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employ women who had proved themselves reliable and strong workers and were used to the language and habits of the miners. Male surface workers earned twice the wages of the women who worked twelve-hour shifts, five days a week and a shorter shift on
Saturdays. Women surface workers were concentrated in Scotland, South Wales, Cumberland, Shropshire and South Staffordshire and Lancashire.
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Penalties for employing women were small and inspectors were few and some women were so desperate for work they willingly worked illegally for less pay. Children continued working underground at some pits. At
Coppull Colliery's Burgh Pit, three females died after an explosion in November 1846; one was eleven years old.
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Not all women who had worked underground gained employment as surface workers. Lighter work on the surface had traditionally been reserved for older men and men who had been injured below ground and some colliery owners considered pits unsuitable places for women. Other colliery owners were happy to
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portraits and later postcards of them in working clothes were produced commercially and sold to visitors as novelties. Photographic studios in Wigan which produced such work were Louisa
Millard (in the late-1860s), Cooper (between 1853 and 1892), and Wragg (which produced a series of at least 18
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From the 1600s in
Lancashire it was common for whole families to be employed in the pits. Colliers relied on their wives, sons and daughters who were employed as drawers. The daughters of colliers usually married within the mining community. As the industry grew the population expanded and more
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was passed prohibiting boys under ten years of age and all women and girls from working underground in coal mines, it was common for women and children to work shifts of 11 or 12 hours underground. Children as young as five or six worked as trappers opening and closing ventilation doors before
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The prohibition of underground female labour caused much suffering and hardship and was greatly resented in south-west
Lancashire. The employment of women did not end abruptly in 1842; with the connivance of some employers, women dressed as men continued to work underground for several years.
57:
In the early coal industry women and girls worked underground alongside men and boys in small coal pits. It was common practice in
Lancashire and Cumberland, Yorkshire, the East of Scotland and South Wales. The death of Elizabeth Higginson working underground was recorded in the register of
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were female surface labourers at
British collieries. They worked at the coal screens on the pit bank (or brow) at the shaft top until the 1960s. Their job was to pick stones from the coal after it was hauled to the surface. More women were employed in this capacity on the
22:
127:, trousers covered with a skirt and apron, old flannel jackets or shawls and headscarfs to protect their hair from coal dust. The women's unconventional but practical dress drew them to the attention of the public and
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members of extended mining families obtained work. Pitwork in south-west
Lancashire resulted in the area around Wigan having the highest rates of female employment in the country in the 19th century.
240:
Langton, John (2000). "Proletarianization in the
Industrial Revolution: Regionalism and Kinship in the Labour Markets of the British Coal Industry from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries".
140:, a lawyer with an interest in women who worked in dirty and unusual conditions, commissioned many photographs. Munby visited the Wigan area many times over many years, interviewing
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in
Yorkshire caused the deaths of 26 children aged from seven to 17 who were drowned while trying to escape. The disaster led to a public outcry and subsequent
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in 1795 described Betty Hodson aged nine who worked underground with her brother, aged seven, dragging baskets of coals for their father.
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were outraged by women working at pits and dressing in trousers was considered unfeminine and degenerate by society.
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women and recording in his diaries what they had to say about their jobs, pay and living conditions.
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Pit-brow women working outside in the cold and dirt developed a distinctive "uniform", they wore
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A photo of pit girls in South Wales, from the late Victorian period
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becoming hurriers, pushing tubs of coal to the shaft bottom.
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The Husker Pit disaster, 1838 - why 26 children died
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Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
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449:The Pit Brow Women of the Wigan Coalfield
162:- women who worked the Cornish tin mines
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564:History of women in the United Kingdom
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16:Female labourers at British coal mines
507:Lancashire Mining Disasters 1835-1910
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298:, University of Paris, archived from
73:On 4 July 1838, a flash flood at the
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559:Industrial roles assigned to women
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534:, painting by Hannah Keen 1895
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491:, Routledge and Keegan Paul,
91:Mines and Collieries Act 1842
395:Pit-brow girls, Wigan, 1893
325:Women in mining communities
62:in 1641. An article in the
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487:By the sweat of their brow
483:John, Angela V. (1984),
49:than in any other area.
148:Victorian sensibilities
549:Coal mining in England
333:National Mining Museum
166:Victorian dress reform
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509:, Wharncliffe Books,
465:Davies, Alan (2009),
447:Davies, Alan (2006),
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87:Anthony Ashley Cooper
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554:Mining in Lancashire
505:Nadin, Jack (2006),
64:Gentleman's Magazine
47:Lancashire Coalfield
31:Lancashire Coalfield
467:Atherton Collieries
295:The Mines Act, 1842
60:Wigan Parish Church
25:Pit brow lass from
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98:After the 1842 Act
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476:978-1-84868-489-8
407:National Archives
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300:the original
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138:Arthur Munby
133:cabinet card
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89:. Until the
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431:Davies 2006
419:Davies 2006
401:20 November
369:Davies 2006
338:20 November
279:20 November
225:Davies 2006
213:Davies 2006
201:Davies 2006
189:Davies 2009
543:Categories
451:, Tempus,
352:Nadin 2006
248:: 311–49.
172:References
160:Bal maiden
75:Huskar Pit
53:Background
381:John 1984
177:Footnotes
79:Silkstone
154:See also
306:30 June
85:led by
29:on the
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272:, The
254:623316
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329:(pdf)
250:JSTOR
125:clogs
119:Dress
77:near
27:Wigan
511:ISBN
493:ISBN
471:ISBN
453:ISBN
403:2016
340:2016
308:2015
281:2016
131:and
274:BBC
40:or
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246:25
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33:.
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