In South Wales, also, it is the custom to send children into the ironstone mines at the same early ages as into the coal mines, and girls and women are employed in the former just as in the latter, with the same unhappy results. As an example of the evidence given on this subject we may cite that of Mr. P. Kirkhouse, overman to the Cyfarthfa collieries and iron-stone mines, Glamorganshire:

"As far as memory will permit, I should say the number of children and young persons working below ground in the Cyfarth fa mines amounts to 400; out of the number, 50 may be females. The youngest are employed at the air-doors, and are taken below at very infantine ages, which cranks [stunts] their growth and injures their constitution, as well as keeping them in a state of ignorance of a very deplorable kind. The employment females are put to is the filling and drawing the drams [carts] of coal or iron-stone: it requires great strength. The main-roads are made as easy as the work will allow, by iron rails being run to the ends of the workings; but this does not alter the nature of the employment, which is certainly unfit for women, and totally deprives them, by the liberty it gives, of getting after-employ at labour of domestic kind."

In the iron-stone mines of the Forest of Dean, a great many children are employed, but few at an earlier age than eight or nine years. No girls or women are employed in them in any kind of under-ground labour.

CHAPTER III.

OF THE NATURE OF THE EMPLOYMENT IN MINES.

IT will have been perceived, from what has been said as to the various descriptions of mines, that the nature of the employment in each must be more or less different. We shall therefore follow the plan laid down in the preceding chapters, and treat, first, of

36

I. THE EMPLOYMENT IN COAL MINES.

Speaking in general terms, the work in a colliery is divisible, first, into that of getting or hewing the coal; and, secondly, into that of conveying it from where it is got to the pit's mouth. In the former species of work, adults, and in the latter, children are for the most part employed.

The occupations of the coal workers may be thus classified :1. Holers, Miners, or Getters, as they are variously called.

2. Hurriers, Pullers, Pushers, Drawers, Wagoners, Helpers, Thrutchers, Carriers, or Thrusters. 3. Hookers-on.

4. Air-door Tenders, or Trappers.

5. Pony-drivers.

In some few districts, there are other occupations, but these are the chief. The operation of getting coal is generally entrusted to adults, though in some parts young persons are to be found at the work.

Mr. Franks gives the case of William Woods, aged fourteen, who was a coal-hewer in the east of Scotland :

Often

"I have been three years below; I hew the coal and draw it to the pit bottom. Was obliged to go, as father could work no longer; he is upwards of sixty. I gang at three in the morning, and return about six; it is no very good work, and the sore labour makes me feel very ill and fatigued; it injures my breath. We have no regular meal-times; food is not safe in the pit. The lads and lassies take oat-pieces and bread below; we drink the water sometimes; get other food at home, sometimes broth, potatoes, and herrings. been hurt, and laid idle for a few days, but never get the licks as many laddies do when the men are hard upon them. I live a mile away; I cannot say how many brothers and sisters are at home, think three besides myself. Was never at school till last summer, but left when the dark nights came on. Knows the letters; cannot read a short sentence; thinks there are six days in the week, and nine or ten in the fortnight, as the men reckon nine or ten days' work. Would go to church if had clothes, but canna gang the now. Father takes for my work; sometimes I get a bawbee on the pay-days; do not always shift myself, as the time will not allow."

"I examined this boy on the Saturday, at a cottage near the pit," says Mr. Franks," and the state of exhaustion he was in can scarcely be imagined; his appearance bespoke great neglect and poverty."

At Worsley, eighteen is the age at which boys are first allowed to get coal, and they are at that age considered “ three-quarters of a man." Mining and sinking are operations only entrusted to the most experienced workmen, as great care and exactness are required in this work.

In some parts of Shropshire-the Colebrook Dale districts, for exampleand elsewhere, the seams of coal are so thin that the men engaged in holing lie at full length in the workings, as represented in the frontispiece, and with a pick undermine the coal, taking out a certain portion of the measure beneath it. Supports of wood are employed to keep the coal from falling down and crushing the miner thus engaged. When a large portion is undermined, wedges are driven in above, and a mass of coal is brought down at once. Sometimes gunpowder is employed; sometimes it will happen that the measure below the coal is hard rock, whilst the measure above is indurated clay, and in that case the holer, instead of cutting away part of the rock below, cuts away a portion of the clay above, as being the easier method of the two; but the coal is less easily detached in this way than when it is undermined.

There is a great deal of art in getting coal. If it is not holed properly, the coal breaks up small, and is not so valuable for sale. Some colliers have not patience to keep to the pick for any length of time, but are constantly putting in the wedges; by so doing the coal is broken up in small pieces, or “burgey," as it is called. It is no uncommon thing to hear the little wagoners in the neighbourhood of Oldham express their contempt of such a man by saying, in a sneering tone, "He's nought but a burgeygetter." This last mode of getting coal makes the work a great deal more laborious to the workman, as in the other mode the weight of the large block assists in breaking itself off.

In his Report on Northumberland, Mr. J. R. Leifchild thus describes the operation of hewing the coal, which is much the same in all districts :

"The hewer curves out about a foot or eighteen inches of the bottom of the seam, to the distance perhaps of three feet, and then nicks,' that is, cuts in with his pick, one of the nooks or corners of his board; by these means he has gained what he calls his 'fudd, or vantage.' This fudd is either brought down by the insertion of wedges or the blast of gunpowder, in which latter case he drills a hole in the opposite corner, fills it with gunpowder, lights the match, and retires till the coal is torn down by the explosion."

In the thin pits, the collier crouches in sundry contorted postures, or lies extended at full length, often perfectly naked, as in the frontispiece, excepting that the collier hews the side and not the roof of the mine. One position in which these men work is very remarkable; the thigh is thrown up, so that the right arm and side may rest upon it. This is by far the easiest mode of lying on the side. In several of the thinner mines in the neighbourhood of Rainow and Macclesfield, the seam of coal is so thin that the men are obliged to work on their sides, and they generally work naked ; the reason generally given for so doing being, that it was inconvenient to work with clothes on, as clothes are apt to get into creases and chafe the skin. It will be readily imagined that the labour of the colliers is greater in the thinner mines than in the thicker ones; but by constant use they become habituated to this mode of working. Speaking of the position in which a man was working, as above stated, Mr. Kennedy says, "Had I not seen it, I could not have believed that a man could have worked with so much effect in so little space. The mine in which this man was working was not more than from eighteen to twenty inches in thickness. His chest was brought down so as almost to rest on the thigh, and the head

bent down almost to the knee; and even in this doubled-up position it was curious to see the precision and smartness with which he dealt his blows." But our chief business is with the employment of young children in these mines-a thing that has been incidentally mentioned already, but which is worthy of being more fully described.

The chief occupation of children, when very young, is to open and shut the doors in the subterranean galleries, by which the current of air is kept in its proper course, for the due ventilation of the entire mine, from where it enters by one shaft, or by one-half of a shaft, to where it finds its exit by another shaft, or by the other half of the same shaft by which it descended. The ventilation of a large mine is a very complicated affair, and can be understood only by reference to a plan of the whole. Suffice it to say, that were a door improperly left open, on the passage of a whirley or carriage of coals through it, the consequence might be very serious, causing, at any rate, great heat and closeness at the place where the colliers are at work, and should there be any explosive gas issuing from the coal, a great risk of loss of life. The only expedient adopted to secure attention to the closing of these doors is to seat a child behind them, who, on hearing the approach of a whirley, pulls the door towards him, and shuts it again when the whirley has gone through. These doors are called trap-doors, and the children so employed trappers. In many pits, however, the ventilation is secured by keeping two distinct shafts in connexion, so that a natural current of air is caused, and trappers and trap-doors are dispensed with. This certainly is far better for the children, the employment being one of the most monotonous and deadening to all the mental and physical powers of a young child which can well be conceived. The trapper has to sit, often exposed to damp, completely in the dark, and in silence, from the time the coal begins to be brought forward by the drawers till the last whirley has passed, cheered only by the occasional gleam of a lamp from a passing whirley, or a few words from the drawers.

Dr. Mitchell, who does not, upon the whole, evince an undue amount of sympathy for the poor creatures, juvenile or adult, male or female, employed in the severe labour of the mines, thus describes the life of a little "trapper:"

"The little trapper of eight years of age lies quiet in bed. The labours of the preceding day had procured sleep. It is now between two and three in the morning, and his mother shakes him, and desires him to rise, and tells him that his father has an hour ago gone off to the pit. Instant he starts into conscious existence. He turns on his side, rubs his eyes, and gets up, and comes to the blazing fire, and puts on his clothes. His coffee, such as it is, stands by the side of the fire, and bread is laid down for him. The fortnight is now well advanced, the money all spent, and butter, bacon, and other luxurious accompaniments of bread are not to be had at breakfast till next pay-day supply the means. He then fills his tin bottle with coffee, and takes a lump of bread, and sets out for the pit, into which he goes down in the cage, and walking along the horseway for upwards of a mile, be reaches the barrow-way, over which the young men and boys push the trams with the tubs on rails to the flats, where the barrow-way and horse-way meet, and where the tubs are transferred to rolleys, or carriages drawn by horses. He knows his place of work. It is inside one of the doors called trap-doors, which is in the barrow-way, for the purpose of forcing the stream of air, which passes in its long, many-miled course from the down shaft to the up-shaft of the pit; but which door must be opened whenever men or boys, with or without carriages, may wish to pass through. He seats himself in a little hole, about the size of a common fire-place, and with the string in his hand: and all his work is to pull 'that string when he has to open the door, and when man or boy has passed through, then to allow the door to shut of itself. Here it is his duty to sit, and be attentive, and pull his string promptly as any one approaches. He may not stir above a dozen steps with safety from his charge, lest he should be found neglecting his duty, and suffer for the same. He

sits solitary by himself, and has no one to talk to him; for in the pit the whole of the people, men and boys, are as busy as if they were in a sea-fight. He, however, sees every now and then the putters urging forward their trams through his gate, and derives some consolation from the glimmer of the little candle of about forty to the pound, which is fixed on their trams. For he himself has no light. His hours, except at such times, are passed in total darkness. For the first week of his service in the pit his father had allowed him candles to light one after another, but the expense of three halfpence a-day was so extravagant expenditure out of tenpence, the boy's daily wages, that his father, of course, withdrew the allowance the second week, all except one or two candles in the morning, and the week after the allowance was altogether taken away; and now, except a neighbour kinder than his father now and then drop him a candle as he passes, the boy has no light of his own. Thus hour after hour passes away, but what are hours to him, seated in darkness in the bowels of the earth? He knows nothing of the ascending or descending sun. Hunger, however, though silent and unseen, acts upon him, and he betakes to his bottle of coffee and slice of bread; and, if desirous, he may have the luxury of softening it in a portion of the water in the pit, which is brought down for man and beast. In this state of sepulchral existence an insidious enemy gains upon him. His eyes are shut, and his ears fail to announce the approach of a tram. A deputy overman comes along, and a smart cut of his yard-wand at once punishes the culprit, and recalls him to his duty; and happy was it for him that he fell into the hands of the deputy overman, rather than one of the putters; for his fist would have inflicted a severer pain. The deputy overman, moreover, consoles him by telling him it was for his good that he punished him; and reminds him of boys, well known to both, who, when asleep, had fallen down, and some had been severely wounded, and others killed. The little trapper believes that he is to blame, and makes no complaint; for he dreads being discharged; and he knows that his discharge would be attended with the loss of wages, and bring upon him the indignation of his father, more terrible to endure than the momentary vengeance of the deputy and the putters all taken together. Such is the day-work of the little trapper in the barrow-way. At last the joyful sound of " Loose, loose," reaches his ears. The news of its being four o'clock, and of the order" Loose, loose," having been shouted down the shaft, is, by systematic arrangement, sent for many miles in all directions, round the farthest extremities of the pit. The trapper waits till the last putter passes with his tram, and then he follows, and pursues his journey to the foot of the shaft, and takes an opportunity of getting into the cage and going up when he

can.

Everything shews the life of the little trapper to be one of the most solitary and painful description. Mr. Symons says—

"As their office must be performed from the repassing of the first to the passing of the last corve, during the day, they are in the pit the whole time it is worked, frequently above twelve hours a-day. They sit, moreover, in the dark, often with a damp floor to stand on, and exposed necessarily to drafts. It is a most painful thing to contemplate the dull dungeon-like life these little creatures are doomed to spend a life, for the most part, passed in solitude, damp, and darkness. They are allowed no light, but sometimes a good-natured collier will bestow a little bit of candle on them as a treat. On one occasion, as I was passing a little trapper, he begged me for a little grease from my candle. I found that the poor child had scooped out a hole in a great stone, and, having obtained a wick, had manufactured a rude sort of lamp, and that he kept it going as well as he could by begging contributions of melted tallow from the candles of any Samaritan passers by. To be in the dark, in fact, seemed to be the great grievance with all of them. Occasionally, they are so posted as to be near the shaft, where they can sometimes run and enliven themselves with a view of the corves going up with the coals, or, perhaps, occasionally with a bird's-eye peep at the daylight itself; their main amusement is that, however, of seeing the corves pass along the gates at their posts. When we consider the very trifling cost at which these little creatures might be supplied with a light, as is the case in the Cumberland collieries, there are few things which more strongly indicate the neglect of their comfort than the fact of their being kept in darkness-of all things the most wearisome to a young child."

Mr. Scriven, who reports upon the Yorkshire coal-field, says

"The children that excite the greatest commiseration are those who stand behind the doors, to open and shut them for the thrusters to pass; they are called "trappers," who, in the darkness, solitude, and stillness as of night, eke out a miserable existence for the smallest amount of wages. In the best-appointed mines the air is rarified by a fire, which is kindled at the foot of the up-cast shaft; the atmospheric air is directed down another, called the down-cast shaft, and is then made to pass into the remotest corners of the pit by doors placed at intervals in the main-gates or bye-ways. The trappers are therefore made to stand