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.
This illustration of a drawer (a type of hurrier) pulling a coal tub was originally published in the Children's Employment Commission (Mines) 1842 report.A hurrier and two thrusters heaving a corf full of coal as depicted in the 1853 book The White Slaves of England by J Cobden.
The Mines and Collieries Act 1842 (5 & 6 Vict. c. 99), commonly known as the Mines Act 1842, was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Act forbade women and girls of any age to work underground and introduced a minimum age of ten for boys employed in underground work. It was a response to the working conditions of children revealed in the Children's Employment Commission (Mines) 1842 report. The Commission was headed by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, Member of Parliament, who was styled Baron Ashley at the time, a courtesy title, and would succeed his father as the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury in 1852.[1]
At the beginning of the 19th century methods of coal extraction were primitive and the workforce, men, women and children, laboured in dangerous conditions. In 1841 about 216,000 people were employed in the mines. Women and children worked underground for 11 or 12 hours a day for lower wages than men.[1] The public became aware of conditions in the country's collieries in 1838 after an accident at Huskar Colliery in Silkstone, near Barnsley. A stream overflowed into the ventilation drift after violent thunderstorms causing the death of 26 children; 11 girls aged from 8 to 16 and 15 boys between 9 and 12 years of age.[2] The disaster came to the attention of Queen Victoria who ordered an inquiry.[1]
In 1840 Lord Ashley headed the royal commission of inquiry, which investigated the conditions of workers (especially children) in the coal mines. Commissioners visited collieries and mining communities gathering information sometimes against the mine owners' wishes. The report, illustrated by engraved illustrations and the personal accounts of mineworkers was published in May 1842. Victorian society was shocked to discover that children as young as five or six worked as trappers, opening and shutting ventilation doors down the mine, before becoming hurriers, pushing and pulling coal tubs and corfs.[3] Lord Ashley deliberately appealed to Victorian prudery, focussing on girls and women wearing trousers and working bare-breasted in the presence of boys and men, which "made girls unsuitable for marriage and unfit to be mothers". Such an affront to Victorian morality ensured the bill was passed.[1]
Lord Londonderry, a coal-mine owner, opposed the bill in the House of Lords and pushed through amendments that watered it down. The bill passed the House of Lords at its third reading on 1 August 1842.[4]
Results of the act
No females could be employed underground.
No child under 10 years old was to be employed underground.
Parish apprentices between the ages of 10 and 18 could continue to work in the mines[5]
The Factory Acts were a series of acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom beginning in 1802 to regulate and improve the conditions of industrial employment.
A pit pony, otherwise known as a mining horse, was a horse, pony or mule commonly used underground in mines from the mid-18th until the mid-20th century. The term "pony" was sometimes broadly applied to any equine working underground.
The Oaks explosion, which happened at a coal mine in West Riding of Yorkshire on 12 December 1866, remains the worst mining disaster in England. A series of explosions caused by firedamp ripped through the underground workings at the Oaks Colliery at Hoyle Mill near Stairfoot in Barnsley killing 361 miners and rescuers. It was the worst mining disaster in the United Kingdom until the 1913 Senghenydd explosion in Wales.
Events from the year 1842 in the United Kingdom.
A hurrier, also sometimes called a coal drawer or coal thruster, was a child or woman employed by a collier to transport the coal that they had mined. Women would normally get the children to help them because of the difficulty of carrying the coal. Common particularly in the early 19th century, the hurrier pulled a corf full of coal along roadways as small as 0.4 metres (16 in) in height. They would often work 12-hour shifts, making several runs down to the coal face and back to the surface again.
Robert Bald FRSE FSA MWS (1776–1861) was a Scottish surveyor, civil and mining engineer, and antiquarian. Robert Bald was one of the earliest and most eminent mining engineers and land surveyors in Scotland, and by the late nineteenth century he was referred to as "the acknowledged father of mining engineering in Scotland".
The South Yorkshire Coalfield is so named from its position within Yorkshire. It covers most of South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and a small part of North Yorkshire. The exposed coalfield outcrops in the Pennine foothills and dips under Permian rocks in the east. Its most famous coal seam is the Barnsley Bed. Coal has been mined from shallow seams and outcrops since medieval times and possibly earlier.
Ladyshore Colliery, originally named Back o' th Barn, was situated on the Irwell Valley fault on the Manchester Coalfield in Little Lever, then in the historic county of Lancashire, England. Founded by Thomas Fletcher Senior, the colliery opened in the 1830s and mined several types of coal. It became infamous as a result of the owners' stand against the use of safety lamps in the mines. Women and children worked in the mines, under poor conditions.
Life in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution shifted from an agrarian based society to an urban, industrialised society. New social and technological ideas were developed, such as the factory system and the steam engine. Work became more regimented, disciplined, and moved outside the home with large segments of the rural population migrating to the cities.
Matthias Dunn was a British mining engineer and one of the first government inspectors of mines. He was known for encouraging safe practices in mines.
The History of labour law in the United Kingdom concerns the development of UK labour law, from its roots in Roman and medieval times in the British Isles up to the present. Before the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of mechanised manufacture, regulation of workplace relations was based on status, rather than contract or mediation through a system of trade unions. Serfdom was the prevailing status of the mass of people, except where artisans in towns could gain a measure of self-regulation through guilds. In 1740 save for the fly-shuttle the loom was as it had been since weaving had begun. The law of the land was, under the Act of Apprentices 1563, that wages in each district should be assessed by Justices of the Peace. From the middle of the 19th century, through Acts such as the Master and Servant Act 1867 and the Employers and Workmen Act 1875, there became growing recognition that greater protection was needed to promote the health and safety of workers, as well as preventing unfair practices in wage contracts.
Gresford Colliery was a coal mine located a mile from the North Wales village of Gresford, near Wrexham.
Coal mining in the United Kingdom dates back to Roman times and occurred in many different parts of the country. Britain's coalfields are associated with Northumberland and Durham, North and South Wales, Yorkshire, the Scottish Central Belt, Lancashire, Cumbria, the East and West Midlands and Kent. After 1972, coal mining quickly collapsed and had practically disappeared by the 21st century. The consumption of coal—mostly for electricity—fell from 157 million tonnes in 1970 to 18 million tonnes in 2016, of which 77% was imported from Colombia, Russia, and the United States. Employment in coal mines fell from a peak of 1,191,000 in 1920 to 695,000 in 1956, 247,000 in 1976, 44,000 in 1993, and to 2,000 in 2015.
The Lancashire Coalfield in North West England was an important British coalfield. Its coal seams were formed from the vegetation of tropical swampy forests in the Carboniferous period over 300 million years ago.
The Lancashire and Cheshire Miners' Federation (LCMF) was a trade union that operated on the Lancashire Coalfield in North West England from 1881 until it became the Lancashire area of the National Union of Mineworkers in 1945.
Huskar Pit was a coal mine on the South Yorkshire Coalfield, sunk to work the Silkstone seam. It was located in Nabs Wood, outside the village of Silkstone Common, in the then West Riding of Yorkshire. It was connected to the Barnsley Canal by the Silkstone Waggonway. Huskar was the scene of a notorious pit disaster in 4 July 1838.
Pit brow women or pit brow lasses were female surface labourers at British collieries. They worked at the coal screens on the pit bank at the shaft top until the 1960s. Their job was to pick stones from the coal after it was hauled to the surface. More women were employed in this capacity on the Lancashire Coalfield than in any other area.
The Coal Mines Act 1911 amended and consolidated legislation in the United Kingdom related to collieries. A series of mine disasters in the 19th and early-20th centuries had led to commissions of enquiry and legislation to improve mining safety. The 1911 Act, sponsored by Winston Churchill, was passed by the Liberal government of H. H. Asquith. It built on earlier regulations and provided for many improvement to safety and other aspects of the coal mining industry. An important aspect was that mine owners were required to ensure there were mines rescue stations near each colliery with equipped and trained staff. Although amended several times, it was the main legislation governing coal mining for many years.
The Cymmer Colliery explosion occurred in the early morning of 15 July 1856 at the Old Pit mine of the Cymmer Colliery near Porth, Wales, operated by George Insole & Son. The underground gas explosion resulted in a "sacrifice of human life to an extent unparalleled in the history of coal mining of this country" in which 114 men and boys were killed. Thirty-five widows, ninety-two children, and other dependent relatives were left with no immediate means of support.
The act 23 & 24 Vict. c. 151, sometimes called the Mines Regulation Act 1860, the Mines Act 1860, the Inspection of Mines Act 1860, the Regulation and Inspection of Mines Act 1860, the Coal Mines Act 1860, the Coal Mines Regulation Act 1860, the Inspection and Regulation of Coal Mines Act 1860, or the Inspection of Coal Mines Act, is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that raised the age of children working in coal mines from 10 to 12 years of age. There were exceptions if the boys could read and write or attended school for six hours per week. The Act also improved safety rules.
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