Pit brow women

Pit brow lass from Wigan on the Lancashire Coalfield.

Pit brow women or pit brow lasses were female surface labourers at British collieries. They worked at the coal screens on the pit bank (or brow) at the shaft top until the 1960s. Their job was to pick stones from the coal after it was hauled to the surface. More women were employed in this capacity on the Lancashire Coalfield than in any other area.[1]

Background

In the early coal industry women and girls worked alongside men and boys in small coal pits. It was common practice in Lancashire and Cumberland, Yorkshire, the East of Scotland and South Wales.[2] The death of Elizabeth Higginson working underground was recorded in the register of Wigan's parish church in 1641.[3] An article in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1795 described Betty Hodson aged nine who worked underground with her brother, aged seven, dragging baskets of coals for their father.[4]

From the 1600s in Lancashire it was common for whole families to be employed in the pits. Colliers relied on their wives, sons and daughters who were employed as drawers. Most colliers' daughters married within the mining community. As the industry grew the population expanded and more members of extended mining families obtained work. Pitwork in south-west Lancashire resulted in the area around Wigan having the highest rates of female employment in the country in the 19th century.[5]

Until the Mines and Collieries Act 1842 was passed prohibiting boys under ten years of age and all women and girls from working underground in coal mines, it was common for women and children to work shifts of 11 or 12 hours underground. Children as young as five or six worked as trappers opening and closing ventilation doors before becoming hurriers, pushing tubs of coal to the shaft bottom.[6] The prohibition of underground female labour caused much suffering and hardship and was greatly resented in south-west Lancashire.[5] After the act was passed some women who had worked underground gained employment as surface workers.

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Davies 2009, p. 7.
  2. ↑ Davies 2006, p. 58.
  3. ↑ Davies 2006, p. 10.
  4. ↑ Davies 2006, p. 12.
  5. 1 2 Langton, John (2000). "Proletarianization in the Industrial Revolution: Regionalism and Kinship in the Labour Markets of the British Coal Industry from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries". Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 25: 311–49. Retrieved 13 July 2015 – via JSTOR. (registration required (help)).
  6. ↑ The Mines Act, 1842, University of Paris, retrieved 30 June 2015

Bibliography

  • Davies, Alan (2006), The Pit Brow Women of the Wigan Coalfield, Tempus, ISBN 0-7524-3912-X 
  • Davies, Alan (2009), Atherton Collieries, Amberley, ISBN 978-1-84868-489-8 

External links

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