Working in Mines

As the industry grew bigger and bigger, the coal mines had to go deeper and deeper to meet the steam engines’ unceasing call for fuel. More miners were needed to help, children were poor and some were forced by parents to work, they needed to carry 100 weight of coal and some children get suffocated for not having enough good quality air. Even children of a young age needed to work. However, the condition inside the mine was absolutely horrible. The mine was dark and damp and according to some miners, sometimes it might get pitch-black and they will get scared. The hours were long, the air was in bad condition, the pay was low, but in addition there was the danger, the darkness, the water and above all the terrible physically hard work.

Inside the factory, the owners were vindictive and despicable. Miners were paid by a tub, if 220kg tub was not full, the owners wouldn’t pay you anything, no matter what. If the tub was over full, the miner wouldn’t get extra paid either. If there happened to be some slack among the coal which is preventable, the miner would NOT be paid, BUT needed to fine into bargain. Isn’t that just harsh and cruel? This really should be set as a punishment rather than a job.

When the children were about 6-7, they moved either to carry the coal in a basket or pulling trucks along the low galleries, harnessed to the wagon like animals. They had a belt around the waist, a chain passing between their legs and they had to go on their hands and feet. They needed to remain in the position for a long time, going up steep roads, and they needed to hold on to a rope just to help themselves.  Due to the bending of the body for such a long time, lots of children were de-hydrated and deformed. The trappers, who were the youngest children in the mines (4-6 years old), were to sit in a little hole, scooping out for the miners in the side of the gates behind each door, where they sit with a string in their hands attached to the door and pull it when they hear the corves. They needed to be in the pit the whole time, about 12 hours a day.

According to miners in the past, they mentioned that they had no candles, so it was really dark and there might be gas explosions plus they might be ran over by wagons. Another 13 year old quoted that she had no shoes, stockings, nor a cloak. And she remembered one time, other male miners knocked her down and they thrashed her, swore at her and beat her up. A girl called Margaret Leveston who was 6 said that she had been down at the coal-carrying six weeks, and made about 10-14 journeys a day, she carried full 56 pounds of coal in a wooden basket. Another girl, Ellison Jack, 11 carried a basket containing about 70 kg of coal all day, and travelled an awful long way to the tub. It was also said that the baskets of coal Ellison had to carry were so heavy that 2 people were needed to hoist them on her back. There was a trapper who worked in the Gawper pit and she was eight, she said she had to trap without a light and she was scared. Sometimes, she sung when she had the light and she said she wouldn’t dare to sing without the light. There was another woman aged 37, Betty Harris who was a miner who pulled the trucks, said the pit gets really wet and water comes over their clog tops and she has seen it up to her thighs. Her clothes get soaked almost the whole day.

Because of the water, filth and the heat, lots of workers prefer to work naked and they were hardly ever off the mud and they would be so glad to reach the surface.

The miners really worked very hard.

By the nineteenth century, finally this “mine working” had been set as a condemned crime in Scotland.