They are usually paid according to the number of baskets or tubs they are able to fill. These are then conveyed by the putters through the smaller or lower galleries of the pit to the headways, where they are hoisted by the crow-men upon the rolleys or waggons for transporting the coals from the crow to the shaft. The roads along which the rolleys are driven are made sufficiently high for an ordinary horse by cutting away the roof or the floor. Some of them are two miles long, and are kept in repair by a rolley-wayman. Where tubs are used for the conveyance of coal the whole way, no crow is necessary, but a lad, termed a ‘flatman,’ who links the tubs together at the level or the flat.
Next to the hewers, the putters are the hardest labourers in the pit; and in some places their labour is even harder, for it is no easy matter to push corfs or tubs, weighing from six to ten hundredweight, along galleries which are often but three or four feet high, where the heat not seldom averages about 78° Fahr., and in consequence of the increased pressure of the air, water boils at 220°. The term ‘putter’ includes the specific distinctions of the ‘headsman,’ ‘half-marrow,’ and the ‘foal.’ Where full tubs or baskets are to be pushed along the rails from the hewers to the crow and the rolley-drivers, the headsmen take the chief part; a half-marrow goes at each end of the train alternately with another half-marrow; while a foal always precedes the train. At the bottom of the shaft the ‘onsetters’ are stationed, who attach the tubs to the ropes which hoist them to the surface. Besides these various classes of workmen, we find the ‘shifters,’ who keep the galleries in repair, and the little ‘trapper-boys,’ whose duty it is to open the ventilating-doors whenever they hear the drivers or trains of coal-waggons coming on one side or the other. Their task, though humble, tedious, and requiring the least amount of intelligence, is of great importance, as the numerous doors which they guard must remain open only long enough for the passage of the trains, and must then be closed again immediately, or the current of air needed to ventilate the mine would be diverted in its course. It is hardly possible to imagine a more joyless childhood than that of these little fellows, condemned to sit in solitary gloom during the greater part of the day, and only comforted by the sudden shout or song of a team-driver, approaching with his train of waggons, and demanding the opening of the door.
Besides the workers underground, a number of labourers or artisans are constantly employed above pit, from the ‘banksmen,’ whose duty it is to see all things living and lifeless up and down the shaft, to the ‘staithmen,’ who attend to the staith or shipping place of coals. Many find constant occupation in the raff-yard, where old waggons, ironwork, and woodwork are duly hospitalled and refitted for fresh duty.
The daily work of the mine is conducted according to the strictest discipline. The ‘resident viewer’ is supreme, and has subordinate viewers, overseers, and wastemen, lamp-keepers, and other officers, who have each their departments, and discharge their duties assiduously.
Thus a first-rate northern colliery establishment—where a total of more than five hundred persons are variously employed—resembles a little community in itself. Men of all educations, arts, grades, and duties, and males of almost all ages, from ten years, are here; men, too, of all appearances—from the gentlemanly viewer to the doubtful wasteman, and from the underground workers-in-chief—the hewers—to the humble trapper-boys.
The peculiar nature of his underground occupations, which condemns the pitman, while working, to a position of great restraint, and taxes the limbs and muscles in a very unequal manner, naturally influences his outward appearance, so that he can be easily distinguished from every other operative.
His stature is diminutive, his figure disproportioned and misshapen; his legs being much bowed, and his chest protruding like that of a pigeon. His arms are long, and oddly suspended. His countenance is not less strange than his figure, his cheeks being generally hollow, his brow overhanging, his cheekbones high, his forehead low and retreating, his complexion pallid. Many of these bodily peculiarities or malformations are probably hereditary. Pitmen have always lived in communities; they have associated only among themselves, and have thus acquired peculiar habits and ideas. They almost invariably intermarry, and it is not uncommon in their marriages to commingle the blood of the same family. They have thus transmitted natural and accidental defects through a long series of generations, and may now be regarded in the light of a distinct race of beings. In spite of the general march of intelligence, their education is still very imperfect, and they are just emerging from the greatest possible moral and intellectual darkness—an improvement due mainly to the Wesleyan Methodists. The untiring labours of this religious sect not only imparted to the colliery population in the North of England a higher tone of moral feeling, but in their efforts to instil religious principles into their minds, afforded them, through Sunday-schools, a slight amount of education and an imperfect capability of reading. These first seeds of improvement will, it is hoped, gradually ripen into fruit, and oppose a strong barrier to the prominent vices of colliers—gambling and intemperance.
A lack of mental and personal openness and boldness, a great inclination to injury and theft, the grossest superstition, and a want of the commonest economy and forethought, are likewise faults which are said to be very common among them. Deception is so much a practice with them that they deceive when no earthly advantage can be obtained from their dishonesty.
Oh the other hand, the proofs of filial affection which they exhibit, and the noble feelings and heroism which they display when explosions or accidents take place, prove that the groundwork of their character is good, and merely requires the influence of a better education to remove a great part of the blemishes which ignorance has engrafted upon an originally wholesome stock. Under every disadvantage, several eminent men have sprung from their class. Thomas Bewick, the celebrated wood-engraver, was early immured in pits; the late celebrated mathematician, Dr. Hutton, was originally a hewer of coal; Professor Hann, of King’s College, in London, was a boy working underground in a northern colliery; and George Stephenson, the illustrious engineer whose wonderful inventions have revolutionised the world, and who, after the lapse of many ages, will still be reckoned among England’s most illustrious sons, began life as a trapper.
Though the use of coal was already known to the ancient Britons, yet the first public notice of the mineral is mentioned by Hume to have been in the time of Henry III., who, in the year 1272, granted a licence to dig coals to the town of Newcastle. Somewhat later in 1291, the abbot and monastery of Dunfermline in Scotland obtained a similar grant. The first coal is said to have been brought to London about the year 1305, where it was used only by smiths, dyers, and soap-boilers. The smoke, which was supposed to be injurious to health, caused great annoyance to the wealthier inhabitants of the city, so that in 1316 its use was prohibited by a decree of Edward I. This ordinance seems, however, to have been but little attended to; for a few years later inspectors were named to levy fines in case of its non-observance, and if these proved ineffectual, to demolish the fireplaces arranged for the burning of coal. The complaints against this fuel continued several centuries, for as late as 1661 King Charles II. was prayed to remedy the nuisance by banishing from town manufacturers who required large quantities of coal.