Hi Dave
Thanks for your comments;
> I am not sure but I would have thought that the token-hanger was the
> one who took the individual miners tokens when they went underground
> and hung them on the appropriate part of the board by the cage so
> that should anything happen one would know who was in what part of
> the pit.
In the couple of C19th mining term glossaries I have seen it is fairly clear
that the "token hanger" was working with tub identification tallies as
opposed to the much later type of flame safety lamp or cage riding tokens
which aren't generally thought to have been used until after the 1860s/80s
and then at only some pits. One of the glossaries list the job description
as;
"Token-hanger - A boy of from 9 to 12 years old, who is paid 1s. or 1s. 2d.
per diem, for arranging the tokens attached to each corf to indicate the
hewer of its contents."
Its not clear to me if this work is being done underground at the flats or
at the pit head when the tokens were removed and their number recorded
before return onto the token cabin peg board. To further confuse things
their are records of 1842 that indicate at Wallsend Colliery both
"chalkers-on" were employed underground to keep account of the hauliers work
plus additional boys to "hang tokens on the corves". Could it be that at
some pits during the early to mid C19th that both systems were used
together? The tub/corf tokens being used to keep track of the hewers work
while the "chalkers-on" primarily were only used to recorded the putters
labours as suggested in your reference? I have later records that definitely
refer to the "chalkers-on" marking each tub with the hewer's numbers etc.
but the definition of the "chalker-ons" work could have varied with both
time and coalfield.
Regards
Mark Smith
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