Chapter VII

His mantle descended to Lord Ashley: and Ashley, after bitter defeats, won on the mine-children what had been lost in the cotton-mills. For the mines took an even more hideous toll of childhood than did the mills. Listen to this, extracted from the Report of the Commission of 1840–1842, which shocked all England by its disclosures--

In every district except North Staffordshire, where the younger
children were needed in the Potteries, the employment of children
of seven was common, in many pits children were employed at six,
in some at five, and in one case a child of three was found to be
employed. Even babies were sometimes taken down into the pits to
keep the rats from their fathers’ food. The youngest children were
employed as trappers; that is, they were in charge of the doors in
the galleries, on the opening and closing of which the safety of
the mine depended. For the ventilation of the mine was contrived
on a simple principle; there were two shafts, one the downcast,
the other the upcast. A fire was lighted at the foot of the upcast
to drive the air up the shaft, and air was sucked down through the
downcast to fill the vacuum. This air was conducted by means of a
series of doors through all the workings of the mine on its passage
to the upcast, and these doors were in the charge of a little boy
or girl, who sat in a small hole, with a string in his or her hand,
in darkness and solitude for twelve hours or longer at a time.
“Although this employment,” reported the Commission, “scarcely
deserves the name of labour, yet as the children engaged in it are
commonly excluded from light, and are always without companions,
it would, were it not for the passing and re-passing of the coal
carriages, amount to solitary confinement of the worst order.”

Children were also employed to push the small carriages filled
with coals along the passages, and as the passages were often
very low and narrow, it was necessary to use very small children
for this purpose. “In many mines which are at present worked, the
main gates are only from 24 to 30 inches high, and in some parts
of these mines the passages do not exceed 18 inches in height.
In this case not only is the employment of very young children
absolutely indispensable to the working of the mine, but even the
youngest children must necessarily work in a bent position of
the body.” As a rule the carriages were pushed along small iron
railways, but sometimes they were drawn by children and women,
“harnessed like dogs in a go-cart,” and moving, like dogs, on all
fours. Another children’s task was that of pumping water in the
under-bottom of pits, a task that kept children standing ankle-deep
in water for twelve hours. In certain districts children were used
for a particularly responsible duty. In Derbyshire and parts of
Lancashire and Cheshire it was the custom to employ them as engine
men, to let down and draw up the cages in which the population of
the pit descended to its depths and returned to the upper air. A
“man of discretion” required 30_s._ a week wages; these substitutes
only cost 5_s._ or 7_s._ a week. Accidents were, of course,
frequent,--on one occasion three lives were lost because a child
engineman of nine turned away to look at a mouse at a critical
moment,--and the Chief Constable of Oldham said that the coroners
declined to bring in verdicts of gross neglect from pity for the
children.