I read John's email with interest, as someone who has been affected by chemicals used in the agricultural industry! Thirty years ago I can remember a somewhat cavalier approach to handing pesticides!!
But a question was asked about attitudes of miners to the inherent dangers. I have been looking at women and children in the cornish mines. I think it is in the 1842 commission that boys are described as being given toy picks, shovels, borers from and early age, and are encouraged to play 'mining games' and copy their elders to learn the different skills. It seems that if you were a child of a mining community your indoctrination into the role of miner or mine girl was probably complete by the age of seven. Your expectation would be of nothing else. This is illustrated by a revealing few lines in 'The Self-Taught Cornishman' , a biography of Samuel Drew (by his son), Warne 1861 p. 18;
'When I was about six years old, I felt much interested in the different parts of the process of mining, and was very ambitious of sinking a shaft. I prevailed on my older brother and another boy to join me, and we commenced operations somewhere near our house. I, though the youngest, was captain; and having procured a board and rope, with a pick and shovel , one drew up with the rope what the others had dug out. We must have followed our task for a considerable time, ands sunk our shaft several feet, when my father put n end to our operations'.
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