I could just remember the nice home we had when my mother lived. Everything seemed so changed. The little house we lived in was at the end of a long row of houses all of the same size. The railway going through from Glasgow to Edinburgh passed close by. How I used to look out for the train, and particularly if the Queen was expected to pass. I only saw her once with Prince Albert. That was at the inauguration of the Loch Katrine water supply. Previously Glasgow had obtained its water from the River Clyde.
ON THE COAL MINES.
My father! How can I write of him. He descended from being a house-carpenter and having men working for him to the doing of rough carpenter's work about those awful-looking coal pits. I used to go there sometimes with his dinner if he did not come home. And then to see the men coming up and going down into the pits! Some of them were hundreds of fathoms deep. They descended in what they called a hutch, and the coals came up in it. It had wheels. When it reached the top someone pushed it off and wheeled it to where its contents were tipped out on a great heap of coals. There was an engine working all the time pumping water night and day. If it had stopped the works underground would have been flooded. No one could go down and no one could live underneath if the engine were not working all the time. I remember how I stared at the men entering the trucks in which the coals were brought up. How queerly they were dressed! On their heads they had a close-fitting cap made of leather, with a place in front to hold a small lamp that would hold half a gill of oil. It had a narrow projection at the side for a wick. Each man had to have his own lamp.
I must say something about the manner in which those men and lads were dressed. Some were laddies from eight to nine years of age. Ah, and some were old men! In fact, there was nothing else for them to do, and they came from all parts of the country to work in the pits. They did not seem to mind it, but I had never seen pits before, and, while waiting for my father, in fear and alarm I watched them going up and down. They were the colliers, and rows of houses were built on purpose for them. Wherever you saw a coal pit there also were the houses, built on the same plan. Now about the clothing. I have mentioned the cap. Their shirts were of a dark, thick, woollen material, while their trousers and coat were of a warm material without any shape. They wore a leather belt round the waist, to which was attached a flagon of oil to fill up their lamps. If they had good, kind wives they would have on long knitted stockings and strong shoes with big nails in them. It looked horrible even to see them going down dry, but when they came up drenched with water or perspiration and all so black and grimy it was worse still. If there were frost and snow their clothes would be frozen on them ere they got to home. Frost and snow lasted many months in the winter in Slamannan. Each one had his own pick to take down with him and he had to bring it back again to get it made sharp for the next day. Some had more than one. They also took with them some food tied up in a handkerchief. When they were washed and clean I did not know them to be the same men and lads that previously I thought did not belong to the human race.
The impression made on my mind then is as distinctly there now, even at this distance of time. I got the idea that they were different from ordinary men. Yet the children of the colliers took no notice of the things that filled me with fright. All the pits were not so deep as the particular one to which I had to go.
There was a heartrending scene one day when a rumor spread that the "New Pit" was on fire. Thank heaven, all the men and boys had been drawn to the top. It was no uncommon thing to hear of a pit catching fire, through foul air or gas, which, if the miners were not careful, ignited and rushed through all the spaces whence the coals had been taken. Some of those pits had been working for years. But I never knew where coal came from till we came to Slamannan. There were many old pits all about that had been worked out. They were fenced around for protection. It made a lot of work to fill the long train of waggons every day with coal and ironstone, to be taken away to Glasgow and Edinburgh by rail. There were many other men and boys employed about the works beside the colliers. All the waggons and hutches for bringing up the coals were made there, and that gave work to rough carpenters. Then blacksmiths, engineers, clerks, timekeepers, and other men, many of whom never went down into the pits at all, were on the mines. I learned also that there were gangs of men who, under contract, cleared away the ironstone in the nighttime, after the colliers had left the pit. The stone had to be blasted out of its place with powder. It was as well, perhaps, that I did not know at that time, although I often wondered what was in some little barrels I saw stacked in the carpenters' shop. Years afterwards, when I was in South Australia, I had a newspaper sent to me containing an account of an awful explosion which happened in a carpenters' shop at Benny Hill, near Slamannan. Many lives were lost, including those of children who had come with their fathers' picks to get them sharpened. I knew the place so well, and I felt thankful that I was not there.
How little do the people think as they sit at a bright fire what a risk to life and limb is needed in order to get this coal when it is so far down in the earth. I saw some very old women, who remembered when they were young having worked in the pits. I saw a young man that was born down in the pit.
When the dear Queen Victoria came to the throne it was made illegal for women to work in coal pits. Here and there through Scotland a mine was found where they could dig in from a hillside and find coal, and get horse-power to haul the coal out, but never in such quantity as was produced when they dug hundreds of fathoms under ground.