Whitehaven Accommodation

Screen Lasses Whitehaven Cumbria

Not Miners' wives waiting at the pithead as commonly supposed, but Screen Lasses in the pit canteen, Whitehaven Mining History

Coal Mining History on the Lake District Coast Women Mining

Never with your leave or by your leave, they tell'd us all to go; They've took the bread clean oot on oor mooths, aye, every mother an maid, An all for to pleasure the menfolk as wants to teal oor trade! Well, if it's hard an mucky, who knows that better nor me? But I liked it, an it was my living - an so it had ought to be.

(An extract from 'Boompin' Nell, by diarist Munby. Nell was based on a real pit woman called Ellen Meggison/quoted from 'Coalmining Women. Victorian Lives and Campaigns' Angela V. John, 1984)

Screen Lasses and Bearers. Women and Coal Mining History

An interesting aspect of coal mining history rarely alluded to is the changing roles of women in mining. Before the 1842 Mines and Collieries Act, women along with children worked underground alongside men. In fact they often performed heavy hauling jobs that men refused to do, and for less pay. Often women had no choice but to work, and their income was perceived as a contribution to the family income, rather than an independent wage.

No change there then! As sub-commissioners, middle class gents, discovered a whole new world of conditions down the mines in the early 1840s, they were determined to ban women and children from working underground. The issue of protectionism of conditions, protecting women from appalling conditions underground is a contradictory issue.

Many women faced the real fear of loss of income in a context of lack of alternative work. Women after 1842 then increasingly began working above ground at the pits, mostly sorting coal or what became known as screening, hence the Cumbrian term 'Screen Lasses'.

Screening involved the separation of different sizes of coal on a conveyer belt with bars set at fixed distance acting as sieves. Women separated the coal from dirt and other impurities. The process became increasingly mechanised, and before the conveyor belts women used to use riddles or large sieves, sorting the coal by hand. Pressure to push women out of mining work emerged usually in contexts of economic depression and with support from Miners' Unions.

Attempts to Ban and Edge Women out of Mining

In the 1880s particularly, consecutive Liberal and Conservative governments proposed Mines bills to ban women from working in the pits. Deputations of women workers in mines across Lancashire and from Whitehaven in Cumbria went down to London to protest. Again in 1911 a further Mines Bill was proposed threatening women's jobs in mining.

Again a deputation went down. In 1970 the last eleven Screen lasses who worked at Haig Pit were made redundant, and the last two British pit women working in mines were at Harrington No 10, Lowca and they were made redundant on 1st July 1972.

Family History and Mining Homes

By 1937 New Houses, three rows of tenements built on the side of a hill in Whitehaven alongside Preston Street at the behest of Lord Lonsdale, colliery owner, were classed as slums. These houses, pictures of which can be found at the Haig Museum, plus in the Beacon library of photographs were home to many mining families from 1788 when they were built. These tenements were crammed together, with the front row consisting of 77 tenements and 5 ashpits, the middle row having 111 tenements and 9 ashpits, and the back row having 78 tenements and 7 ashpits. All in all, 266 crammed tenements and 21 ashpits. There were no toilets, and the ashpits were only emptied once a week.

The water supply was pretty inadequate, just one metal pipe at the top of Ginns was the water source and long queues of women were often waiting to get water which frequently failed in this pipe in the summer months. This meant a long trip to Whitehaven Castle. Stagnant water, and the build up of human dirt around the houses and roads was horrendous and greeted miners returning from 12 hour shifts underground.

The housing was provided by the colliery owner, in this case the Lowther family, for free to his workers and this often bound workers further in a kind of serfdom. Free housing was a deliberate tactic to bind mining workers to Whitehaven and the pits there, rather than seeking better wages in the pits around Newcastle. In these conditions disease was rife, and life expectancy low.

New Houses was eventually demolished in the late 1930s when by this stage outside toilets had been built one for every six houses!

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