Coal Mining in the Victorian Age |
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| Nowadays,
we take power for granted. We expect our lights to work when we switch
them on, our fridges to keep food cold, our TVs and videos and computers
to run all day. But in Victorian times, power was a very different matter. |
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By the
beginning of Queen Victoria's reign, electric motors were beginning
to be produced,
but most homes were still heating by coal fires and lit by candles
and oil lamps. In 1879, the first electric lightbulb was invented and
by
the end of her reign, many homes had gas lights, and some were beginning
to use
electric
lights.
But all electricity, as well as the steam which powered steam engines,
trains and other machinery, was provided by coal. Even the gas used
in gas lights came from coal. There was no nuclear power, no wind power
and
very little
hydroelectric power, so the whole world depended upon the coal mining
industry. Early in Victoria's reign, the coal mining industry was growing
so quickly that people who had previously worked on farms or in factories
were becoming miners. Even women and small children worked underground
for hours at a time, and by 1842 the government decided to produce
a report about the mining industry called a Royal Commission. |
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| The Royal
Commission reported on how women and children were using in the coal
mines, and found that some had started working underground when they
were as young as six or seven. Click
here to read some first-hand accounts
of their lives down the pit. |
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| As a result
of this report, the Coal Mining Act of 1842 said that no women and no
children under the age of 13 were allowed to work underground in coal
mines. At first sight, this seems to have made life better for women
and young children, but some families found it hard to replace the wages
their women had previously earned down the pit, and suffered as a result. |
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| Work down
the pits was very hard, for men as well as for women and children. Miners
worked long hours in dark, hot and cramped conditions, hewing coal with
picks and axes and hauling heavy loads to the surface. But as well as
being
hard, the work was also very dangerous. Rock falls and cave-ins were
common, and explosives were commonly used to extend tunnels and open
up new seams. Flooding was a severe risk, and many workers were drowned
underground as well as being crushed or suffocated. |
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| You can find
out more about life underground in Victorian Times, click
here to visit Ian Winstanley's Coal Mining History Resource Centre. |
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| To learn
more about what life was like working in a coal mine, and the dangers
miners faced, we are going to look at a day in a real-life mine
in North Staffordshire. |
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| Monday 14th
January 1895 was a cold and frosty day at the Diglake Colliery in Bignall
End, North Staffordshire. It had snowed the previous night and
many of the pumps at the pit were frozen. Two hundred and twenty miners,
some boys, many father and son, started work at 5.30 in the morning that
Monday; they were winched down in the dark in metal cages to start work
underground
on
the various
coal
faces in the pit, some 10 feet deep. The mine had been open for some
years
and
had a
very good safety reputation, however, what no-one had ever realised was
that just a few metres away from the 10 foot seam at Diglake was the remains
of an older mine, which had been abandoned fifty years earlier, and which
was flooded with water. |
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| Click here to find out what happened to the miners that day... |
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Diglake Colliery in 1895, with Audley Railway Station visible
in the middle left of the picture. |
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