USING THE CENSUS
Incomers and Miner-Households: a case study of Treeton, near Rotherham in south Yorkshire (1891)
Pits were sometimes sunk with little or no fuss, especially in the earlier days of mining, say before c.1830. However, when larger collieries were commissioned and planned it became almost a standard procedure for the occasion to be marked by a ceremonious ‘cutting of the sod’. Dignitaries watched as a VIP, often a lady of some social or public standing, carried out the task using a special spade. The Victorians and Edwardians were wonderful exponents of such commemorative occasions.
Commemorative colliery pulley wheel and Miners’ Welfare Scheme plaque, Wood Lane, Treeton.
If your miner-ancestor was one the first workers at a new colliery it’s a good idea to check for any report of the ceremonial start of sinking in local newspapers, as the entire proceedings were often reported in considerable detail. From the late nineteenth century, and certainly later, the text was usually enhanced by spectacular images of the event, and occasionally postcards were produced by opportunistic local photographers. ‘Pioneer’ pitmen, in other words experienced miners from neighbouring or distant coalfields, soon to be living nearby, were often included in the ceremonial party, and might be captured on film.
On a fine autumn morning in 1875, on 13 October, a Mrs Jaffray, wife of the chairman of the Rothervale Colliery Company Limited, did the honours, with a glittering ceremonial spade, placing the sod in an equally grand wheelbarrow, then pushed along a plank of timber. A large marquee provided shelter for visitors to enjoy celebratory refreshments, and for dignitaries, the occasion was further marked by a banquet in the Royal Victoria Hotel in Sheffield, attended by a variety of worthies, including the Master Cutler. The reporter for the Rotherham Advertiser included a very down-to-earth comment, contrasting the sunny day and ‘charming landscape, which was soon to be disfigured by colliery headgear and huge chimneys’. Locals were well aware of the impact that a new coal mine might have, as two other collieries, Orgreave and Fence, had been established nearby in 1851 and 1863 respectively, both now part of the expanding Rothervale enterprise.
And so the life of Treeton Colliery, near Rotherham, on land owned by the Duke of Norfolk, began, but it was not plain sailing. Development work via the two new shafts was suspended in September 1878 due to financial and economic problems. However, a resumption of work in 1882 ran alongside a significant transformation of the village from a small rural community of just 137 inhabited houses and 383 people in 1871, to 335 separate occupiers and a population of 1,969 in 1901.
The colliery company had facilitated its demand for labour through a building programme that remains impressive even by modern-day standards. According to White’s Directory of Sheffield and Rotherham (for 1902) some 400 houses had been erected in the township since 1881. This is probably an exaggeration, but distinctive groups of properties are evident on the larger scale OS maps, at Well Lane (Bole Hill Row and New Bole Hill), Wood Lane and Mill Lane. Several of the grander Wood Lane properties, locally known as The Big Six, were reserved for officials, contrasting with the basic ‘colliers’ houses’ further along the street and those down Mill Lane. The 1891 census has the the pit’s first manager, a Scot, Walter Baxter, aged 38, residing at 69 and 70 Wood Lane with his Welsh-born wife Barbara, seven young children, and a 14-year-old servant girl. A Scottish aunt was visiting on census night. The Baxters’ older children were born in a distant mining area, Hednesford, in the Cannock Chase coalfield of Staffordshire, prior to their move to Bewdley in Worcestershire, before migrating to Treeton in around 1882. Baxter died relatively young, aged 53, and his service to the colliery was commemorated in a specially commissioned plaque, which can now be seen set high in a wall near the community centre, off Wood Lane.
Treeton village and colliery, from the 1:2500 OS map for 1903. The rows of miners’ houses SW of the mine are along Wood Lane. Courtesy of the Ordnance Survey.
Plaque commemorating William Baxter, Treeton Colliery’s first manager.
Rothervale’s company secretary, John Howard Keep, lived more grandly at Treeton Hall, in the old village, whilst its Staffordshire-born managing director, Frederick John Jones (1853–1936), resided in detached rural splendour at Treeton Grange, with his wife, two young children and two servants. Educated at Repton and Trinity College, Cambridge, Sir Frederick (as he became) was the first chairman of Treeton Parish Council, and had a country seat at Grantham, Lincolnshire. A distinguished mining engineer, Jones was twice President of the Mining Association of Great Britain and also had business interests in several coal-related industries: coke and chemicals; and iron and steel.
Treeton Colliery was able to open with a workforce of 1,043, comprising 835 underground workers and 563 surface workers. By 1908 the total employed there was well over 2,000, making it one of the larger south Yorkshire pits. The landscape and human impact on the locality was enormous: a previously quiet backwater south of Rotherham was transformed into a thriving rural-industrial community within a single generation; and about three out of every four houses were occupied by miners and their families, mostly ‘imported’ from other coalfields.
Treeton Colliery was sunk by Rothervale Collieries Limited between 1875–77. Although its narrow valley site at the bottom of Spa Hill was unsuited to very large-scale development, the mine was well served by important railways (North Midland and Sheffield District) and a colliery branch line that also linked with its sister pit, Orgreave Colliery. Rothervale became part of the new United Steel company in 1918 and improvement both above and below ground took place in the years before nationalisation. During the NCB era several major developments took place and annual output peaked at 652,000 tons in 1969–70. Treeton’s underground link to its sister pit, Orgreave Colliery, was curtailed in 1981, following the latter’s closure, the connection to neighbouring Thurcroft Colliery having ended about ten years earlier. A major (£20 million) development of Treeton Colliery occurred in 1976 with the construction of a new drift and underground coal transport scheme. Following geological faulting problems, coal extraction was deemed to be ‘uneconomic’ and production ceased in December 1990, 115 years after its ceremonial origin.
Among the Treeton censuses (1841–1911), the 1891 returns are the most revealing from a family and local history point of view since they provide us with the best snapshot of an emerging pit village. Incomers, and as we have seen there were many, were newly settled and their pit jobs, domestic situations and backgrounds are clearly evident.
The 1891 census includes:
• road, street name of the house
• house number (or name)
• number of rooms (if less than five)
• name of head of household
• relationship to head
• marital status
• age at last birthday
• profession or occupation: employer or employee (or neither)
• where born (place and county)
• disability status i.e. ‘if deaf-and-dumb, blind or a lunatic, imbecile or idiot’
Contrary to some impressions and sources, miners’ families were not especially large compared with other industrial groups of workers. However, their households often were. And this is understandable. Despite the efforts of colliery companies and private builders there was just not enough accommodation for all migrant workers. It was quite common anyway for single men and some married couples (even with young children) to find lodgings in miners’ households.
Tip
It is useful when researching the census to appreciate that ‘lodgers’ and ‘boarders’ (in reality there was little or no difference in these terms, used interchangeably by the enumerators) were often relatives or at the very least had some previous connection with their ‘landlord’. So don’t entirely dismiss lodgers/boarders as strangers!
In 1891, the average size of miners’ households in Treeton was 7.09. More than half of these, however (55.6%), had 7–10 occupants and a fairly significant number, 17 (12%), accommodated upwards of 11 (to 16) people in what must have been extremely cramped, awkward conditions. There were at least eighty-seven lodgers placed in miners’ households, about two-thirds of them under the age of 30. As many as one hundred sons of miners, mostly aged between 13 and 20, listed as ‘coal miners’ or with mine-related occupations, also lived in parental households. In addition, eleven households had identifiable close relatives residing with them: four brothers, three stepsons, and a brother-in-law, nephew, father and even grandfather, all pit workers. Extended mining families were therefore not uncommon and again this is not surprising given the housing shortage. A few young miners also found accommodation in ‘non-mining’ households. But even here there may have been some familial link. Colliery shunter John Broughton, aged 22 and born in Warwickshire, lived in the post office at Front Street, where Martha Foers, a 69-year-old widow, was listed as head of the household. Martha also supplemented her income (or maybe helped on social grounds, or both) via another boarder, 22-year-old railway signalman Ernest Tunnicliffe, who came from Staffordshire. Both young men clearly had railway-related skills. In another interesting example, quarryman Thomas Mercer, a widower, living at Upper Bole Hill, provided accommodation for a young married couple: Alexander Tinkler, aged 27, who was banksman at the colliery, and his 21-year-old wife, Harriet.
Head of household George Mallinder, a ‘coal miner’, aged 31, lived with his wife Alice and two school-age children, in a small property at 1 Mill Lane, but still managed to accommodate three colliery labourers: Charles Lindley, 47, and his sons Henry and Edwin, aged 17 and 16 respectively. The Mallinders and Lindleys came to Treeton from Killamarsh, in north Derbyshire, so there was probably a personal if not family connection.
Even quite large miner-family households could find space for lodgers, especially where there were personal links. Jonah Kyte, a 56-year-old coalminer, and his wife Mary Ann, 52, like the Mallinders mentioned above living at Mill Lane, had seven children; three of the males (aged 28, 25, and 14) also worked at the colliery. Income was presumably supplemented via three lodgers who also worked at the pit. Goodness knows what bath night was like when they were on the same homecoming shift! The Kytes came to Treeton from Staffordshire, as did two of their lodgers, the other one from Warwickshire.
Another incoming family, the Johnsons, from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, demonstrate how mining was such a dominant part of their livelihood and way of life. Coalminer Edwin Johnson, aged 48, and his wife Emma (52), had four work-age sons at home, aged 14–21, each seemingly working with their father at the colliery.
The cottages erected along Mill Lane by the colliery company were quite small and would certainly have been very basic in their facilities. And yet several households were large, none more so than where the Bishops lived, whose abstracted details from the enumerators’ returns are shown below:
Henry Bishop, Head, Married, 43, Colliery Banksman, Employed, Brighton
Fanny Bishop, Wife, Married, 41, Nutley, Sussex
Gertrude Bishop, Dau, 19, Mother’s Help, Employed, Brighton
Adeline Bishop, Dau, 14, Gen Dom Servant, Employed, Wimblebury, Staffs
Thomas Bishop, Son, 11, Scholar, Wimblebury
John Bishop, Son, 9, Scholar, Wimblebury
Lydia Bishop, Dau, 7, Scholar, Wimblebury
Ernest Bishop, Son, 5, Scholar, Littleworth, Staffs
Frances Bishop, Dau, 3, Treeton
Jacob Bishop, Son, 9 mths, Treeton
Philip Bungay, Lodger, Single, 21, Colliery Labourer, Employed, Brighton
Charles Carr, Lodger, Single, 21, Colliery Labourer, Employed, Nutley, Sussex
John Carr, Lodger, Single, 19, Colliery Labourer, Employed, Nutley
George Fuller, Lodger, Single, 21, Colliery Labourer, Employed, Brighton
Alfred Osborne, Lodger, Single, 21, Colliery Labourer, Employed, Brighton
Horace Wraxall, Lodger, Single, 19, Colliery Labourer, Employed, Brighton
The Bishop family were somewhat unusual in that they originated in Brighton and rural Sussex, far removed of course from any coalmining area. However, the census shows that they had migrated to Wimblebury, in the Cannock Chase area of Staffordshire – a noted mining area – where four children were born c.1877–84. A move to neighbouring Littleworth appears to have taken place by 1886, when another child was born. The great shift to Treeton occurred not long afterwards, coinciding with the development of the colliery, a daughter, Frances, soon born; and then their youngest child, Jacob, a few months before census night. The family income was presumably assisted by the extraordinary presence of six Sussex-born male lodgers, aged 19–21, all of them working at the colliery. What a cramped and busy household it must have been, sixteen adults and children in a small terraced cottage. Spare a thought for how Mrs Fanny Bishop coped with all the back-breaking and never-ending work, harder than a double shift at the pit I would think.
Extract from the 1891 census showing miners’ households, numbers 9–14 Mill Lane. Ancestry.com
Former miners’ cottages along Mill Lane.
That big new pits pulled workers from neighbouring areas is not unexpected, but more distant migration, particularly ‘mass movement’ (often on foot!) from particular areas is less easy to understand. What does seem clear is that ‘word of mouth’, individuals and families responding either at the same time (or not long afterwards) was an important mobility factor. At the same time, however, the colliery companies themselves were actively and deliberately recruiting in areas where they – the directors, agents and managers – had experience and expertise. That is one reason why significant groups of miners, especially experienced men, often moved from one coalfield to another, despite the distance involved. Local pit closures and economic circumstances apart, the migration of miners and their families from one region to another is a fascinating – but complex – part of local and family history research. Your own research may well contribute to a better, that is more meaningful, interpretation of the migratory process.
The miners and their families brought with them a culture, including accent and dialect, humour, even they way they greeted each other, into a locality, contributing to a rapidly changing community through several generations. The new Board School (1880) and Reading Room (1888), Wesleyan chapel (1892) and restored parish church (1892) were the new hubs of family interaction. To cap it all Treeton was ‘illuminated’ in 1897 when it became the first village in England to have electric street lighting, the power courtesy of the Rothervale Colliery Company.
Analysis of the place of birth of 142 coalmining male heads of household recorded in the 1891 Treeton census provides us with overwhelming evidence of the importance of migration into Treeton from other coalfield areas:
Derbyshire |
34 |
Staffordshire |
22 |
N ottinghamshire |
20 |
Warwicks/Worc |
13 |
Shropshire |
5 (Forest of Dean) |
Leicestershire |
3 |
Gloucestershire |
3 |
Durham/Northumberland |
3 |
Lancashire |
1 |
Somerset |
1 |
The above shows that around three out of every four coalmining heads of household (74%) were incomers, most notably directly from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire (38%) and a significant number (almost 25%) from Black Country counties, particularly Staffordshire. More detailed analysis shows that migration was particularly strong from north Derbyshire (Coal Aston, Staveley, Killamarsh and other nearby mining villages) and Staffordshire (Hednesford, Moseley, Cannock and Dudley). Only 23 (16%) coalmining heads of household were born in south Yorkshire, and perhaps even more surprising was that just six of these (4%) came from Treeton or adjacent hamlets.
There were fewer than ten coalmining heads of household born in noncoalmining counties, mostly rural areas such as Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Hampshire.
About 76% of households where the head was employed in coalmining had either a son or sons in mining, or lodgers (or had both miner sons and lodgers).
The occupational part of census returns also provides a fair indication of the range of job ‘titles’ used by coal industry-related heads of household (or the enumerators’ interpretations of the same). Typically, the generic ‘coal miner’ was used in most cases (77%) but an interesting mix of managerial, craft and miscellaneous terms are listed for the others. In number order they are: deputy (8), labourer (7), banksman (4), engine driver (3), weigh clerk (3), enginewright (3), carpenter (2), manager (2), fireman (1), horse-keeper (1), salesman (1), shunter (1), stoker (1), tipper (1), under viewer (1) and loco driver (1).
There was a similar pattern of ‘job description’ for miners’ sons working at Treeton (or a nearby) colliery. Again, ‘coal miner’ was the biggest category, though not quite as dominant in usage as for heads of household (60%). The others were: labourer (10), pony driver (8), coal-picker/worker at pit bank (7), banksman (5), carpenter (1), corve runner [haulage worker] (1), errand boy (1), fitter (1), joiner (1), lamp cleaner (1), office boy (1) and clerk (1). Two of the sons were only 12 years old; fourteen were aged 13 and twenty-two 14—15. The largest ‘age category’ of miners’ sons was 16–20 years, accounting for almost half (49) of all the listings, mostly described as ‘coal miners’.
What happened at Treeton occurred with understandable variations at many other new mining communities. The census is a wonderful source of information for researching our coalmining ancestry, especially if it is used in context and alongside other material. Just to extract your particular ancestor’s details misses out on placing the family in its social and economic setting.
Tips
• Take a wider sweep when using census returns: look at neighbouring properties, the whole village or district if you can and it will be worthwhile, certainly more meaningful; and you may find family links which otherwise would have been hidden.
• Check to see if there is a village/local history society website for background information; some families may have photographs and ancestry details posted there. Names and places on censuses then become real local people, even if they are not on your family tree. And you can reciprocate.
• Do make use of the larger-scale OS maps when using the census. If there is a Godfrey Edition (as there is for Treeton) covering part or the whole area of interest it will be an abiding aid to your research (www.alangodfreymaps.co.uk).
• Take some time to walk around the area, preferably with a camera, map and notebook. To me, this is what makes local and family history so rewarding. The pit site may be eradicated from the local landscape but many miners’ houses, facilities and public and private memorials may well be present. And do have a chat with local people if you getthe chance. I have always found this immensely beneficial; it is surprising how it can result in some remarkable findings and connections that would otherwise be unavailable from any source.
Further Treeton sources
Alan Godfrey, Old Ordnance Survey Maps: Treeton & Orgreave 1901 (Yorkshire Sheet 295.07)
Alan Hill, The South Yorkshire Coalfield. A History and Development (Tempus Publishing/The History Press), 2001
Rotherham Archives and Local Studies Library
The census and its usage
These days the census is mostly accessed online via commercial sites such as www.ancestry.com and www.findmypast.co.uk, but most record offices and libraries will have microfiche versions of the 1841–1891 censuses for their areas. Transcripts may also be available locally or online, for example at www.freecen.org.uk; and it’s well worth checking what may be available on local history society sites. On usage there’s background information in many general books on family history research, for example Simon Fowler’s Tracing Your Ancestors (Pen & Sword Books, 2011). Specific guides include Stuart Raymond’s Census 1801–1911: A Guide for the Internet Era (Family History Partnerships, 2009).