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    From the Cradle to the Coalmine: The Story of Children in Welsh Mines
    From the Cradle to the Coalmine: The Story of Children in Welsh Mines
    From the Cradle to the Coalmine: The Story of Children in Welsh Mines
    Ebook105 pages54 minutes

    From the Cradle to the Coalmine: The Story of Children in Welsh Mines

    By Ceri Thompson

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    About this ebook

    It is widely believed that the employment of children underground in coal mines ended in 1842. This book, in contrast, shows that young people remained an important part of the workforce up until the virtual demise of the industry in the late twentieth century. The Children's Employment Commission was established in 1840 to expose the conditions under which children had to work underground; as we might expect, public opinion was outraged by what came to light, and a law was passed to prevent all females and boys under the age of ten from working underground. However, the lack of inspectors made the law difficult to enforce, and many females and boys under ten continued to work illegally until Parliament made school attendance compulsory in the 1860s. This popular and accessible book is a rich source of information about the working lives of children and young people in the Welsh coalfields, richly illustrated to include extensive work from Amgueddfa Cymru's photographic archives.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Wales Press
    Release dateApr 15, 2014
    ISBN9781783161546
    From the Cradle to the Coalmine: The Story of Children in Welsh Mines

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      Book preview

      From the Cradle to the Coalmine - Ceri Thompson

      FROM THE CRADLE

      TO THE COALMINE

      FROM THE CRADLE

      TO THE COALMINE

      THE STORY OF CHILDREN IN WELSH MINES

      CERI THOMPSON

      UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS

      CARDIFF

      2014

      © The National Museum of Wales, 2014

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff, CF10 4UP.

      www.uwp.co.uk

      British Library CiP Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      ISBN 978-1-78316-054-9

      e-ISBN 978-1-78316-154-6

      The right of Ceri Thompson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      The University of Wales Press acknowledges the financial support of the Welsh Books Council.

      He was a miniature miner … His lips still retained the pout that must have been there when his mother called him before five o’clock, and he kicked his way along as if he hated everybody and everything.

      B. L. Coombes, I am a Miner (1939)

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all the former mineworkers who agreed to be interviewed as part of the Big Pit National Coal Museum’s ‘People’s History Project’. Parts of their interviews appear in this book, but their full stories can be read in Big Pit’s annual publication GLO/COAL. I would particularly like to thank George Brinley Evans (Banwen Colliery), Bill Richards (Cambrian Colliery), Ray Lawrence (South Celynen Colliery), Arthur Lewis OBE (colliery manager and mining lecturer), Gareth Salway (Bristol City Museums Service) and all the staff at Big Pit National Coal Museum.

      CONTENTS

      List of illustrations

      Chronology of important dates

      Introduction

      Child miners: the 1842 commission

      ‘Collier boys’: the coal boom, 1850s to the 1920s

      Mining trainees: from depression to nationalisation, 1920s to the 1980s

      Child miners today

      Further reading

      LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

      1 ‘Coming to bank’ on a rope

      2 Child sitting by air door

      3 Sled drawn by boy using a girdle and chain. Children’s Employment Commission

      4 Child hauling sled underground

      5 Boy guiding sled down an incline

      6 Boy and sled ‘in the narrow veins of Monmouthshire’

      7 Wheeled cart being drawn by girdle and chain with a little help from behind. Children’s Employment Commission

      8 Boy drawing sled by girdle harness

      9 Woman and young miner in working clothes, mid-nineteenth century

      10 Dowlais ‘tip girl’ c.1860. Girls working underground twenty years earlier would have dressed similarly to this

      11 Welsh colliery worker, c.1860

      12 Hugh Seymour Tremenheere, 1843–9, the first chief inspector of mines

      13 Edwin Greening in 1927. He later went on to fight for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War

      14 Postcard showing a ‘collier boy’, early twentieth century

      15 Young miner hauling a sled through a narrow access roadway, early twentieth century

      16 Young colliers arrive at Pochin Colliery from colliers’ train, c.1920

      17 Filling a dram using a curling box, early twentieth century

      18 Billy Hurland filling a dram with a curling box, Clog & Legging Level, Pontypool, c.1910

      19 Men and boys at Resolven in 1910. Notice the curling box in the foreground

      20 Men and boys outside Cambrian Colliery lamp room, c.1913

      21 The screens at Court Herbert Colliery, 1913

      22 Collier boy at Bargoed Colliery pit bottom, early twentieth century

      23 A young Arthur Lewis in his St John’s Ambulance uniform, 1932

      24 ‘Ha’penny’ – a collier boy from Tonypandy, c.1930

      25 ‘Young and old at Ferndale Colliery’, 1907

      26 Nantyglo colliery boys and schoolboys, c.1900

      27 Pontypridd colliers, c.1910

      28 Father and two sons at Wattstown, c.1920

      29 Colliery official addressing young miners underground in 1943

      30 A young trainee miner in the south Wales coalfield

      31 Bevin Boys at Oakdale, 1944

      32 NCB recruiting exhibition, Cardiff, 1956

      33 Young miners in a training coalface, 1952

      34 Instructor showing a trainee how to bore a shot firing hole, 1950s

      35 ‘End of the shift’: mining trainees showering in a pithead bath, 1960s

      36 Mining trainee being taught to cut roof supports with hatchet, 1950s

      37 Trainee being shown coal being loaded from a conveyor into a dram, 1952

      38 Trainees being shown how to set a ‘pair of timbers’ as roof support, 1952

      39 Young miners erecting wooden roof supports at Ogmore Vale Training Centre, 1950s

      40 Mining trainees being issued

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