CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Discovering the Working Life of your Miner-Ancestor
First days: working at the pit top
First days: working underground
Bathing and women’s work in the home
Officials: deputies and overmen
Chapter 2: Accidents, Disasters and Disease
Everyday accidents and dreadful disasters
Occupational diseases and ailments
Accessing annual mines inspector’s and disaster reports
Was your mining relative or ancestor in the mines rescue service?
Did your coalmining relative or ancestor receive a bravery or gallantry award?
Further reading, video and film
Chapter 3: Rights and Strikes: Associations and Unions
Union development c.1780-present
Chapter 4: Women and Child Miners
Women and children working underground
The Children’s Employment Commission (Mines) and its two Reports 1840–42
Chapter 5: Coalfields and Miners at War
Second World War: ‘We’ll do the fighting if you get the coal’
Selective sources and further reading
Incomers and Miner-Households: a case study of Treeton, near Rotherham in south Yorkshire (1891)
Chapter 7: Making Use of Objects and Ephemera
Later union, strike and commemorative badges
Chapter 8: Collieries and Coalfields
PART 2: WHERE TO FIND INFORMATION
Northumberland & Durham coalfield
Yorkshire (& Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire) coalfields
Lancashire and Cheshire coalfields
Bristol and Somerset/Forest of Dean (Gloucestershire) coalfields
Institution of Mechanical Engineers
Working Class Movement Library