Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1891-08-09
pIT-BROW LASSES.
The women Who Work About
the Mines.
SOMETHING PURELY ENGLISH.
How the Effort to Prohibit the Labor of
Women About the Collieries Failed
Because of One Woman-A Dep
utation to Parliament


Correspondence OF the Gazette
! WIGAN, ENGLAND, July 2S.-The sPit
BROW Lassesn Of England and Wales are
| about SIX thousand III 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 en-
act laws prohibiting such form OF labor
and among the Iowly of England I have
never come upon more interesting or
worthy class.
In former times women were employed
NbelOw grass i'll the English mines. and IL
is scarcely fifty years since, in 1912, that all
female labor in the underground collierieS
was put an end TO. almost solely by the
efforts of the late Lord Ashley. Wholesome
! restrictions upon Juvenile labor in mines
were also imposed a 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 Il manner revolving
| and horrible beyond description. The pro-
! hibition of female labor in mines was there
| fore wonderful revolution. In Lancashire,
Yorkshire and Wales it was especially So
Here thousands of girls had found employ
ment in the pits. Their chief labor was rs
drawers and '.thrutcherS'' for the golfers
rise above this worse than slavish condi-
| ton. Many could pick as well as any
man, and at times ''stood turns" with hus-
| bands or brothers in this extraordinary
toll.
These female workers were chiefly girls
| from twelve TO twenty years of age and
! their work OF drawing, OF ''hurryine,' as
| ii is called in Yorkshire, then consisted in
! dragging the coal in boxes on sledgcs or i'll
| 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 a
! place not two feet III height, and from one
! to two miles from The only outlet TO the
| world above. Through pitch bac5 pass
| ages, 100 low 10 permit OF their standing
| upright, and up and down steep incliues
| they were compelled to crawl, pulling the
| heavy loads after them, or ''thTutching,"
| that is, pushing, them from behind. Fire.
| Quently two or three children were har-
messed together TO thus pull one or more
| loaded trucks. IeatneTn 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 claweG, scram-
bed aud tugged along on them hands and
toes after the manner Of four-footed ami
mails.
The distance these loaded trucks had TO
be hauled was il most cases frightfUl In
stances are authenticated where srown-up
female drawers had TO traverse over 5000
yards of rugged galleries and inclines each
Journey, or in 4 days work We're compelled
10 travel a distance of thirteen miles
always IN STOPPING, and often in creep
ing, posture. Then there were many sad
der wrongs and outragcs in those under
ground slavc-rens. where the law WIS
unknown and not even dreaded. One OF
the horrors proved before the house
of commons was the case of a tiny
lad who was compelled to drag truck
along mine passage scarcely two feet high,
IN which there was foot OF muck and wa
ter, so that his head could be scarcely kept
above tine HOisome stream. The infamous
treatment Of women in these mines is only
known 10 their Maker The expos
ure of but the faintest part of all this
wrong brought instant legal prohibition I'M
der the gravcSt penalties
But there was large number of women
left in every coilIery region who cutched
at any manner of labor that would sustain
life. A few were already working with
men aud lads at the pit-brow Gradually |
nearly all of this work. such as DUMPING the |
trucks from the cage in which they are
brought 10 surface from the bottom of |
the mine shaft, screening the coal and sort |
ing 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 transformed into colle-came TO |
the lot of women. Theoretically the col |
lier opposed it at the public house and IN |
meetings OF his union. Practically. lie Sc
cretly supported il. for his brother might |
have been killed in all explosion and the
wife or daughter IT the pit-brow took up |
the fight for bread where death had checked |
it; and his own arm or leg might ne picked |
off some day in the machinery, and his own |
mother or wife could spring to
the spade or screen, ana do a
~ 1srl.y f,,. I.,1F I
So for name for them ali, though many
we're lasscs no longer. and I have seen
women of fifty and sixty years working
ninbly ut the screens. they came TO be |
known rs 'Pit Brow Lasses,' and in time |
got nearly all the pit mouth labor into their
dextrous hands. But. Il few wears ago,
mutterings were heard in those districts
like Northum berland and Durham, where
no women Were employed. against the sys-
TEN. II meant these fellows who had all
the labor themselves, said, the impoverish-
ment OF that many men and often of that
many families. Then came miners con-
ference at birmingham, in January of 1885,
and resolution there passed that women
should not be allowed to work about the
mines was coyertly inserted as Z clause i'll |
the coal miners regulation amendment bill,
which came up for debate il the house of
commons in March, 1856. This was fol-
lowed by broadsideS against women's pit
l
influential trades papers. as well as in |
horrifying leader in the London Lancet. |
Then Il vast army of female reform cham
pions, headed by Emily Faithful, who after
wards confessed her error in the matter, |
began writing to the press, writing to mem
bers of parliament, and writing TO |
anybody else who would assist IN ad- |
vertising their interest in the matter, |
much after the manner of our own noble
ohalanx OF the shrieking sistcrhood; and |
for time it seemed that the poor pit-brow |
asses, as the bill was 10 be acted on the
May, would be given short shrift
az the mines.
The willy trade unionists who were can
nily using the various sentimeutalists of
England in order TO merely give COCO men
The places to be made vacant by 5000
women, very shrewdly put forward the un-
proposition, where the pit-brow
asses were unknown and had no one tn | /