One of the most revealing documents published in the Victorian period is the report relating to the Children’s Employment Commission of 1842 enquiring into the employment of children – girls as well as boys – in mines. The detail is amazing. For example, in the report on the South Yorkshire coalfield dated July 1841, the main report is 42 pages long, with 17 pages of appendices followed by 73 pages of depositions from 299 separate witnesses gathered in early 1841.

Witnesses included mine owners, pit managers, colliers and the children who worked in the pits, together with a variety of other witnesses including clergymen and doctors. The working conditions and practices in collieries and ironstone pits, large and small, were investigated. Similar reports were compiled for mining areas throughout the country.

Many of the main witnesses were the children themselves. Some of the children interviewed were painfully honest; others may have been ‘briefed’. The same must be true of the adult witnesses who would not have wanted to be dismissed for showing their employer in a poor light. However, even with these reservations in mind, what comes across is a graphic portrayal of debilitating work, often in atrocious conditions, mostly in semi-darkness and with the strong possibility of physical injury.

The sub-commissioner who wrote the report on South Yorkshire graphically described the conditions that would have met young children being introduced into a pit for the first time: “The chamber or area at the bottom of the shaft is sloppy and muddy, and the escape from it consists of a labyrinth of black passages, often not above four feet square, and seldom exceeding five or six.”

The reformers who pressed for this commission to take place were concerned about the physical and spiritual welfare of the children. Others saw the child labour force as a necessary evil, and it was condoned not only by capitalists large and small but also by parents, the latter seeing their children from an early age not as dependants but as important components of the family economic unit.

One divisive issue even among those who condoned child labour was the employment of girls underground. This was said to be normal practice in Yorkshire and Lancashire; in the East of Scotland it was said to be general; and in South Wales “not uncommon”.

Age of commencing work
The South Yorkshire sub-commissioner stated that “there were well-attested instances of children being taken into coal-pits as early as five years of age. The Rev Richard Morton, curate of Dodworth, near Barnsley, said that parents got their children into the pits “as soon as they think they can do anything”, adding “I have been told that some have gone by the time they have been five years old”. It was generally thought that such cases were rare but many did begin work at seven, and eight was a normal age to begin work underground.

It is clear from the evidence that many coal owners did not know how young many of their workers were or conveniently ignored what was going on. They consistently gave the age of commencing work underground as being higher than it actually was. The South Yorkshire sub-commissioner also reported that in thin seam pits there was a temptation to bring in young children simply because they were small and could cope better with the low roofs. One Sheffield coal pit manager actually said in his evidence that “Christians are handier than horses”.

The nature of employment
The work the children did varied but most were either trappers or hurriers. In a deep pit, ventilation air was drawn down a ‘downcast’ shaft, then circulated around the workings and ascended an ‘upcast’ shaft. In order that the air circulated round the whole of the workings and did not take short cuts, trapdoors were placed along the main underground roadway.

Trappers sat in a little hole scooped out for them and with string in their hands. Their job was to open the trapdoor to let a full or empty coal wagon (variously referred to as corves, skips, tubs, sleds and wagons) pass through and then make sure it was closed again. Trappers were often the youngest children, not being strong enough to do other jobs. They only had a candle which often went out.

The sub-commissioner for Lancashire and Cheshire wrote: “Their whole time is spent sitting in the dark for twelve hours … were it not for the passing and repassing of the wagons it would be equal to solitary confinement of the worst kind.” One witness, Mary Davis, said to be “near seven years old”, when seen by the sub-commissioner for South Wales was “fast asleep under a piece of rock near the air-door” which she looked after. Her lamp had gone out through lack of oil and when wakened she complained that rats had run off with her bread and cheese.

One trapper who worked at Gawber pit near Barnsley, in South Yorkshire, was nine and said he had been trapping for three years. When his light went out, he said, “I smoke my pipe. I smoke a quartern of tobacco every week.” At the same pit, another trapper, Sarah Gooder, aged eight, said she trapped without a light and was scared.

Hurriers (also referred to as ‘trammers’, and known as ‘drammers’ in South Wales and ‘drawers’ in Lancashire) had to push or pull full and empty corves from the coal face to the pit bottom or to where pit ponies took over. And the corves were heavy. In one pit in South Yorkshire it was said that hurriers had to push a full corf weighing 8cwt (about 400kg) a distance of 150 yards 20 times during a shift. The usual method of hurrying was to place the hands on the back of the wagon and propel it forward, the speed of movement relying on the size of the wagon, the slope of the passageway, the state of the floor and the strength of the hurrier. Some mines had rails but most did not.

In some pits in Lancashire (pits in the Bolton Lever, Worsley and St Helens areas are among the locations mentioned) it was said that the ‘old mode’ of hurrying was still employed. It was also used in other coalfields, especially where the seams were thin. In this method, the hurriers were harnessed by means of a chain attached to the sled, the other end of the chain passing between the legs and fastened in front to a belt round the waist.

Thus attached, the drawer would move along on his hands and feet dragging the sled (which did not have wheels) behind him. Some not very strong hurriers in these pits sometimes had an assistant called a ‘thruster’ who pushed from behind. The sub-commissioner noted that these thrusters occasionally “rub off the hair from the crowns of their heads so much as to make them almost bald”. The same method of hurrying using a chain attached to the corf was observed in pits in the Halifax area in West Yorkshire where it was said that some passages were only 16 to 20 inches high. The sub-commissioner insisted on including a drawing of a hurrier using this method stating that “The illustration of the circumstances of this degrading labour is so much more forcible than any verbal description, that we must claim permission to subjoin it”.

It was not unusual for female hurriers to be naked down to the waist. The sub-commissioner who wrote the report on the South Yorkshire coalfield said that one of the most disgusting sights he had ever seen was at one of the day pits or adits (that is, pits entered by a shallow tunnel on a steep hillside) at Hunshelf Bank between Green Moor and Stocksbridge, where six of the 18 underground workers were girls. Young female hurriers, dressed in trousers, using the old mode of hurrying, were seen crawling on all fours with belts round their waists and chains passing between their legs. The gate or tunnel up and down which they crawled was no more than a yard high and in some places was only two feet high.

One of the hurriers, a girl of ten years of age, was described as “a nice-looking little child… as black as a tinker and with a little necklace round her throat”. At the same pit he witnessed a girl ‘getting’ coal with a pick, half sitting and half lying in a space only two feet high. At Flockton and Thornhill in West Yorkshire it was reported that although the girl hurriers were clothed, at least three-quarters of the men for whom they hurried worked stark naked or only wore a flannel waistcoat.

The sub-commissioner for the Halifax and Bradford areas went furthest in his condemnation of the employment of female hurriers. He stated that “hundreds of young girls are sacrificed to such shameless indecencies, filthy abominations and cruel slavery… chained, belted, harnessed…black, saturated with wet and more than half naked … they present an appearance indescribably disgusting and unnatural”.

Hours, pay, meals and washing
On average, miners, including the children, worked between 10 and 11 hours a day for six days a week. There was usually a break for lunch but the length of time to eat, drink and rest varied a great deal from no more than 15 minutes to almost an hour. Towards the end of a week or fortnight, depending on when they were paid, longer hours were frequently worked to make up for lost time.

Work usually began between five or six in the morning and the labour started as soon as the coal face was reached. This was almost immediately in a small pit, but could take up to an hour in an extensive deep colliery where the miners had to wait to take the cage to the pit bottom and then walk to their workplace.

One collier at a pit in Barnsley said that the children working there were got out of their beds as early as four o’clock in the morning.

The work day finished between three and five in the afternoon. Night work was unusual.

Pay varied according to age, strength and the job they did, but the youngest children who worked as trappers were usually paid about three shillings a week, rising to 15 shillings a week for 15-year-old hurriers.

Although evidence varied, it is clear that children often went to work without having had breakfast, took only meagre rations with them and were often too tired to eat when they got home.

One 17-year-old female hurrier said she had bread and a bit of fat (dripping) for her dinner in the pit. She said some other hurriers had a “sup of beer” but she said she drank the water that ran through the pit. When they got home from work they usually had their only hot meal of the day.

In South Yorkshire it was said that they had “meat and potatoes for dinner … a small portion of meat and a good deal of Yorkshire pudding with it”. When they washed they only washed their upper parts “in nineteen cases out of twenty” except on Sundays. Nor did they usually change their clothing during the week. There was also great concern about the lack of education among mining children. Naturally they were either very tired or wanted to take advantage of any sunshine rather than attending a night school or Sunday school.

One Barnsley coal owner emphasised that he did not believe the children in his pits were over-worked. He went on to say “They always appear to me to be very cheerful and run about and play when they come out of the pit in the evening”. The sub-commissioner’s riposte in his report was very direct and dismissive: “The evidence given by some witnesses that the children are cheerful when they get out of the pit, is somewhat akin to evidence that people are cheerful when they get out of prison’.”

Conclusion
The Commission concluded that the children employed in pits were growing up in a state of “heathen ignorance”. The outcome of the enquiry was that in 1842 an Act of Parliament was passed forbidding the employment of girls and women below ground and the employment of boys below the age of ten. But there was only one inspector to enforce the Act over the entire country! Evasion of its provisions was not difficult at first.

The regional reports of the Children in Mines Commission can be found here .