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facilitate the carriage of coals in trucks from the pits to the river; and we find these tramways following the best route which lies open to them. Now it is obvious that some arrangement must be made with the landed proprietors in these matters; and in truth these arrangements are often a grave question to the coal-owners. Although the expense of the mining operations is so great although the establishment of a first-rate colliery, with its machinery, horses, wagons, &c., amounts to a sum varying from £40,000 to £150,000 (the sinking of a single shaft having, in one instance, cost £40,000): -although the capital employed by the Tyne coalowners is estimated at a million and a half sterlingyet are the way-leaves,' or 'way-rents,' an additional feature beyond all these, without which not a ton of coal can be brought to market,

On taking a glance round the surface of the country underlaid by the coal-seams (especially at night), we become cognizant of a fact which must excite regret in every thoughtful mind. An immense amount of coal is burned to waste, because it will not afford to pay freight to London. This consists of small coal, which, when taken out of the pit, is not shipped, but lies as an incumbrance at the pit's mouth; and these heaps have on many occasions caught fire. The establishment of numerous manufactures on the banks of the Tyne has, however, increased the facilities for using the small coal.

The character of the pitmen, the nature of their labour, the relations between them and their employers -all are dependent, more or less, on the mode in which the coal is distributed under the surface of the ground. To these deep-lying coals, therefore, we must ask the reader to pay an imaginary visit.

First, then, how to descend? We see a vertical hole, or pit, pitchy dark, and surmounted above by a windlass, or some other means of raising weights. Two men are about to descend. They make a loop in the lower end of a rope, and each man inserts one leg in this loop, the two clinging together in a strange sort of perilous brotherhood. The windlass to which the rope is attached is set to work, and the two men are lowered safely to the bottom of the pit. If the rope should break, or the loop become unfastened—but it is fearful to speculate on such ifs!' Each man holds the rope by one hand, while with a stick in the other he shields himself from inconvenient oscillations. Sometimes there are two ropes in one pit, one ascending and the other descending: the two human loads meeting each other half-way. In some pits there are more couples than one thus clinging to the rope at the same time ; and then one feels almost tempted to liken them to onions strung to a rope. Many collieries have corves, or baskets, in which the men are raised and lowered. Another plan is by means of a large iron tub, which holds eight or ten persons; but in the most modern arrangement there are square iron cases, working in vertical grooves, and capable of accommodating either men and boys or tubs of coal. The ropes employed

arrangement. In some collieries they have a round rope, from five to six inches in circumference; in some, a flat rope, four or five inches wide, and formed of three or four strands, or smaller ropes plaited side by side; in a few instances, chains are used. Some of these ropes are of immense length, owing to the depth of the pits. The deepest, we believe, in England, is the Monkwearmouth pit, belonging to the Durham, as distinguished from the Northumberland collieries: its depth is 292 fathoms, or 1752 feet. Two ropes for this pit weigh about 12,000lb., and cost more than £500.

Arrived at the bottom of a pit, what do the pitmen see-or rather what does a stranger see who makes the descent? Nothing, or nothing but darkness visible.' All vestige of daylight is effectually shut out, and it is long before he becomes accustomed to the light of the candles carried by the men; each one appears as a mere spark, a point of light in the midst of intense darkness; for the walls or surfaces around are too dark to reflect much of the light. By degrees, however, the eye accommodates itself to the strange scene; and men are seen to be moving about in galleries or long passages, working in positions which would seem fit to break the back of an ordinary workman; while boys and horses are seen to be aiding in bringing the coal to the mouth of the pit. Some of these horses go through the whole of their career without seeing the light of day: they are born in the pit, reared in the pit, and die in the pit.

A coal mine is not simply a pit, with coal at the bottom of it. The pit is merely an entrance, from the bottom of which passages run out in every direction, to a great distance. These passages are cut in a 'seam' of coal, and are a natural result of the mode of working the coal. If the whole of a seam of coal were worked away at once, the cavity left would be so large that the earthen roof, failing of support, would fall, burying all beneath it: there are portions left, therefore, called 'pillars,' to support the roof; and the self-interest of the coal-owner leads him to limit the size of these pillars as much as is consistent with safety. Passages lead between and around and among these pillars; and iron tramways or railways are laid along the passages, to afford facilities for moving the corves or tubs of coal from the workings to the vertical shaft. Mr. Holland, in his History of Fossil Fuel,' speaks of the timidity which often prevents persons from visiting these striking scenes, where the pitman pursues,

"Howe'er the daylight smiles or night-storms rave,
His dangerous labour, deeper than the grave;
Alike to him whose taper's flickering ray
Creates a dubious subterranean day,
Or whether climbs the sun his noontide track,
Or starless midnight reigns in coif of black;
Intrepid still, though buried at his work,
Where ambush'd death and hidden dangers lurk!"
"But if courage," he remarks, "be required to

in this work are evidently important features in the enter a coal-mine at ordinary depths, it is in descending

the frightfully deep pits in the neighbourhood of Newcastle, that sensations bordering on the awful are inevitably experienced; and in traversing at such profound depths, the endless galleries into which the shafts ramify, the visitor is struck by the perfection of plans adapted to lessen, as much as possible, the risk which the pitmen run.”

THE WORKING AND MANAGEMENT OF A COAL-MINE.

In most of the collieries around Newcastle, the seams of coal vary from two and a half feet to six feet in thickness. The pitmen are obliged to adopt different modes of procedure, in respect to the thickness of the seam. In ordinary cases, the hewer cuts with his pick a horizontal line at the bottom of the seam, to an extent of twelve or eighteen inches in advance of him; and to this extent the coal is severed from the ground beneath. He then makes a few cuts upwards, to isolate the coal into huge blocks, which still adhere at the back and the top to the general mass. The driving in of a few wedges, or the application of gunpowder as a blast, soon brings down these blocks, in a more or less broken state. Where the seam is very thin, or where it occupies an inclined position, various modes are adopted, each calculated to surmount a particular kind of difficulty.

Without troubling the reader with any extended or scientific details, the following will give him some notion of ventilating and lighting a coal-mine. The seams of coal, and the appertures where such seams have been, often give out carburetted hydrogen and other gases, which, when mixed with common air, become very explosive. Hence it is important to Hence it is important to drive these gases out of the mine as quickly as possible; and this can only be effected by sending a constant current of air through the workings. A complete system, as now adopted at the best collieries, comprises the downcast-shaft, for the descent of fresh air; the upcast-shaft, for the ascent of vitiated air; wellplanned galleries, doors, and valves, throughout the whole of the mine; and a furnace at the bottom of the upcast-shaft to heat the ascending air, and make it ascend more rapidly. In some collieries the air is made to traverse an extent of thirty miles of galleries and passages! In former times the dangerous contaminated passages were lighted only by sparks struck from a small instrument called a 'steel-mill;' but the beautiful safety lamp-or 'Davy,' as the miners familiarly term it has superseded this. In this lamp, there is a lamp-flame surrounded by a wire-gauze having very fine meshes, through which the air must pass to feed the flame; if the air be inflammable, the flame is confined within the gauze envelope; for the iron wire cools the gas too much to permit the flame to exist on the outside of the gauze. If the lamp be properly tended, it is one of the most precious boons that science ever gave to industry; if it be neglected-as it often is by the miners those explosions take place, which so frequently give rise to such fearful results. From some

collieries the gas which constantly escapes is in enor mous quantity; so much so, indeed, that an attempt was made a few years ago to employ the gas from the Wallsend Colliery for gas-lighting in the neighbourhood. Some of the larger collieries require a stock of nearly a thousand 'Davys,' for the efficient working of their pits.

The relations between a coal-owner and his pitmen have a more commercial and extensive character than those between a manufacturer and his operatives. The pitmen are always engaged for a year, and a regular 'bond' is drawn up between them and their employer. This period of a year commences on the 5th of April. As the chief among the pitmen are paid by 'piece-work,' the details are very minute, in order that disputes should as much as possible be avoided. The coal is measured by corves or tubs, which vary in their capacity from 16 to 30 coal-pecks; and a score consists of 20 corves at the Tyne collieries, or 21 at those of the Wear; but as each colliery has its own 'score' and its own 'corves,' all the parties concerned understand each other. The bond is made between the owners on the one hand, and the principal pitmen on the other. The men are, by its provisions, engaged for twelve months to "hew, work, drive, fill, and put coals." The seam of coal is specified, and the price named for hewing a ' score ' of coal from it. A price is then named for 'putting' or driving a score of tubs-so much for the first eighty yards, and so much additional for every further twenty yards. Beyond the stipulated rate of pay, the coal-owners in some collieries engage either to provide a house for each miner, or allow a certain addition to the wages. The putters are to provide themselves with "candles, grease, and soams :" candles to light them along the dark passages, grease for thei ̧ trams or vehicles, and soams (short ropes) for forming harness to their trams. The coal-owners engage that the pitmen shall have the opportunity of earning, throughout the year, not less than a certain fixed sum of money per week; while on the other hand, the pitmen engage that they will always be ready to perform a certain minimum amount of work within a given period. The coal-owners affix their signatures, and the pitmen more usually their 'marks,' to this bond; and thus the year's labours are planned and settled.

The persons engaged in a colliery are subdivided into a greater number of classes than might perhaps be supposed; and generally speaking, the technical designations of these classes is more significant than is usually observable in other industrial occupations; but some of them sound strangely to the ears of the uninitiated. They are distinguished into the two great groups of 'underground' and 'upperground' establishments the former engaged in the pit, and the latter in conducting the open-air arrangements. The chief of them are occupied in a way which may be illustrated in the following connected view.

The hewer is the actual coal-digger. Whether the seam be so narrow that he can hardly creep into it on hands and knees, or whether it be tall enough for him

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to stand upright in, he is the responsible workman who loosens the coal from its bed: such a man often extricates six tons of coal in a day. Next to the hewers come the putters, who are divided into trams, headsmen, foals, and half-marrows. These are all children or youths; and the employment consists in pushing or dragging the coal from the workings to the passages where horses are able to be employed in the work: the distance that a corve or basket of coal is dragged in this way averages about a hundred and fifty yards. When a boy drags or 'puts' a load by himself, he is designated a tram; when two boys of unequal age and strength assist each other, the elder is called a headsman, and the younger a foal,—the former receiving eightpence out of every shilling earned conjointly by the two; when two boys of about equal age and strength aid each other, both are called half-marrows, and divide the earnings equally between them. The weight of coal dragged by these various classes of putters varies from five to ten hundred-weight to each corve; and the distance walked in a day varies from seven to nine miles, to and fro, along the iron tramways of the mine. When the corves are 'put' to a particular place, where a crane is fixed, the crane-man or cranehoister manages the crane by which the corves are transferred from the tramway to the rolleys; and for keeping an account of the number so transferred. The corf is a wicker-work basket, containing from four to seven hundred-weights; the rolley is a wagon for transporting the corves from the crane to the shaft; and the rolleyway is a road or path sufficiently high for a horse to work along it with the rolley, and kept in repair by the rolleyway-men. The driver takes charge of the horse, which draws the rolley along the rolleyway. The on-setter is stationed at the bottom of the shaft, to hook and unhook the corves and tubs which have descended, or are about to ascend the shaft.

Many of these strange designations for the pitmen find a place in the stories and songs of colliery districts -songs which cannot be at all understood unless we know something of the peculiar vocabulary of the place. In one of these pitmen's songs, called the Collier's Rant,' relating to the vaunted exploits of a putter, we find the following two stanzas:

"As me and my marrow was ganging to wark,
We met with the devil, it was in the dark;
I up with my pick, it being in the neit,

I knock'd off his horns, likewise his club feet!
Follow the horses, Johnny my lad oh!
Follow them through, my canny lad oh!
Follow the horses, Johnny my lad oh!
Oh lad ly away, canny lad oh!

As me and my marrow was putting the tram,
The low it went out, and my marrow went wrang:
You would have laugh'd had you seen the gam,—
The de'il gat my marrow, but I gat the tram.

Follow the horses," &c.

Besides all the varieties of pitmen hitherto named, who are immediately instrumental in bringing the coal

to the bottom of the shaft, there are other men and boys whose employments are in various ways subsidiary to them, such as the furnace-men, who attend to the furnace for ventilating the mine; the horse-keeper, who attends to the horses in the pit; the lamp-keeper, who has the care of the all-important 'Davy' lamps,— a careless management of which has led to so many colliery accidents; the wasteman, who walks along all the 'wastes,' or deserted workings, to clear away stones and rubbish which may have fallen, and to attend especially to any obstructions in the ventilation; the shifter, who, as a kind of labourer, assists the wasteman; the switch-keepers, who attend to the switches, or passing-places in the subterraneous railways; the trappers, little boys who are stationed at traps or doors in various parts of the mine, which doors they are to open when corves of coal are about to pass, but to keep closed at all other times, as a means of forcing the current of air for ventilation to follow certain prescribed channels; the way-cleaners, who cleanse the rails of the mine from time to time, to remove all obstruction from coal-dust, &c.; and the wood and water leaders, who carry props and wood to various parts of the mine for the use of the men, and who also remove water from the horse-ways and other parts of the pit.

There are, of course, superintending officers of the mine, who are responsible, to a certain extent, for the due performance of all the work. The chief of these is the viewer, a person usually of great trust and experience. At the opening of a new pit or seam, he makes himself thoroughly acquainted with the nature of the stratification, the thickness of the seam, the probable extent and direction, and other matters of a similar kind; and his great problem is to determine how to bring up a given quantity of coal to the light of day with the least expenditure of time and labour. He arranges the whole plan of working; and he imposes certain restrictions and fines for such hewing as may be deemed unfair or wasteful. It requires a combined exercise of firmness and tact on the part of the viewer, to keep clear of disputes with the pitmen. The under-viewer, as the name imports, is an assistant to the viewer in his important duties. The overman is the third in rank among the officers of the colliery; he is the real working overseer, requiring some brains and much activity he has the charge of everything underground, locates the work-people, examines the ventilation, and keeps an account of all the proceedings. The back-overman is to the overman what the underviewer is to the viewer. The deputy sets props, lays tram-roads, arranges the boarding and timbers of the pit, and has a watchful eye on the general safety of the whole workings. The keeper inspects the workings of

the hewers.

The reader has here ample means of observing that colliers are not merely blackened-faced diggers and shovellers, who attack the coal wherever they meet with it, and roam about in a dark pit, to seek their coaly fortunes. All is pre-arranged and systematic:

every one knows exactly whither he is to go, and what he has to do. But the above list, formidable as it appears, does by no means include all those engaged at a colliery; they are nearly all of them the 'underground' hands, who could not transmit the coal to market without the aid of the upper-ground' establishment. These latter comprise banksmen, brakesmen, waiters, trimmers, staithmen, screen-trappers, and many others.

Hard as a pitman's life seems to be, yet it is agreed by those who knew the Northumbrian collieries half a century ago, that it was then much more laborious. It fell with peculiar severity on the boys employed in the pits. A boy was generally placed at this kind of work at six years old, his parents being poor, and willing to avail themselves of his small earnings. His occupation was first that of a 'trapper,' to open and shut the doors of the pit; he remained the whole day at this employment, sometimes for a period of eighteen hours, and received five pence per day as wages. He went to his labour at two o'clock in the morning, in pitchy darkness, so that it was literally true that in winter he did not see daylight from Sunday until the next Saturday afternoon, when the hour of leaving work was earlier. At twelve or fourteen years of age he became a 'putter' or a driver,' and worked shorter hours, but more severely than as a trapper, receiving wages much lower than those received at the present day, and working a much greater number of hours. At length, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, his strength enabled him to become a 'hewer,' in which employment he was destined to pass the rest of his life, and in which he earned about one-half the average wages of a hewer at the present day.

THE PITMEN; THEIR DWELLINGS, HABITS, AND PECULIARITIES.

The pitmen are in every sense a peculiar race. Their life is half passed in the bowels of the earth, shut out from the light of day. Their thoughts and occupation are with coals from early boyhood to old age; and a very narrow circle indeed it is within which their sympathies extend. They are almost utterly ignorant of the world which exists beyond the colliery world; and any further excursion than an occasional one to Newcastle is truly a great event.

In many parts of England, the houses of the workingclasses are better than the furniture; but among the pitmen of Northumberland and Durham the furniture is better than the houses. A pitmen's village usually consists of houses built in pairs, and the pairs placed in rows. The space between the fronts of the houses, forming the street, is unpaved and undrained; but the space between the backs of the houses (where gardens would be in houses of a better class) not unfrequently exhibits a joint-stock dust-heap and dunghill running along the avenue, flanked here and there by pigsties and heaps of coals,—all in such a state as to show that the masters neglect the men, or the men neglect them

selves, or both. The pitmen's houses are erected either by the proprietor of the colliery, or by certain petty companies, who speculate in the building and letting of them to the coal-owners, at rents varying from three to four pounds per annum. All the pitmen's houses are near the pits; so that when a pit is abandoned, the village is abandoned also; and in such case presents a most desolate appearance. The houses are of three degrees of value; the best possess two rooms on the ground floor, with a kind of loft above; the next best have only one room on the ground-floor, with a loft above; while the worst consist of but one single room. Some colliery villages, where probably the owners pay more personal attention to the comforts of the men, are of a superior character; but the average seem to be about on a level with those here described. Yet these dirty dwellings have, for the most part, better furniture within them than is to be found in houses of a parallel cast elsewhere. Eight-day clocks, mahogany chests of drawers, and four-post bedsteads, are said to have become quite a common object of ambition among the pitmen, and as forming items for consideration at the time of marrying.

It is rather remarkable, and contrary to what might perhaps be expected, that the medical men of the colliery districts do not speak highly either of the physical strength or of the courage of the pitmen. In the evidence collected by the 'Children's Employment' Commissioners, a few years ago, Mr. Morrison, a surgeon, makes the following remarks:-" The outward man' distinguishes a pitman from every other operative. His stature is diminutive, his figure disproportionate and misshapen, his legs being much bowed; his chest protruding (the thoracic region being unequally developed); his countenance is not less striking than his figure, his cheeks being generally hollow, his brow overhanging, his cheek-bones high, his forehead low and retreating; nor is his appearance healthful, I have seen agricultural labourers, blacksmiths, carpenters, and even those among the wan and distressed stocking-weavers of Nottinghamshire, to whom the term 'jolly' might not be inaptly applied; but I never saw a jolly-looking' pitman." Mr. Morrison partly traces this to the fact, that the whole of the pitmen have been pit-boys at an earlier age, during which the form is injured by the cramped positions occupied by the boys in the mine; but he also adduces other reasons:-" Pitmen have always lived in communities; they have associated only among themselves; they have thus acquired habits and ideas peculiar to themselves. Even their amusements are hereditary and peculiar. They almost invariably intermarry; and it is not uncommon, in their marriages, to commingle the blood of the same family. They have thus transmitted natural and accidental defects through a long series of generations, and may now be regarded in the light of a distinct race of beings." Whether seen in the pits or out of them, the pitmen are a singularlooking race. In the dingy lanes which surround many of the collieries, pitmen may often be seen returning

home from their 'eight-hours' shift' of labour, nearly as black as the coal on which they have been at work. Their dress, a tunic, or short frock, of coarse flannel, and trousers to match, becomes soon saturated with moisture and coal-dust. The complexion of the men, when it can be seen in its own proper hue, is generally sallow. Owing to the unusual light by which they pursue their occupations, the eyelids often become swollen, and the eyes assume a diminutive appearance: the strong light of day is sometimes painful to them. Everybody seems to award credit to the wives of the pitmen, as being indefatigable in their endeavours to keep all right and tidy at home, so far as the arrangements of the houses and the employments of the people will permit. The household duties of a pitman's wife are very numerous. Her husband, brother, father, sonsas the case may be-are often divided into two groups, such as "putters" and "hewers," who work at different hours; the former go into the pit when the latter leave, and the hours of labour and of rest are consequently not the same in the two cases. But the ever-busy housewife has to be ready for both. Every man or boy, immediately on coming from the pit, has a thorough and hearty ablution (for the pitmen, to their credit be it said, have the character of being personally clean when not at work, whatever their villages and houses may be), and then either changes his dress, or partakes of a meal, and then goes to bed. The flannel-dress, too, in which the pit-work is done, has to be subjected pretty frequently to the action of soap and water.

One of the gentlemen before named, Mr. Morrison, who was the medical attendant at the great Lambton collieries, gives a picture which shows that the pitmen have the means of living happily and comfortably, if their moral and mental development were a little further carried out :-" The children of colliers are comfortably and decently clothed. Cleanliness, both in their persons and houses, is a predominant feature in the domestic economy of the female part of this community. The children, although necessarily left much to themselves, and playing much in the dirt, are never sent to bed without ample ablution. Pitmen, of all labouring classes I am acquainted with, enjoy most the pleasure of good living; their larders abound in potatoes, bacon, fresh meat, sugar, tea, and coffee, of which good things the children as abundantly partake as the parents: even the sucking infant, to its prejudice, is loaded with as much of the greasy and well-seasoned viands of the table as it will swallow. In this respect the women are foolishly indulgent, and I know no class of persons among whom infantile diseases so much prevail. Durham and Northumberland are not dairy counties, consequently the large population (excepting the hinds in the northern part of Northumberland) are very inadequately supplied with milk. Did this wholesome and nutritious beverage more abound, probably the infant population would be more judiciously fed." In some of the colliery villages there are public bakehouses, one to a certain number of houses, and each containing a large brick-built oven. Early in the morning the wife and daughters of

a pitman may be seen assembled at these places, gossiping with their neighbours, and baking the week's bread for their family. To a person who has no previous conception of the capaciousness of a pitman's appetite, the number and bulk of these loaves will be a matter for marvel.

Follow the pitmen to Newcastle-their great metropolis-and we find them still a characteristic race. Their velveteen dresses, with large and shining metal buttons, mark them out from the rest of the population. Mr. Holland states that the pitmen used formerly (perhaps more so than at present) to be fond of gaudy colours. Their holiday waistcoats, called by them posey jackets, were frequently of very curious patterns, displaying flowers of various hues: their stockings were blue, purple, or even pink or mixed colours. Many of them used to have their hair very long, which on weekdays was either tied in a queue, or rolled up in curls; but when dressed in their best attire, it was commonly spread over their shoulders. Some of them wore two or three narrow ribands round their hats, placed at equal distances, in which it was customary to insert one or more bunches of primroses or other flowers. Such were the pitmen of past days; and many of their holiday peculiarities still remain.

THE HOSTMEN AND KEELMEN.

Yet

The keelmen of the Tyne belong rather to the past age than the present. Steam-engines and railways are gradually effecting changes in the mode of shipping and transporting coals; and the keelmen are becoming less and less essential to the working of the system. we cannot afford to lose sight of them: as memorials of a past state of things, as members of a social machine which has played its part, they deserve a word or two of notice. Their own Keelmen's Hospital would reproach us, if we quite neglected them. It is, perhaps, the only hospital in the kingdom built and supported by the working classes for the benefit of their own members.

These keclmen have been known for at least four centuries. There was a complaint made in 1421, that the Crown was defrauded of certain coal-dues at Newcastle, by the merchants using keels which would contain twenty-two or three chaldrons each instead of twenty; and it was thereupon ordered that the keels should be of definite size and shape. "Keel" was one of the Anglo-Saxon names for a ship; and the same name was applied to the barges used in conveying coals from the staiths to the ships. These coal-keels are steered by a large kind of oar at the stem, called a swape; while a kind of pole, called a puy, is employed to push on the keel in shallow water; the captain of the keel is called the skipper, and his cabin is the huddock. When the water is so shallow as to render the use of sails or oars inconvenient, the keels are thus propelled : Two men, called keel-bullies, are on each side of the vessel, thrust their poles or puys in the muddy bed of the river, rest the upper end against their shoulders,

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