Iain Rowe and Collective Action in ’s Mines Page 1 of 43

WWhheenn TThhee KKiiddss AArree UUnniitteedd……

CChhiilldd LLaabboouurr aanndd CCoolllleeccttiivvee AAccttiioonn iinn CCoorrnnwwaallll’’ss MMiinneess..

Iain Rowe Plymouth University 2009

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Child Labour and Collective Action in Cornwall’s Mines. Iain Rowe Plymouth University 2009

Contents:

Introduction p.02

Chapter 1: p.07 Changing Attitudes Towards Child Labour

Chapter 2: p.14 Child Labour in Cornish Mines

Chapter 3: p.21 Collective Action at Cornish Mines

Chapter 4: p.28 Why Did the Mine Children of Cornwall Resort to Collective Action in 1872?

Conclusion p32

Appendices p.35

Bibliography p.37

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Introduction

In May 1872, children working on the surface of a group of mines scattered around Hill on the edge of Moor in southeast Cornwall, joined together and agitated for more pay. This event has been overlooked by the vast majority of historians who have written about, either mining in Cornwall, or collective action and unionism countrywide. Indeed, only one mention of the event has been unearthed so far, though this was no more than a passing comment in an academic paper exploring wider industrial action by Cornish miners.1 However, no analysis was applied to the circumstances behind this particular action or its outcomes. Indeed, very little has been written, about children in history. Away from crime, punishment and education, childhood is a much neglected historic subject area. Social historians have long been fascinated with our predecessors‟ attitudes to child labour, but incidents of children acting in an apparently independent way have rarely been unveiled and explored, and as far as the author can find, never in an industrial situation. Surprisingly though, strikes by children in the past were not uncommon; on the 5th September 1911, a group of thirty or so boys marched out of Bigyn Council School in Llanelli2 to protest over the caning of one of their peers. Indeed, in this country it would seem strikes by children at school were quite common. During a presentation of research carried out by former Ruskin College pupils in 1972,3 David Marson evidenced that in 1911 alone, there were fifty seven towns that were affected by strikes by schoolchildren. Authors have also covered such events, in 1991 Pamela Scobie published The School that went on Strike,4 a historical novel based on the true story of the children of Burston County School in Norfolk who went on strike in 1914 after their head teachers were sacked by the local authorities. Overseas, collective action by children has also been reported upon Susan Campbell Bartoletti compiled enough information of such events in America to publish Kids on Strike5 in 1999. This book reports on children in nineteenth-century industrial conditions, which are similar to the events on Caradon Hill in 1872. However, the children identified by her as striking in the

1 Deacon, Bernard. „Heroic Individuals? The Cornish Miners and the Five-week Month 1872-74‟. Cornish Studies, No. 14. (Exeter University Press, 1986) p.46 2 BBC Radio Four [www] „History Section‟ accessed 09/01/09 3 The Times, Monday, May 08, 1972; p.12 4 Scobie, Pamela. The School That Went On Strike (Oxford University Press, 1999)

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Pennsylvanian mining fields were part of a larger industrial action which was instigated and controlled by adults. Back in Britain one of the most appalling abuses of human labour during the Victorian period was ended by the Match Girl Strike at Bryant and May in 1888. Nevertheless, the „girls‟ were in general not as in the Caradon case, young children. Moreover, as with the Pennsylvanian case mentioned above, this action was assisted again by adults, in this case the socialist and working condition campaigner Annie Besant.6

The Victorian era is firmly etched onto the modern national consciousness as a time of conflict between the proletariat, a capitalist oligarchy who thought nothing of subjugating the country‟s youth in order to feed its bank accounts and a reformist movement looking to liberate and educate its minors. This thesis will look at the resultant changing attitudes towards children labour in order to contextualise the 1872 agitation by children.

The reporting of any type of collective or strike action in nineteenth-century mines of Cornwall or West Devon7 is virtually nonexistent in the vast historiography pertaining to the Cornish miner and his labours. In point of fact, prior to Gillian Burke‟s reinterpretation8 of the previous historiography the fact that the Cornish miner resorted to industrial action at all was barely recorded. Nevertheless, they did strike, and moreover they did it quite often, as was later verified by Bernard Deacon in papers published in 19829 and 198610.

Prior to Burke‟s revisionary thesis11 the reason why the Cornish miner „did not‟ resort to industrial action was the topic debated by the historians of the subject: the effects of the various types of Methodism prevalent in the Cornish mining districts are extolled as an antidote to collective action by Todd,12 Rowe,13 Rule14

5 Bartoletti, Susan, Campbell. Kids On Strike. (Houghton Mifflin, 1999) pp.82-108 6 See: www.mernick.org.uk/thhol/besant.html 7 The mines of West were on the whole were regulated as part of the Cornish set-up, many of the lodes they worked existed on both sides of the Tamar, their were sold at ticketings in Cornwall etc. Thus, throughout the remainder of this report they will be regarded as one entity, and called Cornish mines. 8 Burke, G.M. The Cornish Miner and the Cornish Mining Industry 1870-1921 (London University, 1981) 9 Deacon, Bernard. „Attempts at Unionism by Cornish Metal Miners in 1866.‟ Cornish Studies, No.10, (Exeter University Press, 1982) 10 Deacon, ‘Heroic Individuals‟ 11 Burke, The Cornish Miner 12 Todd, A.C. The Cornish Miner in America. (Barton, 1967)

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and Harris.15 Religion coupled with economic good sense was also often quoted. Rowse took this a stage further by putting it down to the „Celtic virtues‟ of the indigenous population as a whole.16 Indeed, many of those who emphasised the influence of Methodism also highlight the unique „tribute‟ system of working in the Cornish mines as a supporting element.17 This was an interpretation advanced by Gregory18 as far back as 1968. John Rowe gives us a further reason as to why the Cornish miner did not actively look to collective action: the easy availability, during the nineteenth-century, of emigration. This it is argued, made it easy to move to better prospects around the world when things got tough in Cornwall.19

However, Burke and Deacon as hinted previously, have taken issue with the longevity of these theories, positing that early on in the nineteenth-century any one of, a mixture of, or even all these theories may well have kept the Cornish miner from resorting to collective action. Nevertheless, after the crash of 1866 they have both identified a marked increase of such activity, resulting in widespread strike action; a sequence ignored or overlooked by previous academic writings. The copper crash arguably should have reduced the strength of negotiation of the mining workforce, and thus made industrial action less likely. However, as we shall see, it was in this case the „tribute‟ system of working - which instead of placating the miners, gave them the reason to unite against the mine owners.

No historian to date has looked at where the child fits into the Cornish mining picture; perhaps they are assumed not to have been involved with any industrial activities due to their naivety or simply their young age? Nevertheless, children would have most surely been actively involved with any collective action that took place. Until the governmental legislation of 184220 there was no lower age limit relating to children working in mines, and even after the age of ten had

13 Rowe, J. The Hard Rock Men, Cornish Immigrants and the North American Frontier. Second Edition. (Cornish Hillside Publications, 2004) 14 Rule , J. The Labouring Miner in Cornwall 1740-1870. (University of Warwick, 1971) 15 Harris, T.R. Methodism and the Cornish Miner. Occasional publication (No. 1, 1960) 16 Rowse A.L.The Cousin Jacks: The Cornish in America. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969) 17 Todd, The Cornish Miner in America; Rule, The Labouring Miner; Rowe, The Hard Rock Men 18 Gregory, R. The Miners and British Politics, 1906-1914. (Oxford University Press, 1968) 19 Rowe, The Hard Rock Men

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been set, many of the boys would immediately go underground with their fathers as there was no inspectorate, and most men were employed by other miners to be a member of their pare21, not directly by the mine. Once the children started work at the mine they too would inevitably become embroiled in any unrest and the resulting collective action taken by the workforce, as Scobie has exemplified happening in America . The plight of the workers on the dressing floors of the mines has received separate attention from the underground activities by Lynne Mayers.22 However, she does not focus down on the issues behind child labour, and only takes a brief look at industrial action.

A series of steps will thus need to be taken in order to try and examine the conditions which resulted in the collective action by children taken in 1872. This research will also look at how our predecessors viewed child labour, and how the Victorian reformers legislated to switch the emphasis for the children of the lower classes from labour to education.

20 The introduction of the first Mines Act. 21 A „pare‟ was a team of miners who collectively worked a specific area of the mine together.

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Chapter 1: Changing Attitudes Towards Child Labour

According to the Bureau of Statistics of the International Labour Organization, in 1995, at least 120 million of the world's children between the ages of five and fourteen years did full-time, paid work. Many of them worked under hazardous and unhygienic conditions and for more than ten hours a day.23

The history of childhood as an academic topic has only recently been tackled;24 prior to this the historical plight of the child has been more or less bundled up with the adult world. Undoubtedly, the childhood of a middling or lower class minor born in Britain prior to the 1880 Elementary Education Act, would have been short indeed, and even after 1889 the child would have been out of full- time education and into the workplace from the age of twelve onwards. Before the industrialization of Britain, indeed right back to the days of the first humans to explore this country, a child would have been a vital unit of productivity for the family group. They would not only have been seen as the family‟s investment in the future, but from an early age, would have been helping with food production and processing or in the manufacture of goods either for family use or sale.25 Indeed, the more children you could maintain as a family group, the more potential revenue assets you had. Indeed, George Henry Rowe, who grew up in the parish of St. Cleer during the period of the Caradon Hill children‟s action, was one of twelve children, but he knew of families with twenty-two, and twenty- three children, both of whom were fathered by cobblers, both on their second wives. There was also one family with twenty-four children, who Rowe tells us “received a medal from Queen Victoria which was the custom to those having such large families.” 26 So it is difficult for commentators today with their average of two-point-five children, starting full time employment in their

22 Mayers, Lynne. Balmaidens. (: The Hypatia Trust, 2004) 23 ILO 1996; Kebebew Ashagrie 1998, quoted in: „Child Labour: Cause, Consequence, and Cure, with Remarks on International Labour Standards‟, Basu, Kaushik. Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Sep., 1999), pp. 1083-1119 24 Heywood, Colin. A History of Childhood. (Polity, 2001); Hanawalt, Barbara A. Growing up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History. (1993); Hendrick, Harry. Images of Youth: Age, Class, and the Male Youth Problem, 1880-1920. (Clarendon Press, 1990) 25 Gills, John, R. Youth and History, Tradition and Change in European Age Relations, 1770- Present. (Academic Press, Inc., 1981) p.17 26 Rowe, George H. Autobiography 1868-1946. (Unpublished) p.2

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twenties, to look back into what is another paradigm and make subjective judgements. Colin Henwood, quoting the work of Prout, James and Jenks, tries to explain this by making us think about childhood as a social construction. The words „child‟ and „childhood‟ have implicit meanings specific to particular social contexts.27 To cite James and Prout “the immaturity of children is a biological fact of life but the ways in which this immaturity is understood and made meaningful is a fact of culture.”28

To modern Britain the thought of child labour is abhorrent. However, as the quotation at the head of the chapter reveals, the problem has not gone away. As the novels of Charles Dickens vividly portray, during the nineteenth-century the employment of children was widespread, and the positions they occupied, and the hours they worked were many and long. Many cite Dickens‟ stories as being a driving force behind the Victorian reforms. Numerous characters and plots are based on his own experiences as a child; he was brought up with his father in the Marshalsea debtor‟s prison, whilst he was working in a factory with little enough food to keep hunger at bay.29 However the first legislation which recognised the plight of the child was enacted just seven years after he was born, in 1819. This formative legislation thus was also, by many years, pre-Victorian.30 However, this legislation made no mention of mines, and was enacted only to protect those employed in “cotton and other mills, and cotton and other factories.”31

The plight of the child from the lower classes changed with the introduction of the factory system. This saw the skilled and semi-skilled workforce, especially in the textile industries, removed from their home workshops, to be instead transferred into a mass production environment. Richard Arkwright‟s Cromford Mill which opened in Derbyshire during 1771 is seen as the precursor which ushered in the system; over the next fifty years it totally replaced the domestic system of textile production. Cromford was located next to a river so it could harness its power to drive the power looms via a water wheel. However by the

27 Heywood, A History of Childhood, p.4 28 Heywood, A History of Childhood, p.4 29 Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. Charles Dickens. [www]accessed: 20/04/09 30 Reid, Alistair, J. United We Stand. (Penguin, 2005) p.55. Also see: British Parliamentary Papers 1819: A bill intituled an act to make further provisions for the regulation of cotton mills and factories, and for the better preservation of the health of young persons employed therein. [www] accessed: 21/04/09

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1820s James Watt had efficiently turned the steam pumping engine into a spinning and weaving frame driver, so factories could be set-up anywhere coal and raw materials could be delivered and the finished product could be shipped out. By 1839 there were 419,560 factory workers, 192,887 of whom were under the age of 18 and 242,296 were female.32 The introduction of the factory system saw a break-up of the family productive unit, just as in the Cornish mining industry, where the companies started employing the surface workers on a full time basis, instead of them working for a single team of miners when required. In the textile industry as in the Cornish mines, the women and children were no longer employees of the head of the family, they were now all the employees of a capitalist oligarchy, who called the tune on when, where, how long and for how much they worked. It was not all doom and gloom, most families were much better off under the new system, at least initially. However it was the plight of the child, now tied to a regime of work out of the family‟s control, which set the wheels of reform in motion.

Throughout the introduction of the factory system successive governments, followed a policy of laissez-faire, intended, so they said, to allow workers the freedom and liberty to negotiate over hours and rates of pay. However, by 1833, with the abolishment of Slavery in the British Colonies, some, such as Richard Ostler, a Tory MP, redirected the focus closer to home: Thousands of our fellow-creatures […] are this very moment existing in a state of slavery, more horrid than are the victims of that hellish system „colonial slavery.‟ 33 Ostler was in fact using a rhetorical ploy here, lambasting the industrialists, many of who sat in Parliament, and had pressed for the abolishment of slavery, but who had failed to address their own widely criticised employment policies. Moreover, he was also a leader of the „Ten Hours Movement‟ which overcame initial opposition, to became law for women and children in the 1847 Factory Act. Prior to this, the Acts of 1833, forbade the employment of minors under nine years old, and the 1844 Factory Act laid down that eight to thirteen-year-olds were to work no more than six-and-a-half hours a day plus receive three hours

31 BPP Sess. 1819 32 Pinchbeck, I. Woman Workers and the . (Virago, 1981) 33 Cited in: Hollis, P. Class and Conflict in Nineteenth Century England, 1815-1830. (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973)

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of schooling five times a week. An Act of 1836 legislated that all births must be registered, enabling checks on age to be made, thus closing a loophole which had been previously used by employees as well as employers. The various Factory Acts however, did not affect mining sites.

Concerns though, were also rising about the treatment of both women and children in the mines, and a Children's Employment Commission Report was called for. Commissioners were sent out to all of the major mining districts and the Royal Commission submitted a report to the Government which was debating a Mines Bill during 1842. Dr. Charles Barham, who was a mine surgeon from , collected evidence for the inquiry from some of the Cornish mines, and some of his evidence will be considered below.34

The resultant Mines Act of 1842 made it illegal for any women or boys under ten-years-old to work underground in mines.35 Mayers has estimated from the 1841 census returns that there were 1,600 boys under thirteen-years working on Cornish mines; many of these would have been affected by the new legislation.36 The House of Lords modified some of its points. The age under which child labour was forbidden underground was dropped from thirteen to ten-years-old, and only boys above fifteen-years-old were allowed to control machines. The obligation to put children at work only every other day was removed from the text. It demanded more inspections underground but did not regulate the working hours of the miners. The House of Commons accepted the modified Bill, and on the 10th of August 1842, the Bill became law.

It was a further twenty-two years and the Report of the Commissioners of Mines in 1864 before the situation in the mines was looked into again. There was though opposition to the suggested changes in working practises, or any type of

34 The Royal Commission 1842: The Employment of Children and Young People in the Mines of Cornwall and Devonshire, and on the State, Condition and Treatment of Such Children and Young Persons. Accessed at The Cornwall Centre, . 35 British Parliamentary Papers 1842: A Bill to prohibit the employment of women and girls in mines and collieries, to regulate the employment of boys, and make provisions for the safety of persons working therein. [WWW Accessed 21/03/09] 36 Mayers, Lynne. A Dangerous Place to Work! (Blaize Bailey Books, 2008) p.15

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governmental regulation, emanating out of Cornwall thus the plan to set up an inspectorate for the metalliferous mines was shelved.37

Indeed, it was not until the 1872 Metalliferous Mines Regulation Act which: prohibited the employment in the mines of all girls and boys under the age of ten-years-old; introduced powers to appoint inspectors of mines and set out rules regarding ventilation, blasting and machinery,38 until regulations were made to encourage safe working practises. Thirteen to sixteen year old boys working underground were restricted to a maximum of fifty-six hours per week, and all ten to thirteen-year-old boys working underground (who now had strictly controlled hours) had to attend school for twenty hours every fortnight. The Act as drafted, stated that it would not come into force until the first day of January 1873. This indeed may have been a key factor behind the perceived necessity in seeking a wage rise by the children on the dressing floors of the Phoenix and Caradon mines in May 1872. However what is far more likely is that it may have contributed towards the rapidity at which some mines gave the raise of 1d. to those, whom the newspapers of the day labelled the „smaller girls‟.39

At this period of time in England and Wales there was no other compulsion to attend a school. However, in 1872, the Scottish Education Act was passed, which created the Scottish Board of Education and local school boards, and made school attendance in that country compulsory for children aged between five and thirteen-years.40 Nonetheless, four years later the Elementary Education Act (Sandon‟s Act) placed a duty on parents in England and Wales to ensure that their children received elementary instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic; created school attendance committees, which could compel attendance, for districts where there were no school boards; and allowed the poor law guardians to help with the payment of school fees.41

37 British Parliamentary Papers 1864: Report of the commissioners appointed to inquire into the condition of all mines in Great Britain to which the provisions of the act 23 & 24 Vict. cap. 151. do not apply, with reference to the health and safety of persons employed in such mines [www Accessed 21/03/09] 38 British Parliamentary Papers 1872: Metalliferous Mines Regulation, a bill to consolidate and amend the laws relating to metalliferous mines. [www Accessed 21/03/09] 39 As reported in the: Western Morning News of Tuesday 7th May 1872, p.2 40 Scottish Education Act, The. [www Accessed 15/04/09]

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Of course the Elementary Education Act came four years after the collective action by children on the Caradon and Phoenix mines. However, it is worth considering the speed the reform movement picked up between 1872 and the end of the century. In 1878 the Factories and Workshops Act consolidated and extended factory provisions to workshops, gave protection to the surface workers of mines, and stipulated that women and children were not to work more than twelve hours a day. However, the mine owners were unhappy that the act also banned night working on -dressing, which was a problem for them since much of the process relied on continuous working. It was cheaper and more efficient to keep steam driven processes (such as the stamps) going all night. Children aged less than ten-years were stopped from working and those between ten and fourteen were banned from full-time working.42 In 1880 the Elementary Education Act (Mundella‟s Act) extended the provisions of the 1876 Act regarding compulsory school attendance for children aged five to ten years. Nevertheless, Mayers suggests that “it was known that some [children of school age] were still employed illegally, well into the 1890s.”43 In 1893 the Elementary Education (School Attendance) Act raised the school leaving age to eleven years old. And finally the 1899 Elementary Education (School Attendance) Act (1893) Amendment Act raised the school leaving age to twelve.

It is worthwhile remembering that as industry became increasingly mechanized there would have been less demand for child labour anyway. However, just as important to the Victorian reformers was the provision of universal education, for which it was observed England was lagging behind other European countries, indeed, Scotland was more advanced than it. The school-leaving age has risen steadily throughout the industrialized world correspondingly also. Making school compulsory does not automatically mean that children stop working and turn up instead for education; the process takes decades. Nevertheless, if history teaches us that there is a single mechanism most likely to reduce hazardous child labour then compulsory primary education would be it. Nonetheless, the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 28, requires ratifying governments to make primary education compulsory and available free to all.

41 British Parliamentary Papers 1876: Elementary education. A bill to make further provision for elementary education. [www Accessed 21/04/09] 42 Mayers, A Dangerous Place, p.12 43 Mayers, A Dangerous Place, p.15

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Most of the world‟s governments have ratified the Convention, but as the opening quotation of chapter one suggests, child labour still remains a huge problem.

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Chapter 2: Child Labour in Cornish Mines

Contemporary reformers and legislators were looked at in the last chapter in order to try to understand how they considered the plight of the children of their time; this study must investigate the work the children would have been carrying out on Cornish mines, and how they regarded it.

The children of the 1872 Caradon Hill strike worked at the surface of metalliferous mines. The contains no coal, and little recoverable . The principal minerals mined were ores of and copper, though both and have been commercially recovered across the county also.44 A by-product of metalliferous mining in the county is also which came to prominence, as to being more than an impurity to removed, when it was discovered it could be used to control the boll-weevil which was decimating the North America cotton crop during the nineteenth-century.45 Arsenic however, was not a recoverable product from the Caradon and Phoenix lodes, and although both lead and silver were being mined some 5 miles (8km) to the south at both Menheniot and Herodsfoot, the operatives from the dressing floors of these sites do not appear to have joined the 1872 children‟s collective action for more pay. Overlying the 280 million year old igneous granite rocks, which contain the vast amount of the minerals lodes, are to be found the sedimentary Devonian slates and shales laid down some 400 million years ago whilst the region was submerged under a warm sea. Between the sedimentary and the igneous rock also lies a band of metamorphic rocks, basically slates and shales, literally baked into new rock types by the heat created when the liquid granite magma was pumped under the extant Devonian rocks during a mountain building phase which uplifted an area running from Southern Ireland to Brittany.46 The resultant altered slates were mined at Carnglase some 6 miles (9.5 km) to the southwest of the Caradon mines, where Meyers has noted children were being used on the surface,47 but they also, do not appear to have joined in with the collective action. Situated in and around the Caradon and

44 Earl, Bryan. Cornish Mining. (Cornish Hillside Publications, 1994); Stanier, Peter. The Minions Moor. (St. Ives Printing & Publishing Company, 1996) 45 Earl, Cornish Mining, p.22 46 Stanier, The Minions Moor, p.51 47 Mayers, A Dangerous Place, p.41

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Phoenix mines were also a number of granite quarries, which would probably have employed children. Nevertheless evidence has not been forthcoming to ascertain either if they did, or if they joined in the collective action, but they certainly were not mentioned in the press reports. Thus, the young agitators were a close-knit group, both in the work they carried out as well as geographically.

Our young Caradon and Phoenix agitators were employed on the surface of their respective sites of employment; indeed, as well as working on the dressing floors of mines, boys and girls would be used to drive horses on the whims and around the tramways, amongst numerous other things. Nevertheless, according to Mayers boys from the age of nine years old would also be employed underground operating pumps and tramming ore to the shafts, although they would not have been at the workface until the age of fourteen.48 She cites William Angwin, aged ten who fell down the shaft, whilst following his father down the ladders at Wheal Cock, Henry Hattam, aged thirteen who fell 10 fathoms (18m) at Wheal Cole and Benjamin Thomas, aged twelve at Balleswidden Mine, caught in a rock fall, all of whom were killed as a result of their injuries, as evidence of young boys working underground.49 Indeed, an unpublished autobiography by William Crago starts “At the very early age of nine years my Father told me one evening that on the following Monday morning I was to go with him to the mine to commence work as a miner.”50 However, this source should be treated with caution, for although it appears genuine, a more in-depth reading proves it was not only written much later in life51 but some of the details are inaccurate.52 Furthermore the cover uses a well known but cropped image from in but suggests it is of Crago in South Caradon. Lord Kinnaird in his report on the mines, a more reliable source which hints at the conditions experienced by those underground, said:

48 Mayers, A Dangerous Place, p.20 49 Mayers, A Dangerous Place, p.22 50 Crago, William. His Story. (Unpublished). 51 2nd page use of the word „pit‟ and 3rd page use of the word „subway‟, implies it was written after emigration to North America, these terms were not used in Cornish mines.

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instead of having the bright clear complexion of the young people employed at surface, those who labour in the mines have a very pale sallow appearance, and this they seem to acquire even after having worked underground for only a few months.53 Although these boys who worked underground were of a similar age to those on the surface, nine or ten years old, they would not associate themselves with them, as a certain kudos pervaded those who were able to work underground.54 Moreover, there is no indication that those working underground were any part of the collective action taken by the surface working children in 1872. Girls, and indeed women it would appear, were never employed underground in Cornish mines; however the activities they performed on the surface were a crucial part of the mining operation in Cornwall and as a means of contributing to the viability of the family group: I can buddy and I can rocky And I can walk like a man I can lobby and shaky And please the old Jan.55 Initially they would have worked for their family group, processing only the ore raised by them. However, during the nineteenth-century they more and more became full-time employees of the mine.56 But what were conditions like for children working on the surface of Cornish mines?

Unfortunately the recollections of the 1872 children do not seem to exist in the historical record; however, other primary source material is available for answering this, and it comes through questions asked by the governmental commissioners alluded to above, and also from later recollections in the form of poems and autobiographical accounts.

52 The depth he was working at he states was 1,600 feet but South Caradon is only recorded as being 1,500 feet deep at its close – see: Dines, H.G. The Metalliferous Mining Region of South-West England. (HMSO, 1956) p.601 53 Kinnaird Commission, 1864. Quoted in Mayers, A Dangerous Place, p.22 54 See: Schwartz, Sharron P. Voices of the Cornish Mining Landscape. (Cornwall County Council, 2008) p.71, also this can be detected in the autobiographies of William Crago and George H. Rowe. 55 From a Gwenap bal maiden‟s song collected in: James, C.C. History of Gwenap (Privately Published, 1944). The „old Jan‟ meaning the head of the family, rocky, lobby and shaky being slang terms for dressing operations. 56 Mayers, Lynne. Bal Maidens. (Blaize Bailey Books) p.vi

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This first account is from the poet miner John Harris, whose life was the classic struggle against the harshest imaginable circumstances. He, it was said, could not afford pen and paper so instead used blackberry juice for ink and grocery wrappers for paper. However, cutting through the romanticism, he can be regarded as a reliable primary source, as his observations were recorded as he lived, not compiled at a later date and he does little to either romanticise or criticise the industry. He is in fact commenting on a way of life, his life.57 He did however spent the second part of his life as a nonconformist preacher, and thus one must a little wary in that his earlier writings may have been re-used in part as sermons.58 At ten years of age my father took me with him to Dolcoath Mine, to work on the surface, in assisting to dress and prepare copper ore for market. Sometimes I had to work at the keeve, sometimes at the picking-table, sometimes in the slide, sometimes on the floors, sometimes in the cobbing house and sometimes at the hutch. Sometimes I had to wheel the mineral in a barrow until the skin came off my hands and my arms were deadened with the heavy burden. Sometimes I was scorched with the sun until I almost fainted, and then I was wet with the rains of heaven so that I could scarcely put one foot before of another.59 This source not only gives a lucid description of the conditions a surface worker was expected to endure, but also a record of the variety of dressing procedures a metalliferous ore had to be put through in order to produce a saleable product.

George Henry Rowe started work at South Caradon Mine aged 11 years prior to which his autobiography tells us he was privileged enough to attend the local school which was subsidised by a local Lord, but a small weekly fee was also paid by his parents.60 His autobiographical account of the mine some eight years after the strike on the Caradon and Phoenix dressing floors is possibly the closest available remaining insight into what roles would have been performed in 1872. The account it would appear was written after he emigrated to North America in 1887, and thus must be treated with caution, although unlike the earlier William

57 See: Harris, John. The Mountain Prophet, the Mine, and Other Poems (London: 1860) 58 Stephan, M.A. „Harris, John (1820–1884)‟, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [www Accessed 28 April 2009] 59 Mayers, A Dangerous Place, p.23 60 Rowe, Autobiography 1868-1946, p.3

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Crago account it checks out for historical accuracy, and the family are traceable in both the 1871 and 1881 censuses. In the latter George‟s father, also a George, is a thirty-six year old copper miner, as is his eldest son Richard; George Henry is listed as a copper dresser.61

George Henry Rowe describes many of the roles which would have been undertaken by children across Cornwall, though different minerals needed slightly different dressing techniques, and often no two mines would be treating identical ores, so some variance would have occurred. The basic procedure for the processing of copper ore follows:

Ore was brought to surface in iron buckets called kibbles and once landed the largest lumps were broken into smaller pieces by male surface labourers using ragging hammers which weighed about 8 to 10lb (3.7 to 4.5kg).

The next stage in the separation of waste from the ore-stuff, was spalling. This was nearly always done by women or boys. The object of spalling was to break the ore down into an appropriate size for bucking, or for the steam powered , and to remove as much waste as possible at this early stage. Both ragging and spalling required a firm base on which to break the ore, and areas of cobbles were usually set immediately around the landing area for these tasks. John Darlington, writing six years after the Caradon and Phoenix agitation, still advocated hand spalling as the most economic way to process the copper ore. He estimated an experienced spaller could produce about a ton of ore-stuff per day.62

Picking was the sorting of the spalled and riddled ore, usually the first job a child at a mine got given. Riddling or griddling was a dry sieving of the spalled ore. The large lumps were returned to the spallers, whilst the lumps that fell through were passed onto the cobbers. Many of the children who took collective action in 1872 would have been employed in these processes.

61 1881 England Census, Registration District, St. Cleer Parish, Higher Tremar Coombe, page 14, schedule number 61 62 Darlington, John. „On the Dressing of Ores‟ in Ure’s Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures and Mines (reprinted Dragonwheel, 2002)

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Writing in the 1770s, William Pryce described how cobbing took place at a stone anvil with a “Bat-polled hammer.”63 In some cases, the cobbers had their feet and legs protected by a screen; they separated out and rejected any waste rock, and broke the mixed ore to hazelnut-sized pieces, ready for bucking. Cobbing was considered only suitable for older girls. John Darlington estimated that an expert cobber could “prepare about 10 cwts [454kg] of ore per ten hour shift.”64

Bucking was considered the hardest task carried out by the women and girls on the dressing floors, and involved reducing the cobbed ore-stuff to small granules and powder. The bucking girls and women stood at a bench or a mound of stone packed with earth, into which was set an anvil. As hand bucking was so difficult and demanding, it was one of the first processes to be mechanised. By 1839, De la Beche65 was reporting that the best ores were being broken by steam-driven crushing machines in most of the principal copper mines. Indeed South Caradon mine had a 30-inch engine with one boiler, 24 head of stamps and listed in its closing down auction.66 This may be the same one George Henry Rowe reports of seeing being installed for the first time at the mine.67 However, it would be highly unlikely that a mine such as South Caradon, which was still under the control of its original founders who were renowned for investing in technology, to be fifty years behind the other principal copper mines.

Washing and jigging were methods of separating any waste material away from the ore. Washing was done in long strakes with iron bottoms, whilst jigging from the 1830s onwards was carried out in jigging boxes, which made what was a backbreaking task a little easier.68 Indeed, working on the dressing floors from 1879 George Henry Rowe remarks on how he operated the hand jiggers before progressing on to the machine jiggs, powered by a circa thirty foot water wheel at South Caradon Mine.69 There were numerous other jobs for which young children were also employed on the dressing floors. George Henry Rowe mentions he had to start out running slime pit. This is one of a host of secondary

63 Pryce, William. Minerologia Cornubensis, 1778 (Reprinted: Bradford Barton, 1972) p.234 64 Darlington, On the Dressing of Ores, p.80 65 Beche, de la, H. Report on the Geology of Cornwall, Devon and West Somerset. (London: British Geological Survey, 1839) 66 The Mining Journal (September 1885) 67 Rowe, Autobiography 1868-1946, p.3 68 Mayers, Bal Maidens, p.85

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methods of ensuring that as much of the ore as possible was recovered. He also mentions hutches, ties and buddles as places where young children would have worked.70

The children on the dressing floors who acted collectively must have taken a lead from somewhere, and as alluded to above, their parents and more elderly co-workers, had from the 1860s onwards became more prone to taking this type of action. The next chapter tells their story

69 Rowe, Autobiography 1868-1946, p.5 70 Rowe, Autobiography 1868-1946, p.4

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Chapter 3: Collective Action at Cornish Mines

The Cornish Miner in the later part of the nineteenth-century, found reasons to act collectively, that were just not issues, or did not unduly disturb them in the early part of the century. The miners, as well as adventurers who invested in the mines, were at the mercy of the metal markets. Indeed, from the mid 1860s onwards, the Cornish copper mines struggled. The price of copper was set by international markets71, and in 1866 dropped significantly. The Cornish mines were deep, and the associated overheads were high; copper had been discovered in Australia and North America, and these new deposits were easily and thus cheaply accessible. This economic down-turn saw for the first time Cornish miners pulling together collectively across different mines, and mining regions, to articulate their grievances. The drop in the price of copper was followed in 1873 by a sharp plummet in the usually less volatile price of tin, which further exasperated the situation for the mining communities.72 Indeed, the tribute and tut-work employment systems used in the Cornish mines, as they were intrinsically linked to the selling price of the ore, ensured a lower price at the ticketings73 resulting in smaller wages going home to the family.

Prior even to these collapses in the price of the primary metals associated with the mines of Cornwall though, there were grievances over the level that the bargains were being set at the mines. This was seen by the tributers, as a continual erosion of their earnings and these matters came to a head in both 1853 and 1859, but no long term solution was found.74

A few years later, certain resentment was being aired about Lord Kinnaird‟s responses to the Report of the Commissioners of Mines in 1864. Cornish miners were interviewed by the Commissioners but many complained of pressure being applied to them by their Captains not to „rock the boat.‟75 Nonetheless, Kinnaird in the following year was proposing legislation, in the light of the findings, which would provide governmental inspections of all metalliferous mines. This initiated

71 Deacon, ‘Heroic Individuals‟, p. 40 72 Burke, The Cornish Miner, p.362 73 A market place where smelters bid on pre-sampled specimens by dropping folded tickets, or slips of paper containing the price they were willing to pay for that parcel ore. 74 Burke, The Cornish Miner, p.363

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a series of letters to the local Cornish and Devon press, warning of the dangers of such a scheme; the tone of the rhetoric implied that these letters were from the mine workers themselves, and were signed by such monikers as „a Miner.‟76 Nevertheless, the underlying inference is that these were written by members of the mine management or the shareholders, who in Cornish mines came from all aspects of life. Any inspection would indeed, create far more inconvenience and more importantly potential costs, to these people, than they would to the workforce, who one would expect could only benefit from some kind of regulation. Indeed, high on the agenda for the workforce was improved working conditions and a living wage.77 That said, the notoriously close-knit Cornish, one would have thought, would have been suspicious of any monitoring that was carried out upon them by the authorities.

There were also other vexations, chief amongst which was the five-week month, according to which the mines paid a flat monthly rate for all bargains, including short term contract work, such as that carried out on the dressing floor, whether the calendar month was of four or five weeks. As Deacon suggests, as long as net wages were low [due to the low price of copper], such issues heightened the sense of injustice being felt by the workforce. 78 Another objection was the management of the „sick clubs‟. These were deducted from the mine workers wages at source, but in most cases only covered initial treatment by a mine doctor in case of an accident on-site, but without ongoing welfare benefit. Phoenix United Mine in 1872 for the 800 hands employed was worth £200 per year to the mine doctor.79 Taking the average yearly wage of a miner at the mine was £45, and doing a simple average based on the number of employees this equals £4 a year, or nearly 11% of the wage of one of the better paid workforce! The miners indeed, on a daily basis, risked their lives for the benefit of the shareholders; falls from ladders, explosive misfires, roof collapses, entrapment in machinery, heart disease, the chronic lung diseases of phithisis and silicosis incapacitated and killed on a daily basis. The average age of males being buried in the parish of St. Cleer, where South Caradon and numerous other mines were

75 BPP, 1864, xxiv, question 2869 76 West Britain, May 12th 1865 77 West Britain, May 19th 1865 78 Deacon, „Heroic Individuals,‟ p.42 79 Royal Cornwall Gazette, April 27th 1872

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situated, dropped from 51 years and six months in 1813-19 to 21 years and 10 months in 1850-59.80 South Caradon Mine was the first big employer in the district and opened in 1836. By 1850-59 the population of the parish had quadrupled in just twenty years, and the mines were at their most productive. The health cost to the parishioners is self evident. When one considers that Phoenix Mine expended annually £35,000 - £40,000 on labour and supplies81 one cannot help, but sympathise with the men who thought that the mine itself could quite easily have paid the £200 a year for the doctor.

It was a combination of all of the above that was to transform the Cornish miner from a collection of individuals who occasionally acted in a united way in order to try and reverse their fortunes, into what has been observed as something resembling trade unionism82 a move this occupation in this county had not attempted before.

As mentioned beforehand, the historiographical view of the Cornish miner resorting to collective action has shifted. However, it has not been generally apprecated that prior to the use of strike action by the miners of Cornwall, other means were used by them to achieve their aims. The primary concern of the Cornish miner, as with any able bodied person, was to feed himself and his family. This was achieved both via pay from the mine, and if he was lucky enough, by living off any land he leased or owned. If there was a bad harvest, or a crop was blighted, the miner suffered as much as the agriculturalist did. Moreover, the prices of goods which had to be purchased fluctuated violently during the eighteenth-century, a time when the country was almost constantly at war. 83 The miners or „tinners‟ as they were known, were easily roused into action and their subsequent activities were notoriously violent.84 John Allen, the mid- nineteenth century historian of Liskeard, reported that amongst the inhabitants of the town, hearing “The French are coming” and “The Tinners are rising!”

80 Rowe, Cornwall in the Age of the Industrial Revolution (Cornish Hillside Press, 1993), p.152 81 Royal Cornwall Gazette, April 27th 1872 82 Mayers, Bal Maidens, p.43 83 Rule J. & Wells R. Crime, Protest and Popular Politics in Southern England 1740 – 1850. (The Hambledon Press, 1997) p.3 84 Rule & Wells, Crime, Protest and Popular Politics, p.5

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created equivalent anxiety during the Napoleonic Wars.85 The riot was the traditional form of protest, and food riots in Cornwall, according to John Rule were, on the whole, the domain of the tinner.86 Indeed, the mining town of Redruth lost its corn market for good after a food riot in 1773.87 At common law, riot, any disturbance involving three or more people, was initially a misdemeanour, punished by whipping or a fine. Nevertheless, a statute of 1715, The Riot Act, ruled that if twelve or more people acted in this way and failed to disband within one hour of the reading of a dispersal notice by an officer of the peace, a felony was committed, the ultimate punishment for which, was the death penalty.88

Nonetheless, the fact that the last food riot in Cornwall was in 184889 goes someway to highlight the desperate circumstances the people of the county were continually subjected to. This in a British context, is an extremely late date for such an occurrence. Highlighted by the fact that after 1841 the death penalty was withdrawn for rioting, as there was the notion that it was rarely required.90

The tinners also have been cited as being prime movers in the organisation of wrecking parties.91 A shipwreck was a welcome occurrence to those living on a subsistence wage. Indeed, Parson Troutbeck has been cited as adding to his litany the petition: “We pray Thee, O Lord, not that wrecks should happen, but that if wrecks do happen, Thou wilt guide them into the Scilly Isles, for the benefit of the poor inhabitants.”92 Although food rioting and wrecking does not in any way point towards union activity, it does show a tendency to act collectively, illegally, and with little regard for authority in times of dire need, or when

85 Allen, John. History of the Borough of Liskeard. (Liskeard: 1856) p.360 86 Rule, J. The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England 1750-1850. (Longman, 1986) p.351 87 Rule & Wells Crime, Protest and Popular Politics p.19 88 Stevenson, John and Quinault, Ronald (eds). Popular Protest and Public Order. (George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1974) p.144 89 Deacon, B. “Attempts at Unionism,” p.30 90 Stevenson & Quinault, Popular Protest and Public Order, p.145 91 Hay, Douglas ; Peter Linebaugh, P.; Rule, John G. ; Thompson, E. P.; and Winslow, Cal. Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975) p.181 92 Cited in: Hamilton Jenkin, Cornwall and its People. ( David and Charles, 1988) p.50

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opportunities present themselves, an activity not formerly appreciated by the early writers on Cornish mining.93

Union activity was slow to get off the ground in Cornwall. The Chartist Movement has been linked to unionism, and one of its founder members was William Lovett, the son of the captain of a small fishing vessel, who was born in Penzance, Cornwall on 8th May, 1800. Chartism though had little impact in Cornwall, and Lovett himself only became interested in socialist ideas of those such as Robert Owen after a move to London. Moreover, Chartism was a political movement; its principal aims were to give the male working classes equal access to the parliamentary privileges available to those in the classes above them, and thus any attempt to link its objectives with that of unionism is therefore rather tenuous.94 Indeed, the only activity relating to Cornish miners and unionism during the Chartist era, comprised strike breaking in the North-east in 1844, and in in 1847. On both occasions the blacklegs, or „nobsticks‟ as they were then called, were working in coal mines when members of The Miners Association were striking.95 Having established that the miners did resort to collective action, but in a non-structured way, when did they take those first steps towards trade unionism?

The first recorded moves towards structured association in the east of the county took place in June 1842, with the formation of the Caradon Miners‟ and Mechanics Friendly Society. Monthly meetings were held in The Sportsman‟s Arms, St. Cleer, with a subscription of one shilling six pence a month. Benefits would be available to members after a year of contribution, in the case of sickness or injury nine shillings a week,96 in the case of death one shilling to be paid to the next of kin, by every member, and if a member‟s wife died 6 pence.97 However, friendly societies, were local organisations, and thus were less concerned with labour law on a national scale as trade unions were.98 Moreover,

93 Before the revisionary thesis put forward by Gillian Burke in the The Cornish Miner and the Cornish Mining Industry 1870-1921 94 Pelling, Henry. A History of British Trade Unionism, fourth edition. (London: Penguin, 1987) p.33 95 Challinor, R & Ripley, B. The Miners Association – A Trade Union in the Age of the Chartists. (Lawrence and Wishart, 1968) p.132 & p.191 96 The Rules of the Caradon Miners and Mechanics Friendly Society, 1861, p.5 97 The Rules of the CMMFS, p.10 98 Reid, United We Stand, p.68

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unlike a trade union they also tended towards exclusiveness, and had many rules defining eligibility.99 Indeed the Caradon Miners and Mechanics had an age stipulation of sixteen to thirty five years old100, and twenty eight separate rules, not one of which makes any mention of payment in times of industrial action. Thus any suggestions, no matter how tentative, that this was in any way a trade union should not be drawn.

The circumstances behind the conditions which presented themselves in 1866 however persuaded the miners, at least in the east of the county, of a need to unite as one voice. With a decline of the copper price, and the non-settlement of grievances which had been bubbling under since at least 1853, the miners of east Cornwall formed the Miners Mutual Benefit Association in February 1866. The chief aim of this was an improvement in the financial rewards available to the miner by forcing the mines to offer a more preferable rate of bargain on the mine setting day.101 The mine owners though acted immediately and refused to bargain with Association members, they indeed, cited rules five, six and seven as being particularly objectionable.102 The Association was initially strongly supported with an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 attending open air meetings on Caradon Hill,103 and an alleged 20,000 of the 45,000 miners in Devon and Cornwall being signed up members.104 However, ultimately the mine owners prevailed and it was their collective action against the Association, whom had no reserves from which to distribute strike pay, which won the day. Indeed it may well have been the continued slide in the copper standard which enabled them to do this. A price of £130 a ton in mid-January continued to slide to under a £100 by late June,105 thus making it an easy decision for the mines, to cease production and ride out both storms at the same time. The men it is reported “returned to work on the employers‟ conditions”106 just over three weeks into the strike. The Association had threatened during the dispute, that if their demands were not met, they would emigrate, and throw their families on the Parish.

99 Reid, United We Stand, p.27 & p.53 100 The Rules of the Caradon Miners and Mechanics Friendly Society, 1861, p5 101 The „bargain‟ was a percentage of the dressed ore paid to a mining team or „pare‟ at the end of a contract. Although this percentage was bid upon by competing pares on setting day, the mine Captains could easily artificially suppress the price. 102 Western Daily Mercury, 28th February 1866; Cornish Times 2nd March 1866. 103 Western Daily Mercury, 5th March 1866; Cornish Times, 10th March 1866. 104 Western Daily Mercury, 5th March 1866 105 Deacon, “Attempts at Unionism” p.33

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Evidence from the period after the fall of the Association shows this did happen,107 but whether this was men sticking to their threat or just being barred from working due to their association with the dispute is unknown.

The next period of unrest, conversely, was due to a substantial jump in the price of tin, a rising copper standard and a lack of available labour which was a result of mass emigration. The miners thus, took advantage of their strong bargaining position and endeavoured to end the long disputed five-week month. The Miners Protection Society was formed at Minions in January 1872,108 and by early February, South Caradon Mine acquiesced, and it adopted the four-week month after a mass meeting of 800 to a 1,000 miners at Minions.109 On the strength of this success, strikes ensued across the county.110 Even though the demands for a four-week month were almost universally accepted by the mines, unrest still bubbled under the surface, and correspondence regarding the unsatisfactory wage being paid to the metalliferous mine workers of the county continued to appear in the local press.111 Indeed, this juncture brings us to the moment grievances were being raised by the boys and girls of the mines surrounding Caradon Hill.

106 Cornish Times, 17th March 1866 107 Western Daily Mercury, 9th April 1866; The West Briton 15th June 1866 108 West Briton, 30th January 1872 109 Royal Cornwall Gazette, 3rd February 1872 110 West Briton, 7th March 1872 111 For example see: The Royal Cornwall Gazette, 4th May 1872, A letter from „CARADON‟ regarding the unsatisfactory method currently used in the letting of tut and tribute bargains at the present – dated April 22nd 1872.

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Chapter 4: Why Did the Mine Children of Cornwall Resort to Collective Action in 1872?

The only information that has so far come to light regarding the strike by the boys and girls of the Caradon & Phoenix mines has come via the reporting of the event in the local press. Just one set of mine account books has come to light, and unfortunately the surface account book for the period in question is not amongst them.112 The local newspaper, the Cornish Times unusually, has no file copies available after the 4th May until 1st June. This newspaper, being the most local to the mining district concerned would, one would think, have given a more in depth coverage than those that supplied the Truro or Plymouth papers which are available. The incident first comes to light in the Truro newspaper the West Briton on 7th May 1872: Bal Children At Caradon - Last week upwards of 300 girls and boys working in various mines in the Liskeard district, struck for wages. The wages hitherto given to the girls have amounted to only six shillings per week, but on those employed on the South Caradon mine representing their grievances, and asking an advance they obtained an addition on one penny per day. On this becoming known at the neighbouring mine of West Caradon the girls there immediately struck, and the agitation soon spread to Glasgow Caradon, Marke Valley, Phoenix and other mines. At Phoenix the boys also struck. In some cases the penny advance has been offered, as given at South Caradon, but the children ask for twopence extra, which even then will only amount to seven shillings per week. They are now seen daily congregating on the downs, discussing their grievances and visiting other mines. At Phoenix on Friday, Mr. West desired the people to return and take what he would give them, but unless they receive the twopence extra they refuse to work. At some mines the demands were conceded on Saturday, but the other remain on strike today.

According to the Western Morning News of Wednesday 8th May 1872 settlements were made at South Caradon and Glasgow Caradon of 1d.per

112 Cornwall Record Office, Ref No: X19 - Glasgow Caradon and Wheal Gill mines, , 1858-1875

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day, at East Caradon and Marke Valley, to the smaller girls 1d.per day, but at Phoenix Mine 112 girls and 108 boys were holding out for a 2d.per day. The West Briton of May 9th, reported that all hands were back at work, but a great deal of dissatisfaction remained by those who did not achieve their aims.

Thus reading between the lines, it was children who initiated this action; there is no mention of any adult intervention on their behalf in any of the headlines, or the text copy. There must have been some kind of collective action amongst the children working on the dressing floors at South Caradon in order for them to make the request for more pay. There is no indication if they asked for a penny and got it, or asked for more and settled on a penny. It would also appear that the other surface workers in the surrounding mines were not part of this collective action until the request was made and agreed at South Caradon. The other surface workers it would also appear, acted independently of each other towards their own objectives, and went back to work once these had been met. Thus there was no solidarity between those who had achieved an acceptable rise and those that had not. This is also implied by the fact that those who wanted a 2d. rise, and did not accept the 1d. the majority had agreed upon did not achieve any extra payment at all, even though it is clear that Mr. West from Phoenix had offered them something.

Most of the mines mentioned were big employers113, and main performers Phoenix and South Caradon are part of the top ten Cornish producers by value of all ore sold between 1845 and 1913, West Caradon was in the top thirty, and East Caradon and Marke Valley the top fifty. Glasgow Caradon was a much smaller mine but was still in the top hundred, and in 1872 was selling more ore than its prestigious neighbours.114

What is clear though, is that the wage system was chronically unjust; the penny raise given in 1872 brought the children up to the wages recorded a

113 Although full employment figures for them are not available until after1880 114 Burt, R. (Ed.). Cornish Mines. (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1987) p.li & p.lii. Also see appendix 2

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full thirty years earlier for boys on the dressing floors at Consols.115 Not so clear, and the next challenge for this thesis, must be to try and establish what stimulated the collective request for more pay at the Phoenix and Caradon mines.

It is unfortunate that we have no first hand renditions of this action other than the newspaper reports, or know why even they gave such little space to it. Indeed a total lack of what the children were thinking or what initiated the action is the real problem for this thesis. Research must then take place, via the media coverage of the period, in order to try and identify the possible causes behind the strikes of 1872.

In September 1871, surface workers at Dolcoath Mine went on strike for more pay, and in January 1872, those at Wheal Basset left their work, demanding a rise from 9d. to 11d. per day.116 These ultimately successful and related agitations, along with a continuous stream of letters protesting against the unfair conditions under which the mine workers were employed would have been available to the Caradon workers via the local newspapers. For example a letter from „A Pensilvian,‟117 stating “They currently work with a sledge, shovel or a griddle for nine or ten hours a day for 12d.,” called for a meeting in mid-Cornwall to discuss the current situation of surface and underground miners.118 Carters were on strike in Liverpool, tailors in Dublin, cutlers and bricklayers in Sheffield. Nationally demands were being made by agricultural workers for better pay and conditions and the seine fishermen of Mevagissey were also threatening to strike. The local and national papers of the weeks preceding the agitation by children on Caradon Hill, are indeed full of the instance of workers uniting in protest against the conditions that they were being employed under. 119

115 Barham, Children‟s Employment Commission, p.785. Also see appendix 1 for various wage comparisons. 116 Mayers, Bal Maidens p43; Royal Cornwall Gazette, 6.1.1872 117 Pensilva was a mining village to the east of Caradon Hill. 118 Royal Cornwall Gazette, 29th April 1872, p8 Also see: Western Morning News 2nd- 6th May 1872 inclusive 119 Western Morning News 2nd- 6th May 1872 inclusive

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Also, although the price of tin was high and copper was once again rising,120 there was a general realisation that the mines around Caradon Hill were coming towards the end of their productive lives. For example in the „Liskeard‟ section an excerpt from a meeting concerning the proposed billeting of a military unit near to the town, foretelling that the “adventures in the district are now under a cloud; many mines have been shut up and others are shortening hands, thousands of the labouring population have been compelled to seek employment in foreign climes; commerce is languishing; trade is declining.”121 So the press can be convincingly observed as a consequential influence upon the action of the children; however, one would feel this type of information would have to be filtered down to them via their elders. This would also be the case with issues regarding the cost of living which was rising due to the most extraordinary atmospheric activity experienced this year. Large areas of the country had been repeatedly flooded since January, ruining stored goods and a series of horrendous storms at sea had affected imports.

What is equally important, and was indeed covered in the last chapter, is that the Miners Protection Society was formed at Minions during January 1872,122 and this, as this research has shown, was successful in negotiating the ending of the five-day week in most of the mines in the area. Indeed, in that, as with this action, South Caradon Mine was the first to acquiesce to the demands of its workers, leading the way for a wider settlement across other sites. Has this an underlying importance to this thesis, or was it just purely coincidental?

120 Burt, Cornish Mines, pxxii 121 West Briton, May 9th 1872 122 West Briton, 30th January 1872

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Conclusion

In conclusion this thesis is suggesting that the collective action by children around Caradon Hill, was not part of a concerted move towards trade unionism, nor it seems was the earlier 1872 combination under the banner of the The Miners Protection Society. Both of these can be seen as successful for the participants, as most who joined in achieved their aims. Here one would think, with the solid foundations of a double victory over their employees, would be the perfect time to build a strong association for the future. However this just did not happen. Maybe the failure of the overtly militant Miners Mutual Benefit Association of 1866, beaten by a united front of mine management, and the free- falling copper ore prices was a still a too bitter memory? It is an important fact indeed, that at this period of time there was only a very small percentage of the workforce countrywide who were incorporated into trade unions.

This thesis would thus like to propose that perhaps there is some middle ground between the earlier writers on the industry and the revisionary theories proposed by Burke and Deacon. The failure of The Miners Mutual Benefit Society to negotiate with the mines over setting prices was because they, chose a time not only when labour was plentiful, but more importantly whilst the mines were suffering financially. Whilst the successes for the The Miners Protection Society and the Phoenix and Caradon children, came at a time when the price of copper was on the up, and labour was scarce due to a mass migration abroad due to the formerly suppressed copper price. Perhaps then it really was the „economic good sense‟ of the Cornish miner which negated the need for unionism, and the Miners Mutual Benefit Society just got the timing wrong. However, it is equally likely that this 1866 action was not intentionally unionist in its origins; it may have just been a cultural throwback to the days of the „tinners riots‟, and the need to act collectively when faced with desperate circumstances. The stubborn refusal to drop the three contentious rules from their constitution also worked against them.

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Two theories have also been suggested in this text as to why the Caradon Hill children were successful in their negotiations. Firstly the knowledge by the mine owners, that at the start of the next year with the introduction of the 1872 Metalliferous Mines Regulation Act, they would be faced with losing all dressing floor employees under the age of 10, and those over this age, would have strictly controlled hours of work imposed. Perhaps the concession to the „smaller girls‟ as announced in the press, was based on the knowledge that in seven months time they would be off at school anyway? As we have no first hand reports, and very limited press coverage of the agitation, we cannot with any assurance confirm this to be the case. The second theory suggested was that the successes both of the children‟s agitation and that of the earlier Miners Protection Society were due to an immediate acceptance by South Caradon Mines of their employees‟ grievances.

South Caradon apart from being the richest in the Caradon and Phoenix mining area also had a unique shareholder structure. It was founded by two sets of brothers, Tom and Richard Kittow, from East Cornwall farming stock; and James and Peter Clymo, mine captains who moved to the area from the St. Austell district. They collectively in their spare time, prospected for copper to the south of Caradon Hill, and in 1836 made a massive discovery. Due to the fact there was no copper mining east of St. Austell, potential shareholders were reluctant either to believe the brothers, or to invest in what would be a start-up venture in an area where it was generally thought no copper ore existed. The brothers were thus forced to raise the capital to open up the mine themselves. The mine was an instant success, and from the outset, the vast majority of the shares were thus held by a local farming family and working miners. Although by the time of the collective action the Clymos, James (in 1848) and Peter (in 1870), had passed away, the majority of their shares were still held within the family. Moreover, the Kittows, Tom who was the mine purser (accountant), and Richard a trustee who always preferred farming to mining, also held a major percentage of their original shares. This thesis is thus suggesting that it was the altruistic nature of these families, who saw the merits of both cases, and agreed to their terms immediately, which then put pressure on the other mines to follow suit. The altruism of the shareholders, can be substantiated by the fact that this and a lead/silver mine at nearby Menheniot, which also had the Clymos as majority

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shareholders, were the only mines in East Cornwall to install man-engines. These were built at great cost, had no other purpose than to ease daily toil of the miners getting to and from their underground places of work. The reason they would not negotiate with the Miners Mutual Benefit Society was because of the three problematic rules, which not only called for an Association man to decide what steps should be taken if the income offered by the mine was deemed insufficient, but also offered a provision of strike pay for Association members and the banning from membership of any miner taking a pitch under dispute. Rules they could not possibly countenance as they undermined their authority as managers.

This then leaves us with the question why did the Phoenix children hold out for two pence, but get nothing? The thesis would suggest this was due to the fact the mine was producing much more tin than the other mines, and at this time the price of that metal was riding very high indeed. They were maybe trying their luck, having seen the ease at which raises were being given elsewhere. However, they did not account for William West‟s connections to South Caradon, where he started out in the area as their engineer. Once again, solidarity amongst the mine management was able to crush perceived misanthropy by the employees.

This thesis has recognised the actions of the children of the Phoenix and Caradon mines surrounding Caradon Hill, and has highlighted that collective action by children existed outside of the previously known context of schools, and possibly there are many more yet to be discovered! This action should then be acknowledged, if not as a small step on the way to unionism in Cornish mines, then as one towards child liberty, and children once again being treated with respect. Liberty from the workplace for England‟s youths was to be sealed with the implementation of the Education Acts. Indeed, history teaches us that if there is a single mechanism which has reduced child labour worldwide then compulsory primary education was it. However, as has been highlighted elsewhere, this gave the children of England a different context from which to act collectively if the necessity arose!

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Appendix 1.

Date – age/location Wage per day (pence) 1773 – Buddle Boy 8 years 3½d. 1828 – Women Clay Workers 8d. 1840-50s – Girls on Dressing Floors (average) 4d. 1840-50s – Women on Dressing Floors (average) 12d. 1841 - 9 year old boy @ Consolidated Mines 3d. 1841 – Boy Ore Jiggers @ Fowey Consols 13d. 1842 - Miner in Central District * 30d. 1842 - Childs Average Earnings in Central District ** 10d. 1847 – Pickers @ 10d. 1852 – Boy Drawing Ore @ Wheal Trelawny 6d. 1871 – Miners Average Earnings @ Phoenix U. mine 38d. 1872 – 1st Class Police Constable 44d. 1872 - Girls on Dressing Floors @ South Caradon 13d. 1880 – 8 & 9 year old Ore Dressers @ South Caradon 6d. 1887 – Fuse Girls @ Tuckingmill 4½d.

Pre-decimal Currency Relative Value in 2009 1d. (pence) = 2 halfpence or 4 farthings £0.30p 1s. (shilling) = 12d. £3.60 £1 (pound) = 20s. or 240d. £70.00 I guinea = £1. 1s. or 21s or 252d. £73.60

* The equivalent to the cost of 4 gallons of potatoes and 3lb of fish. **The equivalent to the cost of a 1lb of butter

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Appendix 2.

Mine Copper Output in 1872 Tin output in 1872 Ore/tons Ore/tons South Caradon 5,195 Marke Valley 4,427 6 Phoenix 1,348 364 Glasgow Caradon 2,195 East Caradon 2,133 West Caradon 853

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