The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-10-05 00:00:00

THE NORTHERN PITMAN AT HOME.

The Special Correspondent of the Daily News has
been down in Durham, and has written several very
graphic letters on colliery life in the pit digtriets, from
one of which, entitled a "Durham Pit Village," we
make the following interesting extracts :

The other day I laid down for myself the task of visiting
Nome of the pit villages in the great coal m stem of Durham,
with view to judge for myself of the actual condition of
the miner. I chose the Durham district, an it is It which
yields chiefly the hoimehold coals with which we towns-

people are the most closely concerned. Strangers ap-
parently are not common In Durham, or to the alterna
live my appearance must be of an exceptionally sus-
picious character. I had not been in the street ten minutes
until I found myself under the "surveillance of the police."
A C rpulent sergeant was obviously greatly troubled anent
me, and while he himself ponderously hovered to the fore-
ground, he detached a knock, kueed detective to dog me
closely, This zeal 'us and estimable gentleman never left
me until I finally drove out of the town, when I left him
scratching his head in great bewilderment. . . .

Driving on over an undulating sgricultural country,
closely studded with collieries, we at length reached the
large mining village of Coshes, the centre of A system of
. . . .

sm;ller pit rv.illi;g7s:and
pit village, nearly all-prevalent in this district of Durham.
Cushoe is scarcely the placs which I could advise the tourist
to visit Au search of natural beauty or picturesqueness
Around it, it is true, the country is diversified suit pretty,
but Cushoo lies a dingy blot on the scene. The place is
said to have a population of over 3,000. It consists cl
one wide irregular street over a mile long, with gross.
lanes and side rows of miners' hovels. There are

few shops, and much as there are have a mean,
dleheartened appearance, as if they were ashamed to be seen
he Coshoe. Of publiehouses there are nineteen, besides two
. . . . . .

, -
Cr three heerhouses. Publichouse keeping I imagine to be a
priilltahle avocation in Coshoe. I was shown ene ditty little
place, containing two rooms and a kitchen, which does"
forty half -narrels of beer monthly, besides rum. It was
about noon when we reached Coichoe, and sauntered up
through it, realiting slowly the oppressive melancholy
iif the place. There was hardly anybody moving in
the street. Now and then a limp woman flitted across,
or a grimy miner, in a dingy flannel, with loose knee.
breeches and long ribbed stockings, slouched sham.
blingly homeward, his shift of work over. As we passed
the open doors—nobody seems to shut a door in Coshoe—
other miners were to be seen washing themselves, almost ma
state of nudity. A little further, on the side walk, was.
group of men who had washed and eaten, and who were now
. .

erneiing autl talking each man AuU•teti._ on kin heele, tlm

most common position in the pit and the group had much
the aspect of a convocation of conversational puffins The
... . . '

architecture of the chief street of Coshoo is uot of an

posing character. Most of the houses are built o a soft
. . .

rotting sandstone, intermingled with "member. of Parlia-
ment ''—as flags stuck on end are locally termed. The floors
are either of composite or of brick. If his house is
not much to be proud of, the miner can point with
confidence to his furniture. Its chief elements are a four-
. . . .

_
post bedstead, of mahogany or birch, the post aa mianlVC and
as elaborately carved as possible, and the counterpane
gorgeous in many colours, an eight.day clock of the old-
fashioned, upright kind, with a well for the weights
quite big enough for a coffin, a chest of drawers of the
sareophag,llll pattern, a round table with a bright coloured
cover ou it, a pair of big tea trays with mac° ..ks painted
on them, and half a doz,n pictures of as gaudy colours
as may be. The pitman invariably goes in either
for sporting or religion, considerably oftener the former
thou the latter. You may judge of him by his
pictures. If he is in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of
Iniquity, his walls are decorated with prints of Tom Sayers,
of the celebrated fighting bulldog Cruncher, of Caller Ou—
t' awd mear," of Master M'Grath, ctc. If he has been
" awakened." and is a pillar of strength in the Primitive
Methodist Chapel over the way—miners are nearly all either
Primitive Methodists or Wesloyans—his room is hung with
..• .

-
Scripture prints,
We were scarcely seeing Coxhoe at Its best, no one who
knows the place well informed us. We should have come
In a pay week. The miter hi paid once a fortnight, pay-day
being each alternate Friday. Just now it is worth a man's
while to go to the pay table. Hardly anybody has less than
£4 or £5 to take ; mmy have c nsislerably more—crack
hewers as much as £9. Then the " spree '' begins
. . . . . .

During the tern days of work that Lave preceded
the pay, the miner has been an abstemious and laborious
man I eliki not see five men in the public-houses
in my day's periganations. But when he has drawn
his money he in ilea up for his abstinence. A propor-
tion of his pay he gives to his wife, the rest—often by far
the larger proportion—he appropriates as "pocket money."
lie does riot allow it to remain long pocket money. lie
squanders it like a sailor whi has cc me off a voyage He
inundates himself with the strong, heady "pitrinas" ate.
He forms a "school,'' and gambles feverishly at piteh-and-
toss. He goes into Duch .m, with a gaudy, volundinms
comforter twisted in multitudinous folds around his neck,

and chucks his money away there as freely as if he thing it
in the glitter. On each alternate Saturday an orgy,
whose coarseness is commensurate only with its energy,
is enacted in every pit-village. With slmo the
orgy Lists until Monday, annt indeed longer, but a
hero proportion have got rid of their pocket money, and are
ready fur work again on the Monday. The " pays " are the 1
markers In the chronological table of the inimr. He refers
to a past event ea having occurred so many pays back ; he
his reckoned how many pays Intervene between now and
eiristmas. The sensual pleasures of pay-time are unto hint
the breath of his nostrils. "Would you not prefer weekly
pans?' was a question asked a miner. " weekly
pays ; we can't get half a spree out of a week's work."
The pay Friday is the great market dny in Cuithoe. There
is little to buy ru the place except them but on that day
thi re come carts from Durham and all the a, jacent parts.
On Friday, too, descend upon Coxhoe the greenly swarm of
itinerant Sew jewellers, and the more Pleadable, it fre-
quently rather unscruoulous, travelling drapers. The miner
is caught by • watch like a soup plate, for which he pays by
Inetalments three times its value; he is fond of great bunches
of seals and of rings, whose massiveness is made up of Mi.ch.
beck. Altogether a great, rough, half.chil fish, semi savage,
easily led hut dour to drive, likeable. manly, uncultivated
being, this broad-shouldered, gnarled pitman; an appreciable
power either for good or for mil, ac cording as he is dealt
with,
- -•- -

•• .....
And how la he dealt with? Bear in mind that he must live
where he is liiiden to live, without possible alternative. Let
us take a walk through Coshoe. and see the habitations in
which the miner is forego to dwell. There are in the place,
we are told, some three hundred old houses, ant twelve of a
new- anti improved pattern. By all means let us see first the
twelve better houses. We reach them through an oozy swamp
of black mud, in which two lads are playing lives. The " new "
houses resemble a workhouse chopped into fragments.
They stand apart in a row, with a foreground of black sticki-
ness intermingled with fcetid slime, out of which rise heaps
of broken bricks loosely cemented by ordure. This pleasant
area is bounded by a dead wall, on top of which is the rail-
way. lin the further flank of tne row rises a bank of " (tuff,"
or waste c,isi slack, the slope of which is indented by numer-
ous pigsties, whose refuse drains away lute a stagnant gutter
close to the gable of the last house. The backs of the houses
abut on another gutter, upon ash heaps on which miacel.
laueous relick of all kinds is heaped, upou a path-
way unctuous with nastiness, and upon rain-water butts
without lids. These are the "palaces" of Corhoe, a native
eartionically informs us. In one window are visible lace
curtaine, in another curtains of purple rep; but these isolated
efforts to cope with the dismal genius loci look like paint-
ing the cheeks of a corpse. Tee interior of each house
consists of a front room and kitchen, both paved, down-
stairs ; and a front room and attic, neither water-tight,
I above.

more

If these are the palaces, let us see the hovel& There are,
it is sail, some houses that have grown too bad for colliers,
and being no longer leased by the colliery owners, are now
inhabited by brickmakers and the odds-and-ends people
that find work in a coal district. We thread our way
through close-packed rows of tumble-down shanties that
are dropping lauguidly into pieces. Moat are uninhabited
but there is one with an open door, and vagged children a
it. We enter the hovel. The walls inside are like those
outside—fissured, honey-combed, rotting. The sky is visible
through the bare sloping roof ; there is not a cupboard in
the place, or the vestige of a scrap of furniture. In one
corner, resting on four stones, is the door between the front
and I.ack room, which has been taken it Its hinges, and,
with the dirty bundles of rags upon it, is made to serve as
bed for the family. There are six children, end a haggard
wretched mother ; not one of the family is so ciao as to
comply with the rudimentary requirements of decency,
nor is there a morsel of Cent in the plac-. The father
lea brickmaker ;he earns 10e. a day and drinks it. Mist
this misery is not of the little collier 'Fetid. I
merely introduced a reference to it that it might he open to
me to state that the hovels in which the major portion of the
inhabitants of Coxhoe are lodged are not a whit better than
the one I have de,•;cribed. We pass on up and down mere
close-packed rows, hack to back, of squalid broken-roofed
hovels, whose walls are rotten and mouldering. whose
floors are damp, and the wretchedness of whoa° iuterlore,
spite of is. sal furniture in many cases, is only exceeded
by the abject misery and foul horrors of the .extertor
surroundir gii. The haggard women beset my companion
as we pase, and pray to be removed into better houses.
flare we come to see ab,,nt repairs? "We canna
live in oor hoses invests's- " God knows Edo not wonder at
ii; who but pg. could 1 Home love, sobriety, domestic
comfort, modesty, godliness —ls it not a bitter mcekery to
Imagine the possibility of such things in hoics and amid
surroundings at which a savage would shudder ? The privies
in Confine one may reckon easily en his fir flees. Thenight soil
Is ra9: upon the ground around the houses, first to saturate it
with see-age, then to percolate into the adjoining heck, and
finally to be drunk by the people of Durham. The solid
garbage accumitates on the ash heaps; filth, fish ledies,
cabbage blades, ant ashes make lip the mounds which In
some cases lean against the walls, never rare many istej.s
distant from the doors. T ask as to the water supply. Save
for rain water, ills wholly derived from a single pump well,
and from the gutter alleys, which flood down On either
site of the main street. As for the latter, the reader may
have sten and smelt the gutter w Isiah occuplee the
centre of the street in old Continental towns. If so,
he may realise a fair conception of the Coishoe glitters,
the water of which, however, the caution is given
me, is not cenerally used for drinking or cooking
purposes. For my own part, I prefer not to wasn
liquid sewage. We pay a visit to the pump well, which
stands en the margin of a plot of waste land in the
rear of sorm houses near the upper end of the village,
The peculiarity of this plot of ground Is that pigsties
are (Arend, malty dense upon it—as also ash middens, of
which 1 count thirteen in close vicinity, Close Se .She
pump are six pigsties, the nearest of erhi,h la just
three paces distant from it, find there Is a well defined
chatmel for the goatees of the same down to the lip
of the covered tank which acts as reservoir to the
pump. Fifteen paces on the othi r aide Is one of the few
privies of which Corhoe can boast. It cannot be hut thet
every foot of ground aronud this pump is satlrated to its
utmost pa wee of absorption by sewage matter. "1 likes
pork," soya a woman, grimly, who is drawing water; " likes
pork well enough, hut it Intuit melted down in the water I
driuks as I likes it." Mid in very truth, on a wet day. I
was soleninly assured the water from this pump etinks of the
plgstie.
i might write on and On in this strain. I might tell of
Trimdon, another villa ;e I a congeries of hovels
strs wn over a hill oountry whose elevations arm depressions
consist wholly of coal "doff." and whose cheerless
monotony in broken but by filthy middens and heaps of
ashes mixed with dirt; of Trieadon Grange, not a whit
better, and in some respects, indeed, worse; and of other
places. But it would be wearisome. . . .

The Manchester Guardia records an important
conviction under the Licensing Act at stockton. A publican
waa tined for permitting persons to play in hils billiard-room
at the game ~f ' pool " for money. The case is met by the
seventeenth section of the 11,-. Act, which imposes a penalty
upon any pahlly. who "suffers any gaming or any unlawful
genie to be carried on on his premises." It was urged in the
punlicalie ii, half that playing at pool for money was per-
mitted all over the country, aud that to prohibit it would
hove the effect of closing a great number A billiard-rooms;
but the magistrates were utanoved by Ma plea, and they
proceeded to flue rather heavily two men who had been
parties to a match of
Opool, for money, of mai, aagwho
had Mooed So did* ft Wag warned,

'II A Ut.

LIEBIG'S EXTRACT OF MEAT.

Baron Liebig having publiehed a letter in The Times
in defence of the utility of the well-known " extract of
meat," we give the following extract from hie
letter :

In a paper read by Dr. Edward Eindth, in Brighton. before
Section of the tritish Association, respecting the alimen-
tation of the population of Great Britain, on " Preserved
Food and Extract of Meat," of whieh an abstract appeared in
7inies of the 20th of August, fir, Smith expresses
opinions %Web are incompatible with the present state of
science.

Having directed my special attention to this subject, and
the leading ideas upon nutrition and food being the same
which have been made known by ma 25 years ago, I trust I
may be considered entitled to eluci.sate and correct in your
vale!, circulating paper the injurious and erroneous infer-
ence of Dr. Edward Smith.

Dr. I:dwar Smith attaches great importance to the pre-
paration td food: the economy of nntritieu, however, de-
pends essentially on the right proportion in the nourish
meat consumed of the nitrogen,. substances (meat, MU,
e,..gs, etc ), and those free from nitrogen (starch, butter,
sugar, etc.).

An -excees of meat in the diet is waste, end the exclusive
consumption of p datoes is likewise waste. The chemical
c•ornpositlou of meat and of potatoes (as well as or all other
attieles of food) hi perfectly well known, and It is therefore
easy to calculate the proportion in which they must be mixed
In trier to obtain the maximum of nutritive value for every
Individual at every stage of life

lhe alimentation of a population can only be judg=d by
means of a knowledge of their wants, and of the above-
mentioned proportions. The great et.onomical sat conies in
the prmluctimi of meat and milk by agriculturists who are
acquainted with the relative nutritive value of the various
sorts of hod are well-known, and as long as Dr. Edward
Smith does not specify what weight per head " the
small morsel of meat" and the potatoes or rice should have
in order " to form a highly nutritious diet," and as long as
he does not explain why the small morsel of meat should be
fat meat and not lean, which "the poor, in their fastidious-
ness, prefer," so long Dr. Edward Smith must allow us to
consider hls assertions ttiat the English were worse:Ad than
the Irish or Scotch as a mere fancy.

In the selection of food, which Is Influenced by necessity or
want, the instinct and the experience of the million are In.
fallible, and a far better guide than the theoretic &peen.
teams of men who have remained ignorant of the com-
position of food, as well aa of even the simplest laws of
nutrition.

" Fish," says Dr, Edward Sntth, " ts somotbuss suggested
as a substitute tor meat , but fish Is rather .relish than food.
and contains little more nutriment than water."

From Fsyen's Investigations it is well known, however,
that the flesh of fish on the average does not contain more
water than fresh beef, suit as much solid substance as the
latter. For instanco, the flesh of salmon contains 7110 per
cent, water and 21 290 per cent. solid substances, while beef
(muscle) contains 75 89 per cent water and 2112 per cent.
solid substances. The flesh of herring contain. still less
water than salmon, and even flat fish, faith as soles, are as
rich in nitrogenous substances as the best wheaten flour,
weight for weight.
The assertion of Dr. Edward Smith that the flesh of fish
contains little more nutriment than water in, as may easily
be perceived, in direct opposition to well ascertained facts.
Truly comical are Dr. Edward Smith's views respecting
tea and extract of meat. " lle laments the amount of money
which is, as he holds, wasted, and worse than wasted upon
tea, the amount of nutriment contained in an ounce Of tea
being infinitesimal."
• - - - - •- • • -

Dr. Edward Smith cannot seriously imagine that tea is
taken by certain ignorant and stupid people because they
believe it to be a nutriment, which tea indeed is not. The
capability of swallowing not one single camel but an entire
troop is, however. required In order to believe that If an in-
dividual a short time after having retired from a well sup-
plied table, satisfies the longing for a cup of tea, he does so
for no other reason than to add to the food and wine con-
sumed in abundance an infinitesimal fraction of carbon and
nitrogen, the ta o chief elements of nutrition.
Tea is no nutriment in the ordinary sense. The individual
who takes tea alter his meal feels, without being able to de-
fine It, that tea has a favourable effect upon certain highly
important functions In his body, that digestion Is accelerated
and facilitated, and that his brainwork is benefited thereby,
and it spoor factory workman imposes on lib:peel, privations
In his food and other necessaries of life in order to spare a
few pence for tea, there must be a deeper cause for this than
custom.

Neither tea nor extract of meat is nutriment in the ordi-
nary Celtic; they poises. a far higher importance by certain
medical properties of a peculiar kind. The physician does
not employ them as specific remedies. They serve the healthy
man for the preservation of his health Taken in proper
proportion they strengthen the internal rerstance of the
body to the most various external injurious influences which
conjoint to disturb the general vital processes, and they
adjust these latter.
Health is nothing but resistance to injarlous Influences,
and its degree in different individuals depends upon the
force of this resistance. The object of every intelligent pliy.
Wiwi will be directed in the cure of an illness towards
streezthenitig the internal resistance to local dhturbanc,s,
and to restore the normal functions by his remedies, which
In this race are called medicines ; and he knows therefore to
assign the proper place to the beef tea or meat juice which
lie prescribes to his patients Rua convalescents.
Ills surely a grave offence against all laws of physiology
to compare tea, coffee, and extract of meat to the more com-
mon articles of fond, and because they are not that,
to draw the inference, as Dr Edward Smith has dune, that
they are nothing at AIL This is certainty not scientific
reasoning.

The Times hag; also a leader on the Baron's letter,
in which (without entering into the controversy
betwixt him and Dr. Edward r4mith) they say :

_
The popular writings of Baron Liebig many years ago
rencered most of us in some degree acquainted with the
claesitleation of substances used for food and with the pur-
poses they were severally supposed to fulfil. lie taught
Ur 'fully that food might be divided into three groups—the
albuminous, of which flesh is the type: the oleaginous, or
fatty: and the saccharine, which includes the innumerable
forme of starch which are capable of easy conversiou into
sugar. lie taught that the oleaginous matter eaten was
partly stored up In the economy as deposited fat, and
portly "burnt elf" as fuel for the production of animal
heat. The saccharine matter was entirely burnt off in the
s ime way ; and only the albuminoue was capable of being
converted in the s aid tissues of the body, and of re-
placing a daily waste of those tissues which was assumed
to be con•iderable. The albuminous group of substance
were found not only in animal food, but were largely
represented in the vege.aele kingdom, especially by
the “eleten" of wheat and by substances in which
the pea alai bean femily were especially rich. Had
it not been for th's, life, Baron Meld, taught, could
not have Teem malutai ed on vegetable food alone;
at d, as it was, vegetables presented th s access try aloe-
' minous nutriment In forms more complex, and less easy of
application to the repair of the body, than in the hums fur-
nished by the flesh of animals. Hence the animal killed au
was held to fulfil the office of digesting vegetable albumen,
and, by converting it into flesh, of Increasing its fitness to
become the food of man. Under the influence of these
views it was assumed that a huge proportion of animal
food was, if not necessary, at least desirable for the supply
of waste: sad that farinaceous and oily matters were
of little value except to maintain temperature, and
to confer upon the whole quantity of a meal a
bulk favourable to the digestive process. The progress
of inquiry during late years has led, homer r, to considerable
divergence from these doctrine. It is still held that only the
albuminous material can be applied to the renovation of the
body ; but it is known that the destruction of the body is far
lees in &menet than was supposed, and that a great pro-
portion of the albuminous food taken by habitual flesh-
eaters is at least simply wasted, and I. often distinctly
injurions. The fatty substances consumed are not merely
"deposited," but furnish an absolutely eseential ingredient
to nem ly every one of the tissues, hut especially to the
brain, the nerves, and the muscles. The saccharine group is
not subservient only, or mainly, to the production of heat,
but generally to the production of force ; and the vital
actions of man, instead of beteg maintained at the expense
of his solid structures, are maintsined chiefly at the expense
of the force yielded by the decomposition of the starchy and
saccharine matters which he consumes. It follows that this°
two groups are now held to hold the first place in nutritive
value, and that the albuminous food, although necessary in
moderate quantity, is superfluous when that moderate
quantity is exceeded. The conclusions which result
Tom scientific Inquiry are thus brought into perfect bar- .
molly with the teachings of experience. A diet of suitable
vegetable substances, with • sufficiency of fat, will every-
where preserve life in a high degree of vigour the vegetable
food affording by He gluten a sufficiency of material for
tissue repair and the fat being always essential. It is
the staple of foa not only In the Polar Regions, where
a quantity which would elsewhere be superfluous is
required to counteract the low external tempera-
tom, but, with the addition of rice, forms the sub-
sistence of multitudes who live under a tropical sun. An
exclusively animal diet, on the other hand, is only possible
for meu whose restless activity is comparable to that of the
animal carnivore', and., as was proved by a cruel experiment
onto tried at Gobelius upon some criminals, would ender
ordinary circumstances prove fatal in the course of a few
days.
' " •• ---- •

If we apply these considerations to the ordinary dietary of
English families It will be seen that our common practice I
is to waste animal food by consuming far too much of it, and j
to waste vegetable food lay pot availing ourselves of RS inca.,
hauatible abundance and infinite variety. We get our supplies
of saccharine and starchy substances chiefly from bread,
potatoes, and sugar, and we eat pulse and other vegetables
more as a luxury or a relish than as a possible mainstay of
existeuce. Bice is scarcely employed for any purpose but
children's puddings; and yet, with the addition of some ,
form of animal fat, and occatioually rendere i savoury by a I
morsel of curry, it constitutes the chief sustenance of mll-
lions of peaple. Our Continental neighbours, and our '
II indoo follow subjects, might each give us a useful lesson in ;
the simple art of economizing cur meat supplies be making
them go further than we do, and in the art alao, leas simple,
though even more Important, of using all too available forms .
of vegetable food for their proper and legitimate purposes. •
hut another source of waste equally to be tegrettcd is to he
, found to the abseece of any Tiade organization for bringing
temporary abundance of some particular kind to the doors
of those who might consume it. Tirade of families who
visit Billingsgate in the early morning often tell their
wondering friends that on such-and-such a day fish was
fabulously cheap and recount their purchases to envious
cets. it people generally cannot go to Billingsgate, and
the ordinary fate of a glut of fish there Is to perish and ul-
timately to be condemned by en Inspector of markets as un-
fit for human foil. 'the retail sellers of fish are supposed
to be greatly averse from ally occasional cheapening of the 1
commodity in which they deal mad to consider it their interest
to keep it as a luxury for the tables of km wealthy. Fish,
however, is as rich in albuminous materiel as flesh, end will
NMI all the pe rinses of flash in the physical economy. The
wade consequent upon a cheap day at Billingastate, or I
which occurs when a great haul of some deacription of
fish is used mainly for maclure, is Baal as would startle
those who wrote It down in pounds tithe weight or
value. The waste is little less serious whir, flows upon
the Want of ahl, organization for bringing 01.1periluouil
garden stuff of the country to the crowded ?adulation' of
towns, or which is produced by the owu era ot gardens being
themselves frequently Ignorant of the nutritive value of
the protects th SO aedens yield The remedy for these
eviis Iles toe considerable extent in the hands or those Who
control she education of the country, and especially the edu-
cation of the great mass of the people. The defects in our
arrangements for supply themselves are traceable primarily
to the absence of a national demand ills probably hope-
less to erpect the adult n scant or artisen Pi tolerate any
/doingr le his f!toda of life, ot to arilie at thz gerrtption
that he linW despises, and by despising loses, cheap,
palatable, and abundant supplies of food. Even tho
middle class father of a family, and not less hie wife,
may be regarded as beyond the reach of conviction.
To eat beef I. the ttaditional practice of Poglialonen, and
it held to he the only custom worthy of their name and race.
' tut we have the children, and with them something might
be done. Is it hopelesa that School Boards May some day
I order rational cookery to be taught to girls? If this could be
accomplished, some of the eviating superstitions about meat-
. felting misfit "ate sapped at them foundation ; and • grace-
' Alen might grow up prepared to use, healthfully and wisely,
all the good gifts which Providence has bestowed tor the
gratification and the sustenance of mankind.