27th April, 2007
Poverty
The Children's Employment Commission of 1842, describes a visit to a miner's house "in a back street of the Scows (Scholes) of Wigan":
"The family consists of five children. On entering the house I was struck with its wretchedness; there were two chairs without bottoms, and the remains of an old loom completed the furniture of the lower room; upstairs there were two beds filthy in the extreme..."
"The children looked quite famished; one little girl told me that she had not tasted food from nine o'clock the previous morning, and at the time I visited the house it was seven in the evening... When I gave the child something to buy food, I was quite shocked with the look of ravenous joy with which they received it."
There are many such reports.
Lack of Respect
The Children's Employment Commission also says that miners were regarded as an inferior class by hand-loom weavers and other fellow workers, even though they were paid more and had better employment opportunities.
The reason for this lack of respect, according to the report, was the way of life adopted by many miners.
It states:
"When we regard their amusements we find that their passive relaxations are disgusting by abject insolence, amidst filth, gross sensuality, and drunkenness."
"...colliers' residences may be known by the accumulations of filth and excrement at their doors and by a savage bull-dog in their house..."
"(and) were, for the most part, filthy dens, furnished with a few rude stools and dirty beds and occupied, in the absence of the parent by dirty, neglected, and half-clothed children."
Mr. Halliwell, The Relieving Officer of Wigan, has this to say about the leisure activities of miners and their families:
"The ale houses are thronged on Saturday night and Sundays by colliers and quite young boys. I have met them going home on Sunday mornings after their Saturday night's debauch, and returning in crowds to the public-houses as early on the Sunday morning as the doors were open. Fighting and breaches of the peace are constantly occurring among them..."
"The moral character of the colliers, both male and female, is very low; but I have remarked that the women have a little more respect for decency than the men..."
There are many other similar statements, so the question must be asked, why were the living standards and moral behaviour of miners so low?
Brutal Nature of the Work
Much of the miners' behaviour must be due to a backlash against the brutal nature of the job.
The work was arduous. Conditions underground were difficult and dangerous. Mining accidents frequently resulted in the need to take time off work with no pay and sometimes caused permanent disability.
William Dodd, writing in 1841, mentions a collier who had been "burned by an explosion of gas" and was unable to work. He had a wife and six children. To compound the situation, his son, who was the other bread winner in the family, had been involved in the same accident and was so badly hurt that he was in danger of losing his sight. He would not be able to work for three months.
The Children's Employment Commission has this to say about the frequency of mining accidents:
"Accidents of a more or less serious character are of a daily occurrence in almost every mine where a large number of persons are employed; so common, indeed, that a record is seldom kept."
Added to the difficulties and dangers were the many diseases contracted or exacerbated by the conditions encountered.
A surgeon, in 1842, states that miners were subject to rheumatism, heart disease, erysipelas (an acute bacterial skin disease) and conjunctivitis.
However, he also blames miners' intemperate habits and tendency never to wash their bodies, as contributory factors to their ill health.
Also miners tended to be smaller in stature than other workers.
Working Women and Children
The lack of cleanliness of the miners' homes must, in part at least, be due to the extensive employment of women, both in the mining and textile industries. A wife, who works twelve hours a day pulling coal tubs along an underground railway, cannot adequately look after a house. If the wife's mother had also worked in the mines, and she had been given no guidance in household management, then the situation was compounded.
Hand-loom weavers and their families did not have this problem to the same extent. As their usual place of work was their own cellar, they were at home to look after the children's needs if necessary.
Not All Bad
Of course, not all miners or their families were dissolute or dirty.
John Houghton was an underlooker working for Blundell in 1842. He married a former pit girl whose father and mother had both been miners. John hints that his wife is a good housekeeper and makes this statement about other colliers' wives:
"...but there is a great difference in them, some will keep their house very well, and others as dirty as can be; some will gather a bit of furniture together and others will not have a stool to sit down on."
The Children's Employment Commission also mentions Timothy Fairhurst's house which is clean, well furnished and has pictures on the wall.