Pit brow women or pit brow lasses 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
Lancashire Coalfield
The Lancashire Coalfield in North West England was an important British coalfield. Its coal seams were formed from the vegetation of tropical swampy forests in the Carboniferous period over 300 million years ago.
The Romans may have been the f ...
than in any other area.
Background
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
Wigan Parish Church
All Saints' Church in Wallgate, Wigan, Greater Manchester, England, is an Anglican parish church. It is in the deanery of Wigan, the archdeaconry of Warrington and the Diocese of Liverpool. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List ...
in 1641. An article in the ''Gentleman's Magazine'' in 1795 described Betty Hodson aged nine who worked underground with her brother, aged seven, dragging baskets of coals for their father.
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 members of extended mining families obtained work. Pitwork in south-west Lancashire resulted in the area having the highest rates of female employment in the country in the 19th century.
On 4 July 1838, a flash flood at the
Huskar Pit near
Silkstone 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
Royal Commission led by
Anthony Ashley Cooper.
Until the
Mines and Collieries Act 1842
The Mines and Collieries Act 1842 (c. 99), commonly known as the Mines Act 1842, was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Act forbade women and girls of any age to work underground and introduced a minimum age of ten for boys e ...
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 becoming hurriers, pushing tubs of coal to the shaft bottom.
After the 1842 Act
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. 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.
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 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.
Dress
Pit-brow women working outside in the cold and dirt developed a distinctive "uniform", they wore
clogs
Clogs are a type of footwear made in part or completely from wood. Used in many parts of the world, their forms can vary by culture, but often remained unchanged for centuries within a culture.
Traditional clogs remain in use as protective f ...
, 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
carte de visite and
cabinet card
The cabinet card was a style of photograph which was widely used for photographic portraiture after 1870. It consisted of a thin photograph mounted on a card typically measuring 108 by 165 mm ( by inches).
History
The ''carte de visite'' ...
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 studio images).
Arthur Munby
Arthur Joseph Munby (19 August 1828 – 29 January 1910) was a British diarist, poet, portrait photographer, barrister and solicitor. He is also known by his initials, A. J. Munby.
Munby in Victorian Society
The Victorian Era (1837-1901) was ...
, 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
working-class women and recording in his diaries what they had to say about their jobs, pay and living conditions.
Victorian sensibilities were outraged by women working at pits and dressing in trousers was considered unfeminine and degenerate by society.
See also
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Bal maiden
A bal maiden, from the Cornish language , a mine, and the English "maiden", a young or unmarried woman, was a female manual labourer working in the mining industries of Cornwall and western Devon, at the south-western extremity of Great Britai ...
- women who worked the Cornish tin mines
*
Victorian dress reform
Victorian dress reform was an objective of the Victorian dress reform movement (also known as the rational dress movement) of the middle and late Victorian era, led by various reformers who proposed, designed, and wore clothing considered more ...
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
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External links
''Pit Brow Girl'', painting by Hannah Keen 1895
Coal mining in England
Mining in Lancashire
Industrial roles assigned to women
History of women in the United Kingdom