Can anyone on the list please advise when canaries were first used
underground and under which legislation did it:
(a) become compulsory to keep them at coal mines.
(b) become no longer compulsory to keep them at coal mines.
Thanks for any help with this one.
Mike Gill
I was recently asked almost exactly the same question by an environmental
scientist looking for some historical background to the
canary-in-the-coal-mine analogy now widely used to refer to signs of global
warming. While everyone "knows" that canaries were used as indicators of
air quality in underground mines, I had surprising difficulty finding hard
information about the practice. There was nothing useful in any mining
textbooks on my shelf.
Google searches gave a lot of anecdotal tosh, but I found a few harder
references. Apparently the use of canaries in British coal mines dates from
the Coal Mines Act 1911, which made many improvements to minersı health and
safety, including the creation of Mines Rescue Stations. Regulations under
the act made it mandatory to have caged canaries underground in gassy mines.
From the 1920s the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was seeking to
have the practice stopped, and was offering a reward for the invention of a
more humane means of detecting gas. The problem was that safety lamps and
other devices would warn of flammable and toxic gases such as methane and
carbon monoxide, but no-one could find a better detector for carbon dioxide
than a canary. The practice was discontinued as recently as 1986 when more
sophisticated gas detectors became available, but Iım not sure on what
authority. See:
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/30/newsid_2547000
/2547587.stm>
There is a good detailed story from 1961 on how the birds reacted to gas at:
<http://www.healeyhero.info/rescue/gallery.htm>
A photo of two Welsh coal miners with a caged canary at:
<http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/3560/coalmines.html>
And another one of a mines rescue squad carrying one at:
<http://www.localhistory.madeley.org.uk/madwoodpit.html>
A brief history of the Mines Rescue Service:
<http://www.scottishminingmuseum.com/files/FF7%20-%20Mines%20Rescue%20Servic
e.pdf>
Hope this is some help. It seems there's a lot more folklore about the
practice than solid evidence.
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