The record-union., 1891-08-08
ENGLISH PIT-BROV LASSES.
Wakeman Wandering Among the
Mines of England.
Description OF an Interesting and
Worthy Class of Women-Thefr
Leader, StrugglesE and Victory
Horrible and Revolving Scenes In
the Mines.
Especial Correspondence of the RECORD
UNION, Copyright, 1871
w1eAN. England, July 28, 1891.

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 prohibiting
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
''below grass in the English mines, and
it is scarcely fifty years since, in 1912,
that all female labor in the underground
collieries was putan end to, almost solely
by the efforts of the late Lord Ashley.
Wholesome restrictions upon Juvenile
labor in mines were also imposed year
later. But previous to that time, ever
since English coal, iron and tin were
first mined, the labor of women was util
lied in a manner revolving and horrible
beyond description. The prohibition Of
female labor in mines was therefore
wonderful revolution. In Lancashire,
Yorkshire and Wales it was especially SO.
Here thousands of girls had found en-
ployment 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
slavish condition. Many could pick"
as well as any man, and at times stood
turns" with husbands or brothers in this
extraordinary toll.
These female workers We're chiefly
girls from L to 20 years of age, and their
work of drawing, or "hurrying," as 1t IS
called in Yorkshire, then consisted in
dragging the coal in boxes on sledges, or
in trucks on wheels, from the ''stalP'
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 hight,
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 compelled to crawl,
pulling the heavy loads after them, or
''thrutching,'' that is, pushing them from
behind. Frequently two or three children
were harnessed together to thus pull one
or more loaded trucks. Leather belts
were put around their waists, and then
the little ones We're fastened together, 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 manner Of
four-footed animals.
The distance these loaded trucks had to
be hauled was, in most cases, frlghttul.
Instances are authenticated where grown
up female drawers had to traverse over
5000 yards of rugged galleries and in
clineS each journey, or in days work,
were compelled to travel distance OF
thirteen miles, always in a STOPPING, and,
often, in creeping posture. 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 be-
no pF was M
OF a tiny lad who was compelled to drag
truck along n mine passage scarcely two
feet high, in which there was q foot of
muck and water, SO that his head could
be scarcely kept above the noisome
stream The infamous treatment of
women in these mines is only known to
their Maker. The exposure of but the
tainted part of all this wrong brought in
stant legal prohibition under the gravest
penalties.
But there was large number of women
left in every colliery region who clutched
at any manner of labor that would sustain
life. 4 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 brought 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 market and carrying the
coal dust TO the ovens where it is trans
formed into coke-came TO the lot of
women. Theoretically the collier op-
posed it at the public house and in meet
ings of his union. Practically. he Sc
cretly supported it, for his brother might
have been killed III an explosion, and the
wife, or daughter, at the pit-brow, took
up the fight for bread where death had
checked it, and his own arm or leg might
be picked Off some day in the machinery,
i g, Il
TO the spade or screen, and do a man S
labor for half mans wage.
So for a name for them all, though
many were laSseS no longer, and | have
seen women, of so and 80 years, working
nimbly at the screens, they came to be
known as "Pit-Brow Lasses," and in
time got nearly all the pit mouth labor
into their deXtrous hands. But, a few
years ago, mutterings were heard in those
districts like Northumberland and Dur
ham, where no women We're employed
against the system. 1t meant, these fell
lows who had all the labor themselves
said the impoverishment of that many
men and often of that many families
Then came a Miners Conference at Bir-
mingham, in January of 1885, and a reso-
luton there passed that women should
not be allowed TO work about the mines
was covertly inserted as clause i'll the
coal mines regulation amendment bill
which came up for debate in the House
of Commons in March, 1886. This was
followed by broadSides against women's
pit-brow labor in the Miners Journal and
other influential trades papers, as well
as in a horrifying leader in the London
Lancet. Then q vast army of female re-
form champions, headed by Emily Faith
ful, who, afterwards, confessed her error
in the matter, began writing to the press,
writing to members of Parliament, and
writing to anybody else who would assist
in advertising their interest in the mat
ter, much after the manner of our own
noble phalanX of the shrieking sister
hood; and, for time, it seemed that the
poor pit-brow laSses, as the bill was to be
acted on the following May, would be
given short shift at the mines.
The willy trade unionistS who were
cannily using the various sentimeptalists
of England in order TO merely give {, 900
men the places to be made vacant by
6.00O women, very shrewdly put forward
the unanSwera proposition, where the
pit-brow lasSeS were unknown and had
no one to speak for them; that their occu-
patton was 'unseXing;" that il was so la
boTious as to greatly shorten human life;
that it led 10 immortality in its. .Soddcn,
machine-like mixing of men and women;
that the dress of trousers and short petit
coat was indellcate and improper; and
that idle and vicious habits were engen-
dered in the husbands of women so en-
ployed. The whole country was aston
lShed and horrined at the discovery of
this new blot on English civilization. 1t
accordingly arose unanimously with the
sponge, as 1t We're, of Government inter
ference in its hand to wipe it out.
Then one lone woman also arose. This
one lone woman, almost unaided, de-
feated the entire efforts of the entire
opposition or Indifference of two Home
Secretaries, Childers and Matthews. in