life expectancy of coalminers

[shaner13]

My mothers side were coal miners for generations,going back to early 1700s and i would say based on my own research on my various family branches,that they had poor life expectancies compared to other lines in different generational occupations,i.e my fathers side who were mainly in the ag industry....infact im just looking now and my grandad lived the longest from the mining line,aged 66.
my g grandad;60
     gg;            ;39
     ggg;          ;41
     gggg;        ;49
     ggggg;      ;50
seems the ones i have death certs for all died of lung related illnesses,caused i would expect by coal dust.

[toni*]

with regards to the lack of money people had little choice but to carry on working unless they had an accident and couldn't work anymore so aged 82 coal miner would not be uncommon, he may well have worked up top rather than underground in later years it would realy depend on how fit he was.
i have a book at home about coal miners and will have a look to see if there is anything about life expectancy
but life expectancy in general was i think late 60's early 70's so 82 he was doing well.

[dennford]

See Mortality by Edward Higgs
http://www.rootschat.com/links/06cp/


Stan

Good stuff Stan. Of interest to this thread is the idea of the occupational death rate (deaths per 1000 head of population per year in any given industry). This must surely be more indicative of wether or not one occupation is more or less hazardous than another.
I notice that in one paragraph, Higgs groups coal mining and inn keeping together as examples of the more hazardous occupations

Denn

[NEILKE]

 as has been said in all industries there must have been high death rates look at the chemical, navy (railway and canal building) seafairing which fishing has all ready been said.even in recent years in the glass industry very few in the melting departments tend to live into their 60s bearing in mind arsenic is used in the batch and other nice chemicals ive have no hard figures from books or other sources just out all the funerals we went to from lads we work with from our glasworks they biggest % was from the back of the tank.
neil

[stanmapstone]

The total casualty figures for British Shipping reached a peak in 1881 when almost 4,000 masters and men died. Figures quoted in 1884 showed the loss of life in mining in the worst year was not more than one in 315 of those employed, whereas in British shipping it was one in 60.

Stan

[O1dgobbo]

Hi

Life expectancy for the whole UK population was about 41 in 1840.  I guess that this is largely a consequence of the high rate of child deaths but poor occupational safety would have made a contribution.  Apart from dips in the periods 1914-18 and 1939-45 life expectancy seems to have increased fairly steadily to around 80 for children born today.  Have a look at the new numbers search engine, WolframAlpha

http://www63.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=life+expectancy+UK

All the best

Gobbo

[dennford]

I have no doubt that around the 1880s the maritime industry was a far riskier occupation than coal mining. However Stan the figures in your last post are somewhat misleading.

What we must realise is that prior to about 1890, coal mining was little more than a cottage industry. If we look at the records, I think that the high production mines of Yorkshire (and most of Britain) were only developed between the end of the 19th century and about 1930.

What this means is that the maritime industry of the suggested dates would have employed many more times that of mining. None of the foregoing though would detract from the risky business of our seafarers.

Denn

[Ceidwad Goleudy]

The only life expectancy of miners I'm sure of are those of the miners of South Wales. The figures of death and injury rates held by the University of Wales are for South Wales collieries at their peak of production. On average for every mining shift a collier was KILLED every 6 HOURS and a collier was seriously injured every 12 MINUTES! Add this average up over a 20 year period and the casualty rates are mind boggling to say the least. Also during this period a new Baptist Chapel was formed and erected on average every 8 DAYS. They were God fearing folk to say the least. These death rates do not include the retired colliers who died of pneumoconiosis. As to the cmhrc their figures for Welsh collieries are wholly inaccurate which is understandable due to the constant changing of county boundaries and the inaccurate records maintained by the collieries but enough records and anecdotes were retrieved by the University of Wales to correlate their data.

[dennford]

See Mortality by Edward Higgs
http://www.rootschat.com/links/06cp/


Stan

Good stuff Stan. Of interest to this thread is the idea of the occupational death rate (deaths per 1000 head of population per year in any given industry). This must surely be more indicative of wether or not one occupation is more or less hazardous than another.
Denn

The only life expectancy of miners I'm sure of are those of the miners of South Wales. The figures of death and injury rates held by the University of Wales are for South Wales collieries at their peak of production. On average for every mining shift a collier was KILLED every 6 HOURS and a collier was seriously injured every 12 MINUTES! Add this average up over a 20 year period and the casualty rates are mind boggling to say the least. Also during this period a new Baptist Chapel was formed and erected on average every 8 DAYS. They were God fearing folk to say the least. These death rates do not include the retired colliers who died of pneumoconiosis. As to the cmhrc their figures for Welsh collieries are wholly inaccurate which is understandable due to the constant changing of county boundaries and the inaccurate records maintained by the collieries but enough records and anecdotes were retrieved by the University of Wales to correlate their data.

Yes, after my above posting the penny dropped that these occupational death rates weren't as accurate as I thought - Even though no longer working in the industry many were dying as a result of thier previous occupation.

I suppose all in all there is no perfect way of indicating some things.

Denn