By the 1900s, miner’s working conditions saw them working in shift patterns of no more than 8 hours underground. Still horrific, given the conditions down pits. It was an early ‘human rights’ law brought in by Parliament and at first contested by Coalmasters. More time in the mines, meant more coal brought up and therefore […]
Continued from Parts 1 – 3 ….from the Scotsman, Tuesday 23rd October 1877….. The weather during Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st was extremely boisterous and wet, and the sudden fall in the barometer was exceptional. There was during Sunday, it is understood, an unusually large flooding of water in both pits, due alike to the […]
Shared here by Gordon Cook is a picture taken in 1902 of miners descending in a cage. It is basically a cattle grid with chains, there is nothing to hold on to, and they were not slow in rising or descending either! Gordon told me, “Just a week after the overwinding accident of 1878 […]
I have uncovered a story of unemployed men and their families being returned back to Blantyre, from Canada. Under a headline, “Dumped in Scotland from Canada”, local newspapers of 2nd March 1933, reported that strong objection had been made by the Public Assistance Officer for Lanarkshire due to the methods adopted the Canadian Government in […]
Thanks to Gordon Cook, for sending me this information relating to a legal dispute in the 1870’s around the sinking of the Lady Nancy Mine. The article refers to a farmer, named George Barclay, who had leased the Farm of Greenhall from John Wardrop Moore. The farmlands were fully 66 acres. Without any consultation or […]
Andy Man sent me a great link in February 2015 to the Coal Authority website and in particular their interactive online map. It shows all the immediate mine and colliery entry points, itself fascinating due to the number of them within the immediate Blantyre area. However, it was the overlay of the “Development High Risk […]
850 MINERS IDLE OVER ONE MAN THEY DEMAND HIS REINSTATEMENT AT SCOTS COLLIERY The failure of an underground coal-cutting machineman to turn up for his work on the evening of Sunday 7th August 1938 and the consequent refusal of the pit manager on the following Monday night to allow him to start was responsible for […]