talk report - JULY 2008
23 July 2008: Women in the Mines - Mr Graham Stirrup
Mr Stirrup gave us an interesting talk on the history of women working in the coal mines of Britain. Women have always done manual work from working in the fields and using hand looms to make cloth. They have always played a part in the family economy. He also gave us a brief history of the coal mining industry. Coal was little used until the time of Henry VIII when his extensive ship building programme meant that there was a shortage of trees to provide fuel. Coal had been know about but now it began to be exploited firstly in Bell Pits which went straight down into the ground with winches both manually and horse operated to bring the miners and the coal to the surface. Later when the pits extended sideways into the coal face women were used to carry the coal from the coal face to the bottom of the pit shaft. They did this by means of wicker baskets which were designed to balance on the woman's back when she stooped to an angle of 90 degrees. There was a leather strap around her forehead and a sacking pad at her neck to prevent rubbing and to hold more coal. She had a candle to light her way and a walking stick to help her keep her balance. The floor of the track was uneven and the weight was such that it needed two men to lift the basket onto her back it was hard physical labour. Families used to work together.
There were no cages in the shaft and a circular spiral track up the shaft was used and the women used small baskets to carry the coal to the surface. From 1840 onwards wagons on tracks were used to take the coal to the bottom of the shaft but these were pushed by women. From 1812 brick-lined shafts were in place and a system of ladders with passing places was used to get the coal to the surface. A Royal Commission, which produced illustrations of the conditions in the mines, concluded that women and children under 10 years should not work below ground. The subsequent Act was passed in 1847. At this point women began to work at the pit brow. The miners were paid according to the amount of coal that they had won and their trucks were labelled and weighed at the pit head. These were shunted by hand by the women on and off the weighbridge. In order that no cheating could take place the miners paid for a second man to sit in the weigh house to check the weigh-man's figures. Sometimes the miners, in order to increase the weight of the truck and to cut less coal would put rock in. From the weigh-in the coal was tipped onto a moving belt where it went past women and children to be sorted and the rock taken out. Although the women did the hard work a man was always in charge of them and although the women were better workers they were paid up to a third less than the men. In the Wigan area the women wore trousers to work in and the London intelligentsia thought that this was immoral and there was pressure in Parliament to ban women from working alongside men. This was difficult for the women as often they were single mothers whose husbands had been killed in the pit. Under the 1980 Sex Discrimination Act women were again allowed to work underground and do so but nowadays as engineers etc. The largest number of women working down the pit is in the USA where they are now paid the same rate as men. A very interesting and informative talk.