It is easy to criticise comments about the work of women in mines but if you
study the material and place it in a proper context you will see that the
often-portrayed image needs to be questioned.

Firstly, why did women work in mines? Not because they had to, the early
19th century was a time of industrial boom and there were many work
opportunities and alternatives available. Using the example of Patience
Kershaw again; she was one of ten children, 5 girls and 5 boys. All of her
sisters had worked in the pit as hurriers. Three has left to work in the
textile mills and one had stopped work due to ill health (probably a result
of social condition rather than work). Patience had stayed at the pit and
was the only girl working there with around 35 men and boys. Why had she
stayed? The answer is probably because coalmining was better paid than work
in textiles.

The thought of a 17 year old girl working half naked with men who often
worked completely naked was morally unacceptable to the middle class
Victorians just as it would be today. Its interesting to note that the pits
employing girls at this time were generally smaller family run mines and the
girls were working for members of their own families. Hurriers were employed
by the colliers rather than the mine owners. So any notions of mine owners
exploiting women and children has to be questioned. Most female workers
below ground in West Yorkshire were under the age of 16 and just like the
male children they were employed because they were small enough to move coal
in the low roadways. To have increased the height of these roadways would
have increased costs and compromised the economic viability of the mines.
So, the employment of women and children is affected by economic and
geological factors.

To place all this in context it is important to understand how the working
classes viewed their lives and work and not just apply modern values or
indeed the values of the Victorian middle classes. This has all been a prime
example of Bernard’s discussion about the accuracy of research. If you
examine the material superficially you see what you want to see
(particularly if you have a flag to fly, red or otherwise), but if you
examine it in detail and place it in a proper context the results can be
very different.

As I have already said the testimony of Patience Kenshaw is unreliable. As
well as claiming to move corves a distance of “a mile or more” which is
geographically impossible, she claimed that they weighed 300 hundredweight!
As to whether she could kick my butt that is a question that has no
relevance to the accuracy of the quoted poem but if she could move corves of
300 hundredweight then she could probably kick my butt all the way from here
to Arizona in one go!

The quoted poem is not a celebration of the noble work of a woman in a mine
but a work of fiction based on a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of
the facts.

Martin Roe

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