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    Coal Mines

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    Women and children worked in difficult and dangerous conditions in British coal mines in the 1800s. Children as young as 6 worked long hours moving coal through narrow tunnels. Their jobs involved heavy lifting and risk of injury. One girl described working 12 hour days for 6 pennies and facing physical punishment if she fell asleep on the job. The work left children exhausted, injured, and looking much older than their years. Horse-drawn transport through the mines crushed the bodies of women workers over time. There were no initial laws to regulate or limit child labor in the mines.

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    Coal Mines

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    api-312411440
    110 views4 pages
    Women and children worked in difficult and dangerous conditions in British coal mines in the 1800s. Children as young as 6 worked long hours moving coal through narrow tunnels. Their jobs involved heavy lifting and risk of injury. One girl described working 12 hour days for 6 pennies and facing physical punishment if she fell asleep on the job. The work left children exhausted, injured, and looking much older than their years. Horse-drawn transport through the mines crushed the bodies of women workers over time. There were no initial laws to regulate or limit child labor in the mines.

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    Women and children worked in difficult and dangerous conditions in British coal mines in the 1800s. Children as young as 6 worked long hours moving coal through narrow tunnels. Their jobs involved heavy lifting and risk of injury. One girl described working 12 hour days for 6 pennies and facing physical punishment if she fell asleep on the job. The work left children exhausted, injured, and looking much older than their years. Horse-drawn transport through the mines crushed the bodies of women workers over time. There were no initial laws to regulate or limit child labor in the mines.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    110 views4 pages

    Coal Mines

    Uploaded by

    api-312411440
    Women and children worked in difficult and dangerous conditions in British coal mines in the 1800s. Children as young as 6 worked long hours moving coal through narrow tunnels. Their jobs involved heavy lifting and risk of injury. One girl described working 12 hour days for 6 pennies and facing physical punishment if she fell asleep on the job. The work left children exhausted, injured, and looking much older than their years. Horse-drawn transport through the mines crushed the bodies of women workers over time. There were no initial laws to regulate or limit child labor in the mines.

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    COAL MINES

    Source: http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/coalMine.html
    Women and children at first worked alongside men in the coal mines,
    although there were differences in jobs they did. Before 1842, there
    were no protection laws, nor limits for the age of child labor.
    VOCABULARY
    Hurriers were people that moved the coal from the face (where the
    coal was cut) to the horses -ways.
    Horse-ways were the main passages where horses could be used for
    hauling. Sometimes they used a pulley system to wind up the trams.
    A level is a tunnel into sloping ground, like a cave. The coal was
    mined without having to dig a shaft.

    1) ILLUSTRATING MINE WORK

    Teams of women were


    Hauling a tub of coal by means of a
    employed to use a windlass to rope and chain. The chain usually
    lift coal and workers. Men
    passed underneath the body
    refused to do such work.
    between the legs.

    TESTIMONITES FROM SOUTH WALES


    MINES
    Six year old girl:
    "I have been down six weeks and make 10 to 14 rakes a day; I carry a
    full 56 lbs. of coal in a wooden bucket. I work with sister Jesse and
    mother. It is dark the time we go."

    Jane Peacock Watson.


    "I have wrought in the bowels of the earth 33 years. I have been
    married 23 years and had nine children, six are alive and three died of
    typhus a few years since. Have had two dead born. Horse-work ruins
    the women; it crushes their haunches, bends their ankles and makes
    them old women at 40. "

    Maria Gooder
    "I hurry for a man with my sister Anne who is going 18. He is good to
    us. I don't like being in the pit. I am tired and afraid. I go at 4:30 after
    having porridge for breakfast. I start hurrying at 5. We have dinner at
    noon. We have dry bread and nothing else. There is water in the pit but
    we don't sup it. "

    Mary and Rachell Enock, ages 11 and 12 years.


    "We are door-keepers in the four foot level. We leave the house before
    six each morning and are in the level until seven o'clock and
    sometimes later. We get 2p a day and our light costs us 2 1/2 p. a
    week. Rachel was in a day school and she can read a little. She was run
    over by a tram a while ago and was home ill a long time, but she has
    got over it."

    Isabel Wilson, 38 years old.


    "I have been married 19 years and have had 10 bairns [children]:...My
    last child was born on Saturday morning, and I was at work on the
    Friday night... None of the children read, as the work is no
    regular..When I go below my lassie 10 years of age keeps house..."

    CHILDREN WORKING IN MINES


    Context:
    In the 1800s, British children as young as seven worked in the
    factories and mines. Eventually, the British Parliament would pass laws
    to limit child labor. The following excerpts come from testimonies
    given in 1842, as Parliament debated the problem of children working
    in the mines.
    I am twelve years of age. I
    went down to the pits about
    seven years and a half to
    open the doors [when the
    horses came]. I was twelve
    hours a day and got 6d
    [pennies] a day when I was
    paid I took it home to my
    mother. I once fell asleep and
    was well threshed [whipped]
    by the driver
    About a year and a half ago
    I took to the girdle and chair
    [device used to drag coal through the mines]. I do not like it; it hurts
    me; it rubs off my skin; I often feel pain. I get 15d a day. I cannot
    read
    I had not time to eat a bit of meat from morning till night. I have often
    had blisters on my sideI crawled on my hands and my feet. I often
    knocked my back against the top of the pit, and it hurt very much...

    When I came home at night I often sat down to rest I was so


    tired the work made me look much older than I am
    Source: Excerpt from First Report of Commissioners for Inquiring Into
    the Employment and Condition of Children in Mines and Manufactories
    (London: Her Britannic Majestys Stationery Office, 1842), Volume 16,
    pp. 8385.

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