DR WILLIAM MORRISON, of Pelaw House, Chester-le-Street,
a physician professionally engaged in the Countess of Durham's collieries,
was asked to give evidence to the Children's Employment Commission on
certain aspects relating to the health of those working in the pits and
the influence upon them of starting work at an early age. His opinion was
that the pitman could be distinguished from every other operative by his
outward appearance, his stature being diminutive, his figure
disproportionate and misshapen, his legs bowed, his chest protruding (the
thoracic region being unevenly developed), his cheeks hollow, brow over
hanging, cheekbones high, fore head low and retreating, his physical
condition denoting a tendency to glandular swellings and consumption. "I
have seen," he wrote, "agricultural labourers, blacksmiths,carpenters, and
even those among the wan and distressed stocking weavers of
Nottinghamshire, to whom the term "jolly" might not be unaptly applied,
but I never saw a jolly-looking' pitman."
In seeking the cause of this physical degeneration, Dr Mitchell, the
Sub-Commissioner who interviewed Dr Morrison, studied* the living and
working conditions of the miners from their earliest days. The duties of a
miner's wife being arduous and numerous, with meals to cook for men and
boys on various shifts, pit clothes to wash and men, baths to prepare, and
the general running of the household to see to, she had little time to
attend to her duties as nurse to the younger children. Dr Mitchell
attributed a certain lethargy and dullness of spirit in the youngsters, to
the fact that as babies they were left for long periods in the cradle by
their overworked mothers, with no opportunity for playful activity. As
little boys they followed the monotonous occupation of “trapping" which
virtually condemned them to 12 hours' solitary confinement below ground
each day. and lack of education left their young minds with no mental
resources by which they could while away the lonely hours.
A DISTINCT RACE
Epidemic and contagious diseases being most prevalent where living
conditions are most crowded and sanitation most primitive, more children
in pit villages fell victims to such diseases than in other communities.
Isolated as they were in their villages, the pitmen became a distinct race
of beings.
Inter-marriage and marriage between close degrees of relationship had the
effect of transmitting natural and accidental defects through the
generations. The miners obtained medical treatment for themselves and
their families by subscribing perhaps one shilling per month to a club,
the whole amount thus subscribed being paid over to the medical man. Where
the colliery was near a town, good medical attention and conscientious
treatment were available, but in the remoter districts such easy money
attracted unqualified and ignorant adventurers with the result that the
contributors, to quote Dr Morrison again, were "purchasing misery or death
concealed in the garb of salutary advice.
Those who successfully weathered the hazards of early neglect, epidemics,
inherited weaknesses and doubtful medical care, were subjected as they
grew older and stronger to the physical stresses and dangers of the
particular class of work upon which they were engaged, each promotion or
upgrading bringing with it exposure to new forms of strain and exertion
and added perils.
By
LAWRENCE
SCOLLEN
This is the fifth of a series of articles on the children who worked in
the mines of County Durham during the 19th Century.
The tiny trapper boys, as we have seen, suffered not so much from the
severity of their labours as from the sheer fatigue induced by long hours
spent underground. The younger putters (the "foals") found their strength
inadequate for their work; the bad air and the length of the shift
rendered them liable to severe headaches, loss of appetite, nausea and
vomiting. Strains, ruptures and backs permanently skinned from rubbing
against the roof, were the hallmarks of their calling. Boils were
symptomatic of the debilitated state to which the boys were reduced; one
boy in his evidence blamed the heat and the salt water dripping from the
roof for a crop of boils "the size of hen's eggs" upon his legs and thighs
and under his arms.
PHYSICAL DECLINE
But it was upon the hewers, the young men reaching their full strength and
stature in their twenties, that the blow of physical decline fell most
heavily. Their bodies weakened and strained by being overtaxed in earlier
life, they now had to muster all the effort of which they were capable in
the merciless and unceasing battle to wrest coal from its fastness in the
bowels of the earth. Curvature of the spine, bow legs (or in some cases, a
deformity of the legs described as being "in-kneed"), respiratory
disorders, heartstrain, chronic diseases of the stomach and liver all took
their toll. The average hewer was a disabled man with the marks of old age
upon him, at an age when most other men had scarcely passed their prime.
If he was fortunate enough to be able to maintain the spark of life by the
age of 50, then almost certainly his working life was finished! One of the
medical experts giving evidence to the Commission described the
progressive deterioration of health in the following terms:
"Between the twentieth and the thirtieth year many colliers decline in
bodily vigour and become more and more spare; the difficulty of breathing
progresses, and they find themselves very desirous of some remission of
their labour. This period is fruitful in acute diseases, such as fever,
inflammation of lungs and pleura, and many other ailments, the product of
over-exertion, exposure to cold and wet, violence, insufficient clothing,
intemperance and foul air. For the first few years chronic bronchitis is
usually found alone and unaccompanied by disease of the body or the lungs.
The patient suffers more or less difficulty of breathing, which is much
affected by changes of the weather and by variations in the weight of the
atmosphere; he coughs frequently, and the expectoration is composed, for
the most part, of white frothy and yellowish mucous fluid, occasionally
containing blackish particles of carbon, the result of the combustion of
the lamp and also of minute coal dust. At first and indeed for several
years, the patient for the most part does not suffer much in his general
health, eating heartily and retaining his muscular strength little
impaired in consequence. The disease is rarely if ever, entirely cured,
and if the collier be not carried off by some other lesion in the
meantime, this disease ultimately deprives him of life by slow and
lingering process. The difficulty of breathing increases and becomes more
or less permanent, the expectoration becomes very abundant, effusion of
water takes place in the chest, the
feet swell, and the urine is secreted in small quantity, the general
health gradually breaks up, and the patient, after reaching premature-old
age, slips into the grave at a comparatively early period with perfect
willingness on his part, and with no surprise on that of his family and
friends."
THE GUARDIANS
Slipping into the grave with a perfect willingness was not, however, the
happy lot of all the miners of the 1840's—many were prematurely blasted
into eternity in a searing sheet of flame, crushed under a falling roof,
drowned by an inrush of water, or hurled down the shaft through the
breakage of a
rope. Safety precautions were rudimentary, inspections were haphazard, and
even calamities of such proportions as would today merit the description
"colliery disasters" were regarded as the natural risks attendant on the
business of winning coal, and were thus not the subject of official
inquiry, nor was any complete register of such accidents maintained.
The custom of entrusting to trappers of tender years the duties of opening
and closing air-look doors was the cause of many frightful accidents
declared Dr Mitchell in his report of conditions in South Durham. If a
trapper should leave a door open when it ought to be closed, the current
of air taking the wrong direction could allow inflammable gases to
accumulate and explode. Such an incident was held to be the cause of an
explosion at Willington Colliery in 1841 in which 32 lives were lost. "One
act of omission of assigned duty, one solitary momentary neglect, may
cause the instant destruction of life and property to an indefinite
extent." And the guardians of the safety of all the men and boys working
in the pits were babes of anything from four years of age upwards!
Winding accidents took their toll of many lives, and although most
colliery owners claimed they had regulations as to the numbers of men
ascending and descending at any one time, it was difficult to ascertain
what these regulations were, or whether they were in fact enforced. Very
often it was left to the discretion of the banksman at the shaft top and
the onsetter at the bottom. At South Hetton Colliery the rule was that the
combined weight of the men being drawn up should not exceed the weight of
coals usually drawn up by the rope. This pit was 180 fathoms deep, the
rope 220 fathoms long, and two tons in weight. Two cages came up at a
time, each with a tub of 20 or 30 pecks (6 or 9 cwt.), the combined weight
of cage, tub. and coal being 35cwt. At Wearmouth Colliery a large iron tub
13cwt. in weight was used for drawing coals and workmen. The top diameter
was 3ft. 8in., the middle 4ft. 2in and the bottom diameter 3ft.10in, the
depth being 6ft. 3in. Eleven men or up to 14 boys were conveyed in this
contrivance at each winding.
ON THE "LOOP"
Such luxuries as cages and tubs were unknown at many pits, and it was
customary for men to ride in pairs on the "loop". This was a loop formed
in the shaft chain into which a pair of men would each insert one leg,
grasping the chain above with one hand and wielding a stick in the other
to counteract the oscillations encountered as they proceeded up or down
the shaft. Many accidents were occasioned by rope or chain breakages, by
falling down the shaft by being struck by falling materials or by being
wound over the pulley due to the lack of a proper signalling system
between the shaft and the winding engine-man.
Leaving aside occurrences such as explosions and shaft accidents which
killed or maimed numbers of workmen at one blow, the Commissioners turned
their attention to the numerous accidents in the pit which resulted in
individual deaths or injuries. Inadequate roof support was responsible for
many such accidents and the method of knocking out the supports in board
and pillar working practised in Northumberland and North Durham came in
for severe criticism from Dr Leifchild, a criticism heightened perhaps
because he was investigating the operation at close quarters. After
removal of the coal pillars as far as possible. the timber props
supporting the roof were drawn or knocked down by two men, who then beat
an extremely hasty retreat, since the withdrawal of each prop was usually
accompanied by the fall of large masses of stone "in perilous proximity to
ourselves," wrote Dr Leifchild "a proximity none the less alarming when
one was aware of the number of accidents that occur from such falls in the
performance of this dangerous duty."
Lacerations, internal injuries, fractures, crush injuries, loss of eyes,
of hands and of limbs, brain damage, haemorrhage - so the dreary catalogue
goes on and the list lengthens, while the laconic explanation against each
incident at those pits where records were kept reads "Fell down shaft."
"Slipped off rope," "Wagons fell on him." "Drawn into drum of engine,"
"Jammed by tubs," "Fell before tram," and so on through all the gamut of
doleful misadventures.
ACCIDENT CAUSES
The Children's Employment Commission, in its final summing-up. made the
following reference to the frequency of accidents in the mines:
"That in all the coalfields accidents of a fearful nature are extremely
frequent, and that the returns made to our own queries, as well as the
registry tables, prove that of the workpeople who perish by such
accidents, the proportion of children and young persons sometimes equals
and rarely falls much below that of adults.
"That one of the most frequent causes of accidents in these mines is the
want of superintendence by overlookers or otherwise to see to the security
of the machinery for letting down and bringing up the workpeople, the
restriction of the number of persons that
"COMING TO BANK"
ascend and descend at a time, the state of the mine as to the quantity of
noxious gas in it, the efficiency of the ventilation, the exactness with
which the air-door keepers perform their duty, the place into which it is
safe or unsafe to go with a naked lighted candle, and the security of the
proppings to uphold the roof, etc.
'That another frequent cause of accidents in coalmines is the almost
universal practice of intrusting the closing of the air-doors to very
young children.
"That there are many mines in which the most ordinary . precautions to
guard against accidents are neglected, and in which no money appears to be
expended with a view to '" secure the safety, much less the comfort, of
the work- people."
PHYSICAL EFFECTS
Concerning the physical effects" of work below ground, the report
continues:
"That the employment in -these mines commonly produces in the first
instance, an extraordinary degree of muscular development accompanied by a
corresponding degree of muscular strength; this preternatural development
and strength being acquired at the expense of the other organs, as is
shown by the general stunted growth of the body.
"That partly by the severity of the labour and the long hours of work, and
partly through the unhealthy state of the place of work, this employment,
as at present carried on in all the districts, deteriorates the physical
constitution; in the thin-seam mines, more especially, the limbs become
crippled and the body distorted; and in general the muscular powers give
way, and the workpeople are incapable of following their occupation, at an
earlier period of life than is common in other branches of industry.
"That by the same causes the seeds of painful and mortal diseases are very
often sown in childhood and youth; these, slowly but steadily developing
themselves, assume a formidable character between the ages or 30 and 40;
and each generation of this class of the population is commonly extinct
soon after 50."
MELANCHOLY PICTURE
Thus emerges a melancholy picture of waifs being condemned to the darkness
of the pit at an age when children today are not considered ready for the
infant school, of their constant exposure to maiming or sudden death, of
their development into stunted, crippled, anaemic adults fighting for
every breath, their energy sapped and their vital organs irreparably
damaged by injury and overstrain with no glimmering of light ahead of them
until the day when they would prematurely but "with perfect willingness”
slip into the grave.
Was it possible against this dismal background for their short lives to
hold out any promise of pleasure; was there to be any escape whatever from
the grinding tyranny and stark tragedy of their daily routine; was any
rest or comfort to be found in their leisure-time pursuits or their home
lives? The next article will endeavour to throw some light on the
recreations, living conditions, and social aspects forming the background
to the existence of the Children of Darkness.