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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Colin Cruddace on Friday 05 November 10 02:48 GMT (UK)
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I have often seen references to coal miners (and others) setting off for the promised land, leaving their wives and children behind to join them later when they had made enough to send for them.
I am wondering how a wife with 2 or 3 young children would be expected to live ???
Would she be allowed to remain in a miner's cottage if none of the family actually worked in a pit, and how would she eke out a living ??? ???
It sounds an impossible situation but it did happen. I doubt if she would qualify for Parish relief, so how did they do it?
Colin
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I'm quite sure they wouldn't have been allowed to live in the cottage. At one museum I visited, the guide said if for example the man of the family was killed in an accident underground, the family would have to leave the cottage on the same day as his funeral. For that reason, if there were grown-up sons still at home, they would work a different shift fromtheir dad, so as to leave a current pit worker still resident.
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My G grandfather so I am told left his wife and 3 small children to go to the goldfields in the late 1890's . I have no idea how she coped and have been unable to find them on the 1901 census. He did not return and my g grandmother later remarried. It would have been a hard life for them. :-\
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A relative of mine moved back in with her mother when her husband went to Ohio to the coal mines from mining in Monmouthshire, and she joined him a few months later.
She is enumerated with her parents and younger siblings, though no mention is made of her own daughter, who must have been asleep in a back room when the enumerator called! :o ::)
When Emma joined her husband the daughter is mentioned and so she was clearly about 6 months old at the time of the UK census!
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Thanks for your interesting stories. They more or less confirm what I thought but mine seems to buck the trend. They start their family in the pit villages but in 1856 a son is baptised in the Church where the mother was raised but unfortunately just over a year later this son dies back in the pit village. In the 1861 census they are still in the same village where mother is the head, with a 7 year old son, a scholar, and an 11 year old son, a miner! A couple of months later another son is born. Although he is registered as normal, the baptism does not acknowledge the father of the child, he was the son of the mother, a miner's wife ???
I'm trying to pin down when the husband left to help in finding an immigration record. I'm tempted to say it was before the birth of the son in 1856.
Thanks again,
Colin
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Husband may have sent money or family may have helped. But its likely that the woman herself would have earned money, maybe as a washerwoman or taking in lodgers. Lots of women are just listed as "wife" on the census but in reality worked from home as well as raising children.
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Thanks Jeuel. The census details for dependents, ie wives and children, were very good at masking the true situation. Factories employing children were supposed to provide a couple of hours of schooling each day, so they were listed as scholars. ::)
I've just been going through the pages of the 1861 census for the village to see if there were any relatives and was surprised by the number of unoccupied houses, so perhaps she was allowed to continue to rent the property rather than being thrown out.
Colin
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Hi colin,
Most of my coalmining families - my females (wives and children) worked on top of the pits , many of mine were also recorded in the census as doing this ( especially the female children).
In most coal mining families the wives , and female children worked on top.( for example my G grandmother was only 14 when she was working on top in 1891).
If your relative had any children who were boys they would have had been underground -(depending on their age and what era)
Kind regards
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1842. AN ACT "to Prohibit the Employment of Women and Girls in Mines and Collieries, to Regulate the Employment of Boys, and to make other Provisions relating to Persons working therein." (5 & 6 Vict., c. 99.) This is the first of the series of Mines Regulation Acts. The employment of females within any mine or colliery was absolutely forbidden, and indentures relating thereto were declared to be void. The employment of boys under ten was similarly forbidden. Inspectors were to be appointed to see that the provisions of the Act were properly carried out. Women and girls were not employed underground in the coalfields of Northumberland and Durham, or in Leicestershire and Derbyshire.
1887. THE COAL MINES REGULATION ACT. (50 & 51 Vict., c. 58.)This further regulates the employment of children in, on, or about coal mines. The statutory provision relating to employment of women and girls or of boys under twelve is extended to coal mines, and rules are laid down about overground work as follows:
1. No boy or girl under twelve years of age shall be so employed.
2. No boy or girl under the age of thirteen years shall be so employed:
(a) For more than six days in any one week; or,
(b) If employed for more than three days in any one week, for more than six
hours in one day, or in any other case for more than ten hours in any one day.
Employers are entitled to pay the school fees, if any, not exceeding twopence per week, and to deduct the same from the child's wages.
1900. MINES REGULATION ACT (PROHIBITION OF CHILD LABOUR UNDERGROUND). (63 & 64 Vict., c.21.)This is a very short Act, containing practically only one section, which is as follows: "A boy under the age of thirteen years shall not be employed in, or allowed to be for the purpose of employment in, any mine below ground, and accordingly Sections 4 and 5 of the Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1887, and Section 4 of the Metalliferous Mines Regulation Act, 1872, shall be read and have effect as if for the word 'twelve' the word 'thirteen' were substituted therein."
Stan
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Cell and Stan, thanks for your very helpful posts.
Red Tape can be hard to unscramble and I am inclined to say that in 1842 females, and boys under 10 were forbidden to work within or in a mine (below ground).
In 1882 it refers to children under 12 working in, on or about coal mines, but strangely, it only gives rules for those working overground.
I suppose that somewhere along the line, anyone under 12 was forbidden from working below ground.
Regards,
Colin
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Under the 1842 Act the employment of Women and Girls, and boys under ten below ground (i.e. within any mine or colliery) was absolutely forbidden.
The Coal mines regulation act, 1887
Part 1.
Employment of Boys, Girls, and Women.
No boy under the age of twelve years, and no girl or woman of any age, is to be employed in, or allowed to be for the purposes of employment in, any mine below ground.
Stan
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Yes my 3xgreat grandad moved from Durham, England to Allegheny, Pennsylvania in 1886 to work in the coal mines. His wife died in 1885 and all his children were grown up and he went to join a daughter who went out 6 years before. Seems a lot of British miners went to the New World to work in the mines.
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Apparently many settlers decided to return, it had never been their intention to stay for ever. As many as 1 in 4 of those who emigrated to America from Europe in the early twentieth century did not settle there permanently. In the 1901 Census there were 1,497 people in County Durham who had been born in the United States.
Stan
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My ancestor was one of those who settled there permanently and is on the 1900 US census. He did make short return to England but then went back to the States again. His daughter emigrated in 1880 with her family and stayed there forever until her death in 1911.
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The regulations for the employment of boys, girls, and women under the 1911 Coal Mines Act are at http://www.dmm.org.uk/books/cma11-11.htm
91. No boy under the age of fourteen years, and no girl or woman of any age, shall be employed in or allowed to be for the purpose of employment in any mine below ground. Nothing in this section shall apply to any boy who has been lawfully employed in any mine below ground before the passing of this Act.
Stan
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My great grandad was born in 1891 in Durham. So he wouldn't have started work in the mines until perhaps 1903 when he turned 12. He was a coal miner in the 1911 census, joined the Army then returned to Durham in 1919 with his London born wife, my great gran. He resumed work in the mines.
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The 1900 Mines Regulation Act (Prohibiting of Child Labour Underground) (63 & 64 Vict., c 21.)
"A boy under the age of thirteen years shall not be employed in, or allowed to be for the purposes of employment in, any mine below ground."
Stan
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Thanks for the info.
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In 1892 my Ggrandfather went to New York leaving behind a wife with small children. On the census she gives her
occupation as teacher and later as dressmaker. This sounds too professional for this family and puzzled me until I
remembered my mother saying that her grandmother made a very good living as a medium! I suppose she wasn't
going to put that on the census form!
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At least my ggggrandfather waited until his wife died until he went to America.