A good proportion of persons employed in
carrying on the work in mines were under 13 years of age: and
a still larger proportion were aged between 13 and 18. In
several districts female children began work in the mines at
the same early ages as the males.
The miners lives depended upon the
proper ventilation of air, and this depends on the trapdoors
(Brattice) being kept shut after the trucks carrying coal had
passed through them. The youngest children called ‘trappers’
had to perform this task. The report said while this was not
hard work it was monotonous and painful to contemplate the
dull, dungeon-like life, for the most part spent in solitude,
in conditions of damp and darkness. They were allowed no
light: but sometimes a good-natured collier would bestow a
small piece of candle on them. These children had to work the
same hours as the men.
At the Gnoll Colliery in 1842 the
children were lowered down the shaft in a bucket. In 1837 at
the Eaglebush Colliery children had the option of using a
ladderway after a fatal accident when one boy fell out of the
bucket.
At both collieries the coal was brought
out of the workings to the main road in slides or sledges,
drawn by boys aged 10 to 13, using a chain passing from a
girdle or band round the waist and between the legs to a hook
in the front of the sledge. The weight of these sledges, when
loaded, was between 2 to 2½ cwt.
In the 1842 enquiry report, R. H.
Franke, esq. one of the sub-commissioners wrote:
A brief description of the hard and
dangerous conditions in which the children had to work. The
female child had first to descend a nine ladder pit to the 1st
rest, even to which a shaft is sunk. She then has to draw up
the baskets or tubs of coal filled by the bearers: she then
takes her ‘creel’ or basket shaped to conform to her back not
unlike a cockle-shell flattened towards the neck , so as to
allow lumps of coal to rest on the neck and shoulders. She
then pursues her journey to the wall face or as it is called
the room of work. She then lays down her basket, into which
coal is rolled, and it is frequently more than one man can do
to lift the burthen on her back. The tugs or straps are placed
over the forehead and the body bent to a semi-circular form,
in order to stiffen the arch.
Large lumps of coal are then placed on
her neck and she commences her journey with her burthen to the
pit bottom (shaft) first hanging her lamp to the cloth
crossing her head. In this girl’s case she has first to travel
about 14 fathoms (84 ft) from wall face to the 1st ladder.
which is 18 ft high; leaving the 1st ladder she proceeds along
the main road, probably about 3ft 6in to 4ft 6in high, to the
2nd ladder, 18ft high, so to the 3rd and 4th ladders, till she
reaches the pit bottom, where she casts her load, varying from
1 cwt to 1½ cwt, into the tub.
This one journey is deigned a ‘rake’; the
height ascended and the distance along the roads added
together exceeds the height of St Paul’s Cathedral; and it is
not infrequently that the tugs break and the load falls on the
children following. However incredible it may be, I have taken
evidence that fathers have ruptured themselves from straining
to lift loads on the children’s backs