In May 1842 the Children's Employment
Commission broke a scandal that briefly transfixed Victorian
society. Words and sketches by two investigators in Yorkshire led to
female miners being castigated as brazen, shameless, half-dressed
hussies or worse. Their sexual conduct was questionable, they failed
to attend church, to keep a home decent or bring their children up in
good ways. Banning them from earning a living underground was seen as
the only way of banishing these horrors.
This negative view of female coal
miners has persisted ever since, obscuring the horrific nature of the
work they were doing and why they had to toil underground. When I
discovered my 4x great-grandmother, Rebecca Whitehead, on the 1841
census, reputedly a pitiable, feckless creature who spent her days
harnessed like an animal, dragging a coal truck behind her as she
towed 'on all fours' with breasts swinging for everyone to see I took
a critical look at the Royal Commission report.
My investigations challenge the view
that females working without tops was a widespread occurrence.
Topless females were only seen working by investigators at one pit.
By a fortuitous inclusion of this pit as an example of a medium-sized
colliery, it is possible to identify who these girls were. A maximum
of five were involved. The youngest was 11, the eldest 17 and
commended elsewhere for her propriety and reliable evidence. All went
to church, chapel or Sunday school. They worked for family members
and removed their tops at times to keep cool in a pit which was
particularly hard to work.
After several readings of the report I
realised the investigator who portrayed these teenagers as
loose-moralled wrote hypothetically when he supposed that sexual
misconduct must be occurring. As a sad footnote, before the Royal
Commission published its findings in May 1842, three of these girls
had died in an underground explosion because of the negligence of the
pit manager.
Pictures which purport to show
bare-breasted females at work can also be challenged. A topless woman
dragging a cart has a masculine looking face. The supposed breasts
may have been intended as nothing more than well-developed pectoral
muscles for which male miners were renowned. A topless girl being
hauled out of the mine sitting crotch to crotch with a teenage lad is
named as Ann Ambler, the only girl working at that pit. In the text
the only garments she is reported as lacking are shoes and socks.
.jpg) |
The shocking illustration of Ann Ambler from the Commission
report
(courtesy of Ian Winstanley, Pick's Publishing and the Coal Mining History Resources Centre.) |
The two investigators who created the
sensation about topless working and sexual morality were a barrister
and a doctor; intelligent men capable of weighing evidence and
drawing appropriate conclusions. That they reported as they did was
less Victorian prudery than Victorian compassion. Both men were
shocked and disgusted by discovering girls who were knocked about by
men they worked for, girls dragging coal carts on all fours with
chains which had worn holes between the legs of their trousers and
exposed flesh in intimate places, girls working in conditions which
resembled a city drain and women being required to work harder than
galley slaves moving coal carts which were too heavy for female
strength.
 |
| A Wigan pit brow lass (image from tumperkin.blogspot.co.uk) |
From detail hidden within their
individual reports it is clear that these investigators worked
together to unearth evidence which would help the women to escape
from their degradation. They called in two of the national
Commissioners and took them to the most shocking pits they had found.
It seems likely that these Commissioners steered the investigators to
produce emotive reports about moral issues. From previous involvement
in official investigations they knew that calls to reform working
practices based on compassion for women would fail in a society which
considered that Parliament had no remit to involve itself in
regulating industrial practices. If females were to be taken out of
the mines (and a number indicated that they would like this to
happen) the grounds had to be moral.
Topless working was only one myth which
surrounded female miners in 1842. My research has addressed numerous
others also and produced a picture of respectable women of surprising
talents.
There has been very little
investigation into the lives of the women and girls who worked
underground in coal mines. I'm hoping that Pit Lasses will stimulate
interest in the subject and lead to new discoveries. My research to
date has identified aspects of their lives where specific studies
would be valuable if appropriate samples or sources can be
identified. There may be family stories around and un-indexed papers
in archives. I would be interested to hear from anyone who can
contribute to research on this topic.
Find out more on www.facebook.com/PitLasses or get in touch with Denise by e-mail (pitlass@btinternet.com). Check out Denise's book Pit Lasses: Women and Girls in Coal Mining c.1800-1914 (published by Wharncliffe Books, 2012) here
4 comments:
Loved this post. Thank you for bringing up such an interesting subject.
When I used an image of the engraving of Ann Ambler to illustrate an article of my own (Dreadful Calamity at Church Gresley), I had no idea of the relevance to pit lasses. Thanks for drawing my attention to the book and bringing, as always, a refreshing view to the story.
I had no idea that women worked in those awful coal mines. I felt lucky that my great great grandfather joined the Mormons and left Wales and therefore, saved his life and children's lives by crossing not only the ocean but the plains to Utah where they farmed and had a full life.
Fascinating. My mother's mother was a coalminer's daughter and did some work in the mines as a child. She and her siblings also scavenged for coal deep in the shafts to feed the stove of their home in eastern Kentucky. She shuddered at the memory 'it was so dangerous!' They were poor after their dad was blinded in a mine explosion and almost starved to death one winter.
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