|
IT was one o'clock on a bright, sunny day, and the stranger making his way
along the front street was struck by the neatness of the houses and the
tidy, newly-swept condition of the path he trod. Happening to hear through
the open door of one of the houses the chimes of an eight-day clock, he
paused to glance within and was struck by the shining cleanliness of the
interior. A chest of drawers, with brass handles and ornaments, reached
from the floor to the ceiling, a huge four-poster bed boasted a coverlet
made up of squares of printed calico, brightly-gleaming saucepans and
other tinware utensils were displayed upon the walls. His interest being
noted by the occupants he was invited to enter. The man of the house, his
shift at the local colliery just completed, was fresh from his bath and
about to begin his meal of baked potatoes and grilled bacon which stood on
the table, flanked by a jug of foaming beer. His wife, attentive to the
needs of the breadwinner, hovered in the background, neat as a pin and
happy to see her man safe home from his work. It was the summer of 1840,
and the stranger was Dr James Mitchell, of New Bond Street, London, who
was visiting the village of Coxhoe in the course of his investigations
into the employment of children in coalmines.
MINERS' HOMES
The house he visited on that summer day he regarded as typical of the
dwellings of the better class of pitman, the hardworking man in steady
employment, earning about 5s per shift and expending it on the maintenance
of his home and the provision of the creature-comforts of his family.
Within the previous ten years collieries had opened at numerous places
between the Wear and the Tees: at each locality there had sprung into
being a large village or town, with a population "almost exclusively of
the collier people, beer-shop people and small shopkeepers." The houses
were built by the colliery owners or by others who let the houses on lease
to the colliery owners so that the invading hordes of workmen and their
families could secure accommodation within walking distance of the pit
head. So great was the rush to occupy their new homes that many families
settling in before the houses were properly dried, fell victims to disease
and even death.
The village of Coxhoe, as described by Dr Mitchell, extended for a mile on
both sides of a public road, but the houses were not continuous, there
being a break after every ten or 12 houses, giving access to the streets
running off to right and left. The cottages were built of stone plastered
with lime, with blue slate roofs, each one identical to its neighbour.
There was no yard behind or in front of them; there was no dust-hole, or
convenience of any kind "nor any small building, such as is usually
considered indispensable and necessary," yet there was no unpleasant
nuisance, no filth nor ashes, no decaying vegetables.
All was swept and clean. It was explained that carts came round at an
early hour each morning with small coals, which were left at every front
door. The carts then proceeded along the back lane, collecting all the
ashes, filth and refuse, which they deposited in a heap in the adjoining
field.
HOUSES FOR £52
The houses in Coxhoe village were built to a standard pattern with a floor
composed of clay, sand and lime. The front room was 14ft. by 14ft. 10in.,
the back room 14ft. by l0ft. and the pantry leading off from the back room
6ft. 6in. x 3ft. The upper storey consisted of one bedroom with a sloping
roof. The height of the front wall of the cottage was 13ft. l0in. or 14ft.
9in., the back wall being somewhat lower. The cost of the building was
£52, and where rent was charged the amount was £5 per annum. Smaller
houses, built for childless couples, consisted of one room and a pantry
downstairs and a bedroom upstairs, and cost £42 to build. For a population
of some 5,000 mostly workers at various collieries in the neighbourhood,
there were 30 beer shops. There was no Church of England building, but the
Wesleyans and Primitive Methodists held meetings and had many adherents.
In the streets of most of the colliery villages were many little brick
buildings used as public ovens. Small coals were shovelled into them and
burned until the ovens were thoroughly heated, then the coals and ashes
were swept out, the dough put in and left to bake on the hot bricks. None
of the cottages had any land attached, but large fields were divided by
wooden stakes into potato plots of about one twentieth of an acre each.
Here and there a bright splash of colour marked the site of a collier's
flower garden. Perhaps to offset the ugliness of the pit head and the
growing spoil heap, perhaps to compensate for the gloom and the confined
atmosphere of his working environment, the miner often found escape and
tranquillity in creating a patch of beauty, however small. At South Hetton,
the Sub-Commissioner was conducted with obvious pride around one such
garden by a miner who "might have competed with a Spitalfields weaver in
his choice rarities. At the local prize shows the miners often exhibited
blooms of such merit that they "often carried off the palm from the
gentlemen's gardeners."
SOUTH HETTON
South Hetton at this time had a population of about 2.500, who occupied
houses better built and roofed than most, according to Dr R. Elliott,
Lecturer in Materia Medica at the Newcastle School of Medicine, who was
asked to give evidence to the Commission by virtue of his having practised
in the Thornley and South Helton area during 1837 and 1838. There was no
resident medical practitioner in South Hetton at the time of his report,
and none nearer than two miles
away, except such "irregular practitioners" as midwives, bone - setters
and "charmers."
Dr Elliott's picture of the average colliery village is a good deal less
salubrious than that painted by Dr Mitchell of conditions at Coxhoe. He
found that the cottages were mostly in rows, and the rows were built in
pairs with their front doors facing one another, the space between being
clean, unpaved and without drains or channels. But the street separating
each pair of rows, i.e. the back street, was "one long ash-heap and
dung-hill, generally the playground of the children in summer, with a
coal-heap and often a pigsty at the side of each door." Each row had a
large communal oven: there were no privies.
Dr. Elliott recommended
"concealing" the ash-heaps so as to provide privies, and the laying-out of
greens in the front streets for playing and for bleaching. Each row, he
thought, should have a triangular grass plot at the front and a similarly
shaped ash-heap at the back "enclosed within a suitably high wall, with
privies let in, and with ash-holes opposite, the apex having a gate for
leading away the manure, and pointing to a six-sided common oven." He also
wanted to see a proper system of drainage and (unheard-of luxury!) a
bath-house. "In middle and advanced life" he wrote "pitmen, like all
hardworking men, exposed to alterations of heat, and also to damp, and
""Very subject to articular, muscular and rheumatic pains and every
colliery engine discharges regularly vast quantities of newly condensed
steam, into the "hot pond"; the whole of which, excepting what the
sagacious housewife walks off with (hot and distilled, i.e. soft water) to
wash with, is allowed to cool! The remainder might continually supply a
series of a dozen baths without any bath-waiters to fee."
FURNITURE
Dr William Morrison, of Pelaw House, Chester-le-Street, was also asked for
his observations, and he, too, commented on the arrangement of the houses
in rows or squares, but found that in his experience the pigsty was in
front of each cottage and beside it were deposited the ashes, off-scourings,
and the coals. The ground-floor rooms were paved with bricks and the
bedroom was without a ceiling. There was a well nearby and in some
villages waste pipes from the colliery engine house supplied abundant hot
water to the houses. He remarked on the importance attached by the collier
folk to their furniture, and described the handsome four-poster of the
miner and his wife and the "desk-bed" in the same room used by the
youngest children. The other members of the family slept in the back
downstairs room or in the attic bedroom, where the bed, because of lack of
headroom was perforce made up on the floor. The bedding was almost always
excellent and the people had unlimited small coals so that however poor
the pitman and his family never knew the miseries of cold. "In a
well-ordered house, the final adjustment of affairs for the night presents
a gratifying picture of social comfort." He noted, too, that the children
were comfortably and decently clothed, cleanliness both in their persons
and in their homes being a predominant feature in the domestic economy of
the community. The children, although of necessity left very much to
themselves, and the attractions of playing with dirt being as irresistible
then as they are to today's children, were never sent to bed without ample
ablution.
So far as diet is concerned, Dr Morrison had this to say: "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 as abundantly partake as the
parents: even the sucking infant, to its prejudice, is loaded with as much
of the greasy and well-seasoned viands of the table as it will swallow.”In
this respect the women are foolishly indulgent, and I know no class of
persons among whom infantile diseases so much prevail. Durham and
Northumberland are not dairy counties, consequently the large population
(excepting the hinds in the northern part of Northumberland) are very
inadequately supplied with milk. Did this wholesome and nutritious
beverage more abound, probably the infant population would be more
judiciously fed." Many miners kept a pig which was slaughtered for home
consumption. One witness interviewed by the Commission described how he
bought a pig for 27shillings and spent something over £4 on food for it.
When killed it weighed 23 stone l0lbs before being salted and laid by.
FAMILY BUDGET
Dr Mitchell analysed the weekly expenses of a miner, his wife, and two
children of one and three years old, who lived at Sunderland.
s. d.
½ stone of flour at 2s 8d 4 0
11/2 lbs of sugar at 812d 1 03/4
4 oz tobacco 1 0
1 lb soap 0 6
1lb butter 1 2
2oz tea 9 1/2
4 oz coffee 6
5lb meat 2 11
Blue Starch 1/2
1 oz. mustard 1 12
Gill of pease 1 12
Soda for washing 12
Milk 4
Half peck potatoes 5
Water to the man who
brings it with the cart 2
Salt 12
Pepper 12
Oatmeal 3
13 6 34
House free.
6d a fortnight kept off for carrying coals. The surplus to pay for
clothes, shoes and other extras.
A miner, again with wife and two children, living at Bishop Auckland and
earning20s per week,
gave the following account of his weekly expenditure:
£ s. d.
1lb blasting powder 10
candles for use in
the coal pit 101/2
Soap 7
112lb sugar at 9d 1 112
2oz. tea 6
1/4lb. coffee 7
112 stone of bread 2 0
Yeast, salt and pepper 4
71b beef at 7d 4 1
1 pint of milk a day at l14d 914
34lb. butter 1 034
1lb cheese 8
1lb bacon 8
Tobacco 8
14 11
House, free: coals, 3d a week.
Surplus of wages for beer, shoes, cloths and other extraordinary charges.
A single man pays 11s a week for board and lodging, washing, mending,
darning, marking. He has to pay for beer at the public house, gunpowder,
picks, pick shafts, clothes and shoes. Board and lodging are frequently 9s
a week.
A GRANDER SCALE
Dr Liefchild, the Northumberland and North Durham Sub-Commissioner, found
a family at Urpeth, near Chester-le-Street, living on a much grander
scale, but it will be noted that there were four wage-earners, even the
little trapper-boy of eight years old bringing in 2s 2d per fortnight.
EARNINGS PER FORTNIGHT
£ s d
Father, 2 weeks 2 4 0
Putter, 1 boy, 17 years of age 1 16 8
Driver, 1 boy, 12 years of age 13 9
Trapper, 1 boy, 8 years of age 9 2
Total ... £5 3 7
OUTLAY PER FORTNIGHT
£ s d
Mutton, 141b at 7d 8 9
Flour 5st at 2s 8d 13 4
Maslin, a mixture of different
sorts of grain, 3st at 2s 6d 7 6
Bacon, 141b at 8d 9 4
Potatoes, 12 boil at 4s 6d 2 3
Oatmeal 6
Butter, 21b at 1s 3d 2 6
Milk, 3d per day 3 6
Coffee, l'/41b at 2s 4d 3 0
Tea 141b at 6s 1 6
Sugar 31b at 8d 2 0
Candles 11lb. (of 16 to a lb.) 612
Soap 14, at 6s 8d 1 8
Pepper, salt, mustard etc. 6
Tobacco and “allowance"
(beer) 4 0
Shoes, making and repairing.
9s per month 4 6
Clothes, etc., for parents and children:
Clothes, shirts, flannels, etc 5 at 3s 6d 17 6
Stockings, say per fortnight 2 6
Sundries, say 2 6
Total outlay for a fortnight £4 7 l012
Contributions to benefit funds generally 1s 3d per month.
It will be recalled from a previous article that the wages of a fully
trained adult collier might be as much as £30 per annum. Putters could
earn-4s a shift and hewers the same although in some cases they made as
much as 5s by extra effort. (The wages of agricultural labourers were at
this time 12s per week plus free cottage and perquisites such as potatoes
and produce.) Colliery workers were paid fortnightly on a Friday, and the
women went to market on the Pay Saturday, which was a holiday. The other
Saturday ("Baff" Saturday) was a working day when trade was good.
Shopkeepers would give credit during the Baff week. In slack times the
owners would pay their workmen perhaps 15s a week whether there was work
or not and when trade improved deductions were made from wages until the
advance was repaid. There was a good deal of custom for the hawkers who
travelled the villages, and payment by instalments for the larger items
was common, as much as 15 per cent being added to the cost of the article
by way of interest charges. Many miners had their clothes made by
itinerant tailors and paid for them by fortnightly instalments.
This glimpse into the living conditions of the pitfolk of a century and a
quarter ago, allied to the knowledge we have already gleaned of their
working life, brings us almost to the end of our narrative of the fortunes
of the collier people in the early years of the Victorian era. It remains
only for us to study in next week's article the way the children spent
their limited leisure time, the "moral condition" of the youngsters in
their] progress through the only real school they knew, the hard school of
experience, and the general attitude of the miners families to the
religious aspects and conventions of society which for the first time were
set down and crystallized through the medium of the Children's Employment
Commission.
|
