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Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Cymru
National Museum of Wales
1979

CHILDREN WORKING
UNDERGROUND
This booklet has been written
by R. Meurig Evans of the Schools Service

ISBN 0 7200 0217 6

Card-backed paperback in VG condition published  in 1979 - 71 printed pages - size: 6" x 8¼" approx
Includes black and white photographs and illustrations - minor shelfwear to covers - all pages clean and binding tight
Small round price-sticker on top right corner of front cover

Foreword
It is almost beyond understanding that a civilised society should allow children of five years of age to work, not only in factories, but in coalmines and ironworks. Industrial Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries accepted such a labour force as a necessary part of producing much needed raw materials as well as making the finished article.
It is difficult to allocate blame for such inhuman treatment of children, for not only did some managements condone the system but parents too. It must be remembered that it was an age of great contrasts: poverty and wealth, freedom and slavery.
Changes for the better had to come and the government of the day began an investigation into the employment of children. This ultimately resulted in what was to be known as the Commission of Enquiry into the State of Children in Employment. During the early 1840s inspectors visited the whole of industrial Britain taking evidence from employers and employees. Untruths were frequently told during the presentation of evidence: the employees did not want to risk losing their jobs by giving evidence that would discredit the management while the latter wanted, generally speaking, to paint a picture which would be acceptable to the government.
Reading through the reports of the inspectors, however, it is not difficult to realise the terrible existence of whole families and communities whose lives, often short, were committed to working underground.
The government investigated all indutries in which children were employed, but this book deals only with mining. Eleven areas only are dealt with in this book and it must be remembered that mining took place in many other parts of Britain. Most of those who speak from these pages are children, although the greater part of the evidence was provided by adults.
There was considerable opposition to the proposal that child labour should be abolished and it was with great difficulty that Lord Shaftesbury's Mines Act was passed in 1842. This made illegal the employment of children under the age of ten years underground. Many years were to pass before complete success was to be achieved and children of all ages could make their way to school instead of to mine or factory.
July 1979

SOME RANDON EXTRACTS . . . .
South Durham
`The little trapper of eight years lies quiet in bed. 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 to the pit. He turns on his side, rubs his eyes, and gets up, and comes to the blazing 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 horse-way for upwards of a mile, he 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 fireplace, 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 anyone approaches. He may not stir above a dozen of steps with safety from his charge, lest he should be found neglecting his duty, and suffer for the same.'
So wrote the government inspector of one young lad who worked in one of the South Durham mines in 1840. We are not told the name of the young trapper or the pit in which he worked but his story could be repeated many times, not only in the Durham coalfield but in many other parts of industrial Britain during the first half of the nineteenth century. The story continued . . .
`He sits solitary by himself, and has no one to talk to him. 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 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 1p a-day was so extravagant expenditure out of 4p, 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? . . . .

. . . . . distance from the top of the wall to the highest point of the roof was 7 feet. The height of the outside front wall was about 13 feet 10 inches. The other type of cottage consisted of one room and a pantry 'downstairs and one bedroom upstairs. These cost £42 each to build. Rental per annum on such cottages was about £5. Coxhoe in the 1840s had a population of some 5,000. It also had 30 beer shops, but no church or chapel, although both Wesleyan and Primitive Methodists arranged meetings in their own houses.
Here is an account of the expenditure of a miner's family, consisting of the man, his wife and two children for one week. The miner earned £1 a week.

                                                          £. p.
One pound of blasting powder              5
One pound of candles for use in pit      4½
Soap                                                      3
One pound and half sugar at 4p per lb.  6
Two ounces tea                                      2½
Quarter pound of coffee                         3
One and a half stone (21 lbs) bread        10
Yeast, salt, pepper                                  1½
Seven pounds beef at 3p per lb               21
Pint of milk a day at 1/2p per pint           3½
Three quarter pound butter                     5
One pound cheese                                  3
One pound bacon                                   3
Tobacco                                                  3
                                                      ----------
                                                             .74
                                                      ----------

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