Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-08-09
PIT BROW LASSES.
Story Of the Long War on Women
and Child Labor in the Mines.
A GREAT AGITATION IN ENGLAND.
1t Came Near Abolishing Petticoats Even at
the Mine Mouths.
THE WORK OF MRS. MARGARET PARK

CORRESPONDENCE OF THE DIsPATcH.l
W1GAN, ENGLAND, July 31.-The "Pit
Brow Lasses" of England and Wales are
about 5000 in number. They are the girls
and women of all ages who are employed
about the "brows" or mouths of British coal
and iron mines. No other working women
In England have received so much notoriety
from the press, owing to various futile
efforts In Parliament to enact laws prohibit
ing such form, of labor, and among the lowly
OF England have never come upon more
interesting or worthy class.
In former times women were employed
NbeIow grass" in the English mines, and it
is scarcely 80 years since, in 1S42, that all
female labor in the underground collieries
was put an end to, almost solely by the eff
forts of the late Lord Ashley. Wholesome
restrictions upon Juvenile labor in mines
were also imposed year later. But pre-
vlous to that time, ever since English coal,
iron and tin were first mined, the labor of
women was utilized in a manner revolving
and horrible beyond description. The pro-
hlbition of female labor in mines was,
therefore, wonderful revolution. In Lam
cashlre, Yorkshire and Wales it was espe-
clally 50. Here thousands of girls had
found employment in the pits. Their chief
labor was as drawers and ''thrutchers'' for
the golfers who cut or dug the coal. They
could never rise above this worse than
slayish condition. Many could "pick" as
well as any man, and at times "stood turns"
with husbands or brothers in this e1traordi-
nary toll
LITTLE CHILDREN IN HARNESS.
These female workers were chiefly girls
from u to 20 years of age, and their work of
drawing, or 'thurrying" as it is called in
Yorkshire, then consisted in dragging the
coal in boxes on sledges or In trucks on
wheels from the "stall' where the collier
was at work, to the shaft of the pit. Often
the miners would be cutting the coal, as is
now frequently the case in place not two
feet In height, and from one to two miles
from the only outlet to the world above.
Through pitch-black passages, too low to
permit OF their standing upright, and up
and down steep inclines they were COM
after them, or 'thrutching," that is, push
ing, them from behind. Frequently two or
three children were harnessed together to
thus pull one or more loaded trucks.
Leathern belts were put around their waists,
and then the little ones were fastened to-
gether, by a chain passing between their
legs from one belt to another, when the
children clawed, scrambled and tugged
along on their hands and toes after the man
ner Of four-footed animals.
The distance these loaded trucks had to
be hauled was in most cases frightful. In
stances are authenticated where grown-up
female drawers had to traverse over 5000
yards of rugged galleries and inclines each
journey, or in days work were compelled
to travel distance of Is miles, always in
stopping, and often in creeping, posture.
CRIMES ONLY TO BE HINTED AT.
Then there were many sadder wrongs and
outrages in those underground slave pens,
where the law was unknown and not even
dreaded. One of the horrors proven before
the House of Commons was the case of
tiny lad who was compelled to drag truck
along mine passage scarcely two feet high,
In which there was foot of muck and
water, SO that his head could be scarcely
kept above the noissome stream. The in
famous treatment of women in these mines
is only known to their Maker. The ex-
posure of but the faintest part of all this
wrong brought instant legal prohibition
under the gravest penalties.
But there was a large number of women
left in every colliery region who clutched
at any manner Of labor that would sustain
life. A few were already working with
men and lads at the pit brow. Gradually
nearly all of this work, such as dumping
the trucks from the Cage in which they
are drought to surface" from the bottom
of the mine shaft, screening the coal and
sorting out the slate and stone, loading the
coal wagons with the coal ready for the mar
ket, and carrying the coal dust to the ovens
where it is transformed into coke-came to
the lot of women. theoretically the collier
opposed it at the public house and in meet
ings of his union. Practically, he secretly
it, for his brother might have
been killed in an explosion and the wife or
for bread where death checked it; and his
OWN arm and leg might be picked off some
day in the machinery, and his own mother
Or wife could spring to the spade or screen,
and do mans labor for half mans wage.
TO ABOLISH IT ALTOGETHER
So for name for them all, though many
we're lasses mo longer, and 1 have seen
women of 80 and 80 years working nimbly |
It the screens, they came to be known as |
'Pit-Brow Lasses, and in time got nearly |
Ill the pit mouth labor into their dextrous |
hands. But, O few years ago, mutterings |
we're heard in those districts like Northum-
oerland and Durham, where no women were
Employed, against the system. 1t meant,
,hese fellows who had all the labor them. |
'elves said, the impoverishment of that
many men and often of that many families
Then came miners conference at Bir-
ningham In January of 1885, and a resolu-
ion there passed that women should not be |
allowed to work about the mines was covert
y inserted as a clause in the coal mines I
.egulation amendment bill, which came up
'or debate in the House of Commons in |
March, 1886.
This was followed by broadsides against
Vomen's pit brow labor in the Miners Journal
md other influential trades papers, as well
IS in horrifying leader in the London
Lancet. Then vast army of female reform
champions, headed by Emily Faithful, who
'fterward confessed her error in the mat
er, began writing to the press, writing
o members of Parliament, and writing to
nybody else who would assist in adyertis-
ng their interest in the.matter, much after
ne manner OF our own noble phalanx of the
sisterhood; and for time it
eemed that the poor pit brow lasses, as the
Ill was to be acted on the following May,
Tould be given short shrift at the mines.
IAGNIFIED INTO A NATIONAL DISGRACE.
The willy trade unionists who were can
lily using the various sentimentalists of
England in order merely to give 5000
1en the places made vacant by 6,000