Yeah, we need to do some more about Beamish, not least because I still have a million and one pictures to share. Also, I confess to being fascinated by the whole coal mining thing, which apparently started seriously over here as early as the mid-1500's when wood started becoming scarce in England. I can't promise not to keep coming back to this subject as I learn more and more!
One thing that struck me as soon as I saw it was the row of garden gates:
You see these often in this area, only without the gates and without the houses, but the sections of brick wall remain and it was good to see what the houses might have looked like. The cottages had good sized gardens and, from what I read in the museum, the miners were keen growers of vegetables. Mind, this scenario is in 1913, pegged as the best of times for miners in this area. This was the year with the highest production and miners were, after all, paid by the tonnage they produced from the mines.
There were several cottages but it wasn't until later that I read they were meant to show differing circumstances for Methodist (tee-total with 9 children, I gather) and Catholic households (not tee-total and with 12 children) as well as for one where the head of the household had been killed but his widow and family still had use of the cottage (that one wasn't available to view on this occasion).
I gather the family keeping the cottage was a later development and fairly local. You would think that for men to be willing to risk their lives they would need to know their families would still have a home. However, from what I've read, this wasn't the case in the late 1800's, at least not in Oklahoma.
I noticed some of the beds tended to have drapery, probably needed to increase at least a sense of privacy, and they had patchwork quilts, though this is largely an American craft, or at least the more detailed and ornate patterns are American.
"Crazy quilting" was more in fashion over here, as shown by this tea cozy. I've tried it and it's not as easy at it sounded.
Another form of craft I noticed were "proddy" or "proggy" mats, which apparently everyone made until about 5 minutes before I came over. I'm not a fan of them anyhow, I think the designs one
can do are too crude. Nevertheless, they were very useful and thrifty and I can't help but approve! Mom used to make hooked rugs ('hooky mats' over here, saved for 'best') and I still have several of hers in the loft.
Liz, from the sewing group, had just been describing her mother's chenille tablecloth and I couldn't imagine it. I was thinking of a fabric made with short bits of fiber drawn through cloth in a design and made into a -- usually white -- bedspread, sometimes a housecoat. I thought it would be an awfully bumpy tablecloth! So I was pleased to see what she'd been talking about, right down to the fringed edging.
I was also pleased to see a clothes dryer just like the one in my kitchen! We have a modern one in the garage but it is very rarely used.
These were genuine coal stoves, with ovens. They were an advance on the communal oven that preceded them, but were eventually replaced as they were too small to meet the needs of the
families. That whole idea of meeting the families' needs was another huge contrast with what I read about the conditions in Scotland.
This shows a back alley and they look pretty much the same today in the older houses a street or two away from mine, except that there are brick walls on both sides, of course.
The green doors on top are where the coal went in to it's out building. The black door near the ground was where the 'night soil' came out of the out house. The brick walls are increasingly being made over to accomodate garage sized doors -- for a garage or just for parking in the back yard.
Toilet facilities included a bowl and pitcher of water, and for night time, the 'gazzunda' (as in goes under the bed), specimens of which could be purchased at Tynemouth Fleamarket a few years ago. I thought it would make a great punch bowl or soup tureen, but Bill said no one would eat from it.
He had a good laugh before explaining to me what it was! In my defense, the one I saw was much more ornate, with a lid, and looked like a piece of china, which I suppose strictly speaking it was.
During the day one could use the out house
or have a bath in front of the kitchen fire of an evening.
The other cottages had stairs (with or without a rug to indicate financial status I suppose) to the single large room above the two below. This is where all the children slept.
We decided that if a widow took in a boarder she would pretty much have to join the children upstairs; well, one assumes that's how it worked, respectability being the watchword of the times.
In any case, I overheard it said that the front room (which included the parents' bedroom) was 'for best' and the kitchen was where everyone sat as a rule (my Grandmother didn't make that up by herself).
Then we have the laundry room. I don't know if this got moved into the kitchen in winter time or not; I don't know where everything else in the kitchen went to.
All in all, I thought the miners' quality of life in 1913 was pretty reasonable given the standard of the day for most people anyhow over here. (I gather most people my age remember their childhood in a house without indoor plumbing, something I still can't get my head around, but it will be to do with the age of the housing stock).
Emerging from the drift mine, we drifted over to the lamp cabin. Picking up and leaving off one's lamp was a part of the miner's work routine. Think about sitting in the complete dark without even one's lamp and it's not hard to understand why they made such a big deal about them. Even more than that, proper maintenance and handling of lamps was critical to safety. The more or less simultaneous invention of various improvements on the acetylene lamp brought about the safety lamp, a major life-saving development.
When we entered the lamp cabin the guy behind the counter was patiently explaining about the locking mechanism on the bottom of the safety lamp. Apparently the men weren't to be trusted to keep the lamps shut, so it was locked before they took it away down the mine. The locking mechanism is a small pin that can only be removed and replaced using a large magnet. We all listened for the 'click'.
Then he talked about how mines produce methane, which is explosive and that methane gas coming into contact with the open flames of the acetylene lamp was very bad news. A guy named Davy came up with the idea of putting a very fine metal mesh around the flame, which apparently was sufficient to protect the flame from gas; only problem was that it also prevented light from coming out. Then Stephenson (of the steam locomotive fame) came up with putting a glass barrel around the flame, and moving the mesh up a bit, still protecting the flame but permitting illumination.
A third guy, a Frenchman named Marsaut added the 'bonnet' -- the solid metal part you see -- which fitted over the mesh portion and allowed intake air, but still prevented combustion, and added the locking mechanism. The lamps are often referred to as 'Davy' lamps, but their proper name is just 'safety lamp', as all these contributions went into making it was it is today - or back in that day, I mean.
He went on to list all the inspection protocol and cleaning methods, using a machine against the wall. The rotating brush he used to clean the part of the lamp reminded me of the machine I used to wash glasses behind the bar at Pizza Hut...that would have been a ridiculous 30-something years ago... Back to lamps.
He told us of the Burns disaster, a mining accident in the West Stanley colliery that claimed the lives of 168 men and boys, ages 12 to 70, back in 1909. It was thought to have been due to the opening of a lamp and the resulting methane explosion.
One of the first things I shared with my cousin in Australia, Sharon, were the notes I took back in 1990 from a book in the Oklahoma Historical Library about the history of mining in Oklahoma. I thought it was pretty exotic stuff, in part because they talked about 'unions' -- not a word I heard used much when I was growing up. Even 20 years ago, my imagination was caught up by the description of a terrible mining accident in Krebs, Oklahoma, in 1892, in which 96 men were killed and another 200 crippled. This disaster resulted in the US Government appointing an Inspector of Mines.
I typed up those scribbled notes and sent them to Sharon. She reported back that I had a great uncle who was one of the 96 men killed in that accident. So, I paid attention when the lamp cabin guy was talking about safety in mines.
In addition to scaring myself by imagining going down the elevator into the blackness of a pit mine, another fun thing we did was to go into a drift mine. I wasn't really frightened of that, but my pictures are lousy because I didn't dare stop and get left behind. It was rather dark in there as well.
Whilst waiting for the last group to emerge, the tour guide talked us through this schematic of the tunnels in a mine. The tunnels were spaced apart such that their 'roof' would be supported. There are signs all over the place warning that hewing from unauthorised locations would result in dismissal or arrest. Obviously if too many chose the same 'column' it would result in a collapse. In any case, miners received free coal for heating their cottages as part of their remuneration.
The height of the tunnels varied, depending upon whether man or beast would be working them. We noticed this short little horse, too big to be a Shetland pony, but later deduced he was a pit horse, meant to drag the tubs of coal around. We were told that the regulation height of tunnels meant for horses had to be around 4 feet; men were expected to work in much more cramped spaces, something less than 2 feet on occasion. Of course it was the perfect occasion to point out that the mine owners cared more for their horses than for their men. That's as may be, then again, I don't remember ever seeing a horse crawl...is it possible?
With that, we entered the mine, bent over at the waist to pit pony height. Bill pointed out that the floors had neat paving down the middle, a nicety there for tourists. The floor was plenty wet all the same. Once we got around the corner, I stopped to take a picture of the entrance. My camera liked that a lot better than some of the other things I asked it to do.
Our first stop was to see an automated coal cutting machine. They weren't widely available until the 20th century, but they did cut coal four times as fast as a man. However, the miner working with the machine didn't get 4 times the pay. After about 6 months or so what he got was deaf. It was so loud, they nicknamed the machine a 'panzer'.
We also got a little lecture about miners' lamps. Seems that originally, miners used acetylene lamps. Acetylene gas is the produced when calcium carbide, which comes from limestone and coke, is mixed with water. Acetylene illumination was used widely in the early 19th Century and this, we were told, is the source of the phrase 'Being in the limelight.' More about lamps later.
Then we went along to see a few other things associated with a typical workplace.
The long things on the left are the drill bits for making deep holes for explosives. This is the next thing my mind wouldn't accept. Bad enough to be crawling around the the dark with water and rats and such -- well almost dark;
apparently one gets used to this and can see quite well... Imagine being in a crawlspace waiting for the wall to explode. Sounds completely mental to me.
Then we took a moment to consider the living conditions in the cottages, with no running water or electricity. Someone realised that would mean -- gasp -- no hair dryers! Meanwhile, I was still trying to picture me sitting in the near dark, lighting some dynamite or something and waiting for it to go off.
Nope, wouldn't happen.
Beamish is another place I've heard about a long time, meant to go see, but just never did until this past holiday weekend. I'm glad I waited after all, because what I saw there was so much more interesting after having visited Dalry and buried my head in the lifestyle of miners in Victorian times.
It was the first day I've gone without a sweater or waterproof covering, the weather was really lovely, and a lot of other people also seemed to have realised that it was a good day on which to visit an open air museum. The queue was probably the longest I've stood in for years.
Beamish, in County Durham, has 300 acres on which buildings have been gathered -- as in de- and re- constructed-- to join some that were already located there. We spent nearly 4 hours there and only covered the colliery village, but that's how it goes when you stop and take a picture or 10 every 2 minutes. See how much I think about you guys?
Right. Let's see how much of this stuff I can remember. Those red buildings are the pithead. The steam-powered train does a short run back and forth so you can see where the cars line up underneath. Inside the building is the elevator that takes men down into the mine shaft and brings up the bins full of coal and mining waste. The coal goes into the train cars after it has been picked over by boys or elderly miners. If a tub -- which normally weighed around half a tonne -- contained more than 20 pounds of waste, the miner was fined!
The waste goes along the bridge over to the refuse heap on the far left. I was interested in all this this because one of my ancestors is listed on a Census record in Dalry as a 'pithead labourer'.
On this board, a miner hung his numbered tag to show he was down the mine (I wonder if that's why they always say around here 'down the pub' or 'down the town' omitting the word 'to'). I found it chilling to learn that the miner's payroll number tags went also on his lamp, into the tub of coal he hewed so as to be credited for his work, and one remained with him, in the event of his body needing to be identified.
It was difficult to tell, so much paint was missing from the sign, but Bill reckoned there had been a fore shift (3 - 10.30 AM), a back shift (9:30AM - 5PM), a night shift (4PM - 11.30 PM) and a 10PM shift (10PM - 5.30 AM). I had to make myself get close enough to actually look down the mine shaft. I simply cannot imagine going down into a hole half a mile under the surface at any time, but especially not starting out in the dark of night. For some reason that just makes it seem even more unbearable.
