‘The Worst Village in England? I am sitting down to write this article in numb despair, for the mining community I have to describe is so repulsive that many who have never been near it will refuse to credit the story . . . Love of literature, love of the beautiful, seem almost entirely absent from the minds of the people. Women have not even self-respect enough to spend money on dress.’

The Christian Budget, 8 November 1899

 

‘In a field of coal it is usual to put down a series of bore-holes for the following purposes: –

(a) To obtain a correct section of the strata passed through

(b) To find the depth of a seam or seams from the surface

(c) To find the thickness, quality and number of seams

(d) To ascertain the chemical qualities of the coal, and also the nature of the roof and pavement

(e) To ascertain the inclination of the strata and the number and size of “faults” in the field.’

George L. Kerr, Practical Coal Mining: A Manual for Managers, Under Managers, Colliery Engineers and others, 1900

 

‘It’s been said that in the Durham and Northumberland coalfield, when you’re a kid in a pit village, you don’t get “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” or “Little Red Riding Hood” as a bedtime story. You get Churchill and the ’26 strike and the betrayal of Thomas and the railwaymen and things like that. And it’s this I want to focus on, because it’s this manner of carrying history, of awakening a deep curiosity in it, setting the starting-blocks of learning, which is truly the miners’ history. It was, after all, the way we the miners carried our history in recent years before we could read or write.’

David Douglass, ‘The Worms of the Earth: The Miners’ Own Story’, in Raphael Samuel (ed.), People’s History and Socialist Theory, 1981