis et al., Op. Cit.. p. 79. 254 CHAPTER VIII CONCLUSION From the foregoing we can see how the coalminers and their families were distinguished from other working class groups both in their living and working situations. Further• more, these features not only served to distinguish the coal• miners from others and earn them a reputation for being a "race apart" but they also helped to draw the coalminers more closely together into an almost closed social and working group, with specific attitudes and outlooks. To summarise, the following factors have been identified as promoting the intense solidarity characteristic of the coal• miners. Firstly, the whole community was centred around the coal mine and its fortunes. Everyone was connected with the mine to some degree, and this factor alone led to a sharing of common interests. In most cases the population of the coalmining community was isolated geographically from other working-class groups and occupations and therefore was largely immune to the influence of new ideas and change. This factor intensified dependence upon the coal mine and interdependence within the mining population. The lack of occupational di• versity and loyalty to the community, provided little incentive for leaving mining. Coalmining thus became entrenched as a traditional occupation within families. Paul de Rousiers identified these interdependent forces at work in his obser• vations from the late nineteenth century: Few artisan communities in England are so stable as mining communities. In a mining village... there are only miners or persons employed by the mine, such as 255 carpenters or mechanics, and everybody, from the pony-driver to the village retail trader, gets his living directly or indirectly from the mine. The frame is infinitely more narrow and the young man has less chance of raising himself, 1 The standard of living within the coal towns limited the population to a similar living experience. The level of wages and diet, indentical housing and facilities, and a common environment all contributed to shared or common expectations in life and as such, drew the population together. Though better off than most other occupational groups, the actual living conditions of the miners were generally poor, and coal• mining families were caught up in a common struggle against the environment. The interests of individual families centred upon the coal mine and upon the community as a whole. However, the coalminers were also family men, and a study of the family unit brought to light certain distinctive features which clearly separated the miners from other working-class and occupational groups. One of the prime distinguishing features here was the actual size of the coalminer's family — the coalminingpopulation consistently led the field in high rates of fertility. Several explanations have been proposed in the thesis for this phenomenon and all of them involved factors that applied specially to the coalminers. Early age at marriage prompted by high wages and the attainment of peak earning .": powers at an early age; high rates of infant mortality which further prompted fecundity; the ignorance of birth-control methods or the unwillingness of the collier population to employ family limitation; the lack of employment opportunities 256 for women and the consequent lack of an incentive to limit family size? and to a lesser extent, the value of children as wage-earners: these were all factors which were peculiar to the coalmining population and which helped raise the levels of fertility. The coalminer's home provided shelter for certain other household members in addition to the larger than average-sized families. In an occupation which attracted a floating popu• lation of single young men, temporary lodgings were essential. This type of accommodation was normally provided by the coal• miners themsleves, and the miner's home therefore was often shared by one or more outsiders. In addition, strong kinship ties and consistently low relief rates for aged paupers in the cdalmihisg' districtsiimply that sons and daughters regularly provided shelter for aged or homeless parents. As a result of all these factors, the coalminer's household was swelled to a disproportionate and distinctive size. Because of the single-industry nature of the coalmining villages and towns, employment opportunities for women were extremely limited. Women therefore became more home and family-orientated. This factor had certain ramifications in the standards of housekeeping and comfort in the average col• lier's home, and for the mentality of the women themselves. But it was the men who ostensibly determined and forged the attitudes of this male-orientated community, and who were the motivating force behind the solidarity of the mining population. Their working situation which differed so markedly 257 from other occupations served to encourage a "team-spirit" and comradeship. Each man had to work with and for his "team" and the necessity for cooperation within the working situation demanded good social relationships also. Leisure was similarly of a gregarious nature and pleasure hours were shared with working companions. The dangers inherent in coalmining affec• ted the social life and culture of the mining population which combined frivolous pleasures with serious efforts towards seIf-improvement. Both work and leisure therefore were group activities and fostered cohesion within the community. There was also the ever-present threat of tragedy or misfortune. This common battle fostered community feelings and a desire to help for "you will never see a miner refuse help to another p who is sick or injured, for it may be his own turn next." Abe Moffat found this community spirit to be the mainstay of the population, and when his large family was victimized by the Fife Coal Company for its part in the 1926 strike, he found no lack of offers to help: But living in a mining community, we were able to withstand the hardship and sacrifice, for the friendship of miners and their families can only be understood when you live among them. In ill• ness or bereavement you are never without friends in a mining village. Even during hard times we could always rely on one another's assistance. The people were not only kind and generous, they were loyal to one another, and even with all the hardship and sacrifice they would come together and enjoy themselves in a manner that would be the envy of many non-mining communities. 3 Out of this community spirit and isolation there emerged common attitudes and outlooks special to the miners. Tradi• tionalism, a keen sense of a common past and resistance to i 258 change "became strong characteristics among the miners for, "the weight of the dead past in the miners' mind, behaviour, customs and habits is very considerable." This traditiona• lism amounted almost to a conservatism by which their peculiar culture was strengthened and maintained. Sir Richard Redmayne described the "peculiar character" of the northern pitmen with whom he had worked: Jealous of their rights, steadfast in their courage, loyal to their leaders, and though in politics mainly radical, they are in most other respects strangely conservative. Having lived for genera• tions apart from the general community, in villages situated close to the scene of their labours, the miners have come to possess an outlook on life and many characteristics peculiar to themselves. In their mode of living, their sports and diversions, and even in their language.,. they differ from their nearby neighbours. No boy in a colliery village dreamt of following a calling other than that of a miner. The boys entered a mine at an early age, passing from trapper to pony-driver, from driver to putter and from putter to coal hewer, so that it was a true saying in youth, "once a miner always'a miner." 5 Despite the fact that the coalminers were noted for their redicalism in the realm of politics, they were still essen• tially averse to change. This can be seen in fact in their slow acceptance of Labour principles, and in the long struggle of the infant Labour party to wean the miners away from their Liberal affiliations. Even after their commitment to Labour politics, the coalminers remained a self-sufficient and in• ward-looking occupational group in the political battle-ground: Miners had many of the classic ingredients for a labor protest movement. Their work was dangerous? they lived with their fellow workers without much contact with other elements of society. But there was a traditionalism in miners' life that limited their vision of the future. They were proud of their work and were quick to protest major changes in it. They were devoted to their families and often religious. They benefited from full employ- 259 ment^ and their wages often rose even when those of other workers were falling. They also had gardens which in my opinion, obviously open to challenge, is a likely index or cause of a certain basic con• servatism. Finally, they were isolated from other workers. Even when they joined them in Labor politics they acted as miners not as workers. 7 These conservative attitudes of the coalminers were further relfected in the community as a whole, for the coal• mining community was marked by a peculiarly conservative culture. This closed and isolated living situation encou- raged a coalmining culture which was preserved in balladry, legend and superstition. There was a strong and wide oral tradition among the coalminers for "miners' roots went deep and this consciousness of a past, expressed itself in many o ways, but most clearly in superstition, folk-lore and song." A sense of a common past and of brotherhood in diversity led therefore to the development of a special culture and "it is doubtful whether any other industry in Britain has such a body of balladry related to the job itself, or to the life, o diversions and struggles of the men engaged in that job." We may conclude that the coalmining communities gene• rally were of a closed, inward-looking nature, reflecting the attitudes of the coalminers' themselves, who had been nur• tured in an atmosphere of traditionalism, conservatism and isolation. The community grew up around the coal mine, and the mine dictated the personality traits and characteristics to be assumed by the community as a whple. The strongest 260 of these traits wa&'bsolidarity. Perhaps Mark Benney's des• cription of the effects of the colliery upon its working population illustrates most graphically the intense inter• dependence between coal mine and population, and the cohesion between the members of the community. In concluding, his coalmining community may be taken as being representative of those with which this thesis has been concerned: For a century and half the pit had dominated its life, shaping the people to suit its purposes, killing and maiming them giving a proud prosperity and snatching it back, throwing up a grey rampart of slag to isolate the village from the world, binding it in fierce exiguous loyalties. Arbitrary and unaccountable in its behaviour, to the men who were dragged from its galleries burnt or mangled, to the women who tried to keep homes clean and tables laden with the wages it paid. Yet to those who had endurance and hardi• hood enough to survive its ways, it gave a deep sombre pride and satisfaction. Nothing had come easily to this village. When it felt a need, it had tried to supply it for itself, and if anyone opposed the effort, the village had fought. Every institution in the village with the exception of the cinema, the post-office and the church, the people had built themselves or struggled for through their union. Their community, forged deep underground in dark stony places, drew on elemental sources of strength and discipline. Personal ambition was tamed to the Lodge office, the committee table, the pulpit and the craft of the pit. The customs of the community, both underground and on the surface, were old and honoured for their ages the double isolation of craft and geography had turned these people in upon themselves, so that they took their standards from their forbears instead of from the strangers in the city. Often they resisted change to their detriment. The working customs of the pit — the cavil, the bargain, the stint, the complicated piece-rate payments, the hundred separate little agreements about picks and lamps and what-have-you — these were the survivals of an era of plenty that ten• ded to become fetters in time .of dearth. But their history was important to them. Its victories were the worn paths of their living: its defeats were the marrow in their bones, 10 261 FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER VIII 1 Paul de Rousiers, The Labour Question in Britain (London, 1896), p. 128. 2 B.L. Coombes, These Poor Hands (London, 1939), p. 238. 3 A. Moffat, My Life with the Miners (London, 1965), p. 10. 4 F. Zweig, Men in the Pits (London, 1948), p. 176. 5 Sir Richard Redmayne, Men. Mines and Memories (London, 1942), p. 9. 6 This point is open to debate. See section on wages in Chapter II, above. 7 P. Stearns, "The European Labor Movement and the Working Classes 1890 - 1914," in H. Mitchell and P. 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