Coalminers' Blues; Working in the Pits; Child Labour Underground; Folk Songs

I've been reading and writing about the lives of some coal-miners recently, which took me back to some of the many moving and tragic songs about working in the pits.

Dick Gaughan, Photo JP

Dick Gaughan, Schooldays' End

Dave Burland, Tony Capstick, Dick Gaughan, Schooldays End

The Carter Family, Coal Miner's Blues

Blind Alfred Read, Explosion in the Fairmount Mine

Cap, Andy and Flip, McBeth Mine Explosion

Merle Travis, Dark as a Dungeon

Merle Travis, Sixteen Tons

Woodie Guthrie, Ludlow Massacre

Dick Gaughan, Ludlow Massacre

Dick Gaughan, The Pound a Week Rise

Lee Dorsey, Working In The Coal Mine 

Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard - Coal Miner Blues

Dick Gaughan, Johnny Miner 

Dick Gaughan, Auchengeich Disaster 

Dick Gaughan, The Recruited Collier

Dick Gaughan, Miner's Life Is Like a Sailor's

Kate Rusby, The Collier Recruit 

Bob Hay, Collier Laddie

Alan Reid, Robert Burns, My Collier Laddie 

Ewan MacColl, Blantyre Explosion

Ewan MacColl, The Plodder Seam

Ewan MacColl, Big Hewer

Ewan MacColl, The Coal Owner and the Pitman's Wife

Ewan MacColl, The Gresford Disaster

Ewan MacColl, Fourpence a Day

Ewan MacColl, Blackleg Miner

Stewart Cameron, The Gresford Disaster

Halveyp, Schooldays' Over

Stewart Cameron, Schoolday's Over

The Miner's Lifeguard, Bob Fox and Benny Graham

Miner's Lifeguard, Pete Seeger and The Song Swappers

Union miners (A miner's life/A miner's lifeguard) at Durham Miners' Gala 

Hugh E. Jones, Coal, Coal for Manchester

Here's the lyric of Coal, Coal for Manchester, by Hugh E. Jones.

The lyrics and chords for The Blantyre Explosion


I also dug out my copy of "Come All Ye Bold Miners, Ballads and Songs of the Coalfields", compiled by A. L. Lloyd (1952).

What Jobs did Children do Underground? My Learning.org

Children in Mines, National Museum Wales

Poynton, A Coalmining Village

"Boys started full time in the collieries at whatever the permissible age was once this was prescribed by law, 11 from 1842 for boys underground. But in 1837 Thomas Ashworth notes there were 124 boys from 8-18 employed underground in the collieries and 150 in 1847. He also held the view, advanced for the time, that no women or girls should be employed underground at Poynton. The permissible age for the employment of boys underground was raised to 12 by 1860, (11 if they had a certificate in reading and writing), and 14 by 1911 with increasingly strict regulations about hours permissible per week, e.g. 54 in 1887 with a maximum day of ten hours, sufficient interval between shifts and provision for meal breaks. Boys above ground were similarly regulated, the 1911 Act allowing employment at 13. To avoid accidents, from 1887 boys and women were not allowed to move railway wagons. At Poynton boys were usually given surface work to do, as many of the men have told us, e.g. labourers or blacksmiths, stoker at Towers Yard, helping with coal screening, sometimes as door-tenters (e.g. Hugh Walker aged 10 illegally employed in 1851) or helping with transport underground. At 18 they had strength and knowledge enough to assume a job as driver or drawer underground and as Mr. Goodwin says in a Local History Society Newsletter3 "putting on at the bottom of the jig (or rope haulage system) five tubs at a time going up, five loaded tubs coming down". It was the job of the fireman (called deputy elsewhere) to inspect the mines each morning for safety of roof, presence of gas, state of ventilation and drainage (see Chapter 11). The maintenance of proper ventilation and pumping machinery to clear water was vital".

From Chapter 10, Economic Aspects of the Collieries (Poynton, A Coalmining Village).

From Chapter 11 - Cooperative and Self-help Organisations

From an article in The Advertiser, October 1, 1909 (page 2, in my collection)

Poynton Collieries, Voices of the Workforce (Sound Files)


1842 Royal Commission


https://www.ncm.org.uk/downloads/21/1842_Commission.pdf


Mines and Collieries Act 1842, Wikipedia


The Victorian Web: Testimony Gathered by Ashley's Mines Commission

'The images were published in "The Condition and Treatment of the Children employed in the Mines and Colliers of the United Kingdom Carefully compiled from the appendix to the first report of the Commissioners With copious extracts from the evidence, and illustrative engravings" of 1842. '

A glossary of words used in the dialect of Cheshire, 1877 (pdf)


Update (19 March): Christopher King has sent me this useful link, "Songs from the Mines"


List of books about coal mining


Film, How Green Was My Valley, 1941


Film, The Stars Look Down, 1940


Film trailer, The Citadel, 1938 


Tony Harrison - v. (1/2)


Coal: A Burning Legacy, BBC Radio