Famous Dudley's Page

COAL MINERS OF ENGLAND;

Welcome to the Coal Miners.

My Great-Grandfather Joseph (Joe) Dudley, my Grandfather Henry Edward Dudley and all of Henry's brothers were coal miners.
A lot of my ancestors were coal miners in England and in Illinois, and my wife also, has ancestors who were in the coal mining industry, including a cousin who owned a coal mine in Alabama.
I have placed this page on my website in their memory, and for anyone else's ancestors, who were in the coal mining industry, and for us to learn and know what it was like for them, being a coal miner.
I have placed here, some history, facts, and pictures of coal miners and of coal mining in general of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

A coal miners day was long and arduous, and they lived constantly in the shadow of harm from the explosion of mine gas, the slumping of coal piles, or the collapse of tunnels. Even the miner's equipment and environment in which he operated -- the explosive powder used to dislodge coal, the flame in his lamp, the gases within the mine -- packed lethal potential, compounded by a persistent failure to heed safety measures.
News of accidents was announced by the unexpected blast of the steam whistle that marked the rhythms of the day, alerting residents of the village of possible disaster. People streamed out of their homes to see where the wagon bearing bodies would visit; some residents later recalling that if a family of the deceased were not at home, the company would simply place the body on the porch to await their return. In many cases, bodies were simply never recovered.
Such catastrophes were not the only peril facing miners. Having survived the sudden hand of fate, miners faced the protracted fate of occupational disease. Most famously, miners were vulnerable to "black lung" disease, also known as "miner�s asthma", from years of inhaling particulate matter in the cold, damp underground environment. During the nineteenth century, few mining companies made provisions for the care of ailing workers, and many miners spent their final years convulsing from coughs, with family members as their only medical care.
Collieries, or mining operations, often required miners to provide their own tools and powder, with company stores providing the goods for sale, and the cost deducted directly from the miner's wages. Many colliers required their employees to purchase goods from the company store and enforced this rule by paying them scrip redeemable only at the company store. As a result of this system of enforced purchase of goods sold at inflated prices, employees fell perpetually into debt for both their company-owned homes and their store debt. If an indebted miner died, the company might require his sons to continue working to pay off their father's debts.
Their lives were hard and it wasn't until the middle of the 20th century, did things get a little better. Although the life of a miner has improve somewhat, the dangers of the mine are always present. Clearly a miners life was one full of hardships, heartaches and disasters.
I hope you enjoy this page and maybe leave with a better understanding what it was like being a coal miner. The hardships, the sacrifices they made and of the dangers, coal miners faced everyday that they worked the mines.
If you have any questions and/or comments, or if you have some information on coal mining, which you would like to share with us, please feel free to e-mail. My e-mail link is at the bottom of each page, or you may go to my new Dudley Family Pages guestbook and leave your comments there. Thank you, Dudley

The Breaker Boys!

Women and children were employed in mines during the 19th century. By the late 19th century, the younger children no longer went into the mines, but were employed as breaker boys. Their job was to pull out slate and rocks that were mixed in with the coal. The small hands of the children were considered more effective for this than the large hands of adults. It was grueling work and easy to injure hands with the rocks and coal moving by. They would stoop over the chute where the coal passes and with their nibble fingers they would pick out the impurities. In breakers were water was not in used to wash the coal, the air was laden with coal dust, and in winter their little fingers would get cold and chapped, and at all times when the machinery was in motion the noise from revolving wheels, crushers, screens and the rushing coal was deafening. This made for a terrible environment for children to be in, much less to have to work in. And likely as not a supervisor with a cane would strike the boys deemed not to be working hard enough.
They also usually went uneducated, because of the long hours at the coal mines, there was no time for school. So the chain was rarely ever broken, child follow the father in this work for generation after generation, and kept most families in poverty. There were no other opportunities for them, except for the hard, drab and extremely dangerous work of the coal mines.
But despite these barriers, a number of boys who began life under these conditions were able to rise to prominence in the various spheres of life.
After a time improved machinery for cleaning coal began to replace the breaker boys and also child labor laws preventing children from working at such jobs, spelled the end of the breaker boys and children all together from working in the mines. But for many years the practice of hiring and working children went on, and this cost a lot of children, some of their limbs and, and far too often even their lives.

Bracing up the walls and ceilings of a coal mine.

Although these men are bracing this mines tunnel walls and ceiling, it was all too often that the greed of the company would prevail over safety. In an effort of the company to maximize profits and under pressure from company leaders for more production, miners were forced to resort to such practices as "robbing the pillars" -- removing even the supporting beams of the mine walls to extract the last bit of coal. All too often the results were a cave-in, and the burial of many miners. Other forms of safety were also neglected for the shake of profit, which cost a lot of miners their lives.

Some of the children, that worked the mines.

Perhaps the most horrific working conditions faced by a child, was those of the coal mines. Women and children were preferred more often, because they would work for less money and wouldn't complain as much. They also could work in smaller areas of the mines and reach into the smallest crevices. The conditions of the breaker boys were especially heart rendering.
My own grandfather Henry Edward Dudley started working the coal mines in England, in 1894 at the young age of ten years old.

These two men are pushing their cart, heavy laden with coal.

In the smaller mines, men were used to push the coal bucket up the long endless track to the coal chute, where they dumped the coal and the breaker-boys sorted. At a large mine, a lot of horses were used to do this back-breaking work.

Coupling Boy

This young boy, like many others, had the dangerous job, even for a man, much less a young boy of his age of coupling and un-coupling the train cars in the loading area of the coal mines.

Miners

A picture of some miners of the 19th Century, notice how young some of them are.

Women worked at the coal pit's mouth.

Yes, even women worked the mines although most worked outside the mine shaft, a few women actual worked in the depths of the coal mine itself.
The image above shows some of these women from the 19th Century, eating their breakfast.
This drawing was done around 1886.

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