Born in 1867 in Leeds, England, much of Samuel Pickles's working life was spent in a mine pit. His father was a clay tobacco pipe maker, which he had learned from his father. But Sam’s father died in December 1870 when Sam was only three years old. Sam’s widowed mother was working for her late-husband’s family in the pipe-making business as a pipe trimmer in the 1871 census. She remarried in December 1872. Sam’s mother and step-father, a coal miner at the time of the marriage, had seven children.
In the 1881 census, 14-year-old Samuel was shown to be working as a coal miner/hurrier already. Once the coal was broken off the wall, it had to be transported out. To save money, the mine owners made these transport shafts only as large as they absolutely had to and then hired the smallest people they could find to fit into them. Also called a coal drawer or thruster, adults could not easily do this job because the tunnels were so small.
A hurrier’s job was to literally "hurry" the coal. This was an unimaginably hard job as the hurrier pulled a coal-filled basket or small wagon called a corf using a 'gurl' or leather harness. These carts were hauled through dark shafts that could be as small as 16-inches high. These children or small women would often work 12-hour shifts going back and forth between the coal face and the surface (sometimes on their knees) in tiny tunnels lit only by candles.
Employers were not listed on this census, but they were living at 6 Duke William’s Street, which was located in the densely packed, working-class Burmantofts/Marsh Lane district of East Leeds, situated just off the major artery of York Road. Within four kilometres of that residence were at least four different collieries where Sam could have worked.
Samuel's step-father is missing from the 1871 census. This indicates he was away from the family. It is possible that Samuel had to take this job because his step-father was away, and Samuel was the oldest boy in the household, which meant it was his responsibility to support the family. It may also be possible that this was standard practice for boys his age who were not from privileged families.
After a youth of coal mining, on 14 July 1885, Samuel joined the Prince of Wales Own (West Yorkshire) Regiment (service # 1047). He would have turned 18 just two months earlier, and this would have been one of the few options available to a young man of his station without a father. Samuel was only 5'4-1/2" at the time of his enlistment. He weighed 117 pounds and had a chest measurement of 33-1/2 inches. They recorded these measurements for their uniforms. Although it’s possible he was still growing, the family was known to be short so he may have remained this height for the rest of his life for all we know.
After his first stint of military service, Samuel ended up back in Leeds, where he grew up and returned to coal mining. On his marriage record in 1893 when he was 25 years old, Sam shows his occupation to be coal miner.
On 9 January 1900, Samuel was recalled to the army. He'd had active service from 1885 until 1893 and was on reserve after that. But the Boer War began in October 1899 in South Africa. Officially known as the Second Boer War and most recently as the South African War, it lasted until May 1902.
Samuel came home in June 1902 and returned to coal mining as his occupation showed on the birth records for his subsequent children. Thirty years after he began coal mining, Sam had then reached the peak of the underground labour hierarchy. In the 1911 census, Samuel is shown to be a “Coal Miner (Hewer).”
Hewers were the elite, skilled craftsmen of the pit. They worked right at the dangerous, unstable "coal face." Sam’s job was to lie on his side or crouch in a tiny seam for hours on end, using a pickaxe, wedges, and shovels to physically cut, undermine, and break the coal away from the rock stratum. Hewers were paid by the ton of coal they managed to produce, making it the highest-paid—but most lethal—job in the mine due to cave-ins and gas explosions.
The First World War came and went but Samuel continued coal mining. At 47 in 1914, he was too old to serve in the army. During the First World War, the British government took state control of all coal mines to guarantee fuel for the war effort, regulating wages and keeping them relatively stable. However, in the post-war economic slump, coal prices collapsed. To offload the financial losses, the government abruptly ended state control and handed the pits back to private owners on March 31, 1921.
The private mine owners immediately announced drastic wage cuts—in some areas up to 40 percent or 50 percent—and a return to longer shifts. The miners refused to accept these punishing new terms. In response, on April 1, 1921, the mine owners locked the workers out of the pits.
The 1921 census was supposed to happen just a few weeks later at the beginning of May. But the government was worried that the mine lockout would trigger a general strike throughout the country in support of the miners. This could have erupted into rioting. So rather than risk census takers out in the community during a period of unrest, they postponed the census. This is the only time in history that a UK census was postponed. In fact, the miners had an agreement with transport workers and railwaymen (the Triple Alliance) to strike in solidarity. At the last minute, the leaders of the other unions canceled their strike, leaving the miners to fight alone, and a general strike did not happen that year.
By the time the census was taken in June, the miners were still out of work. The census takers asked the miners to note on the forms what their normal job was, if they were out of work and where their regular workplace was so that it could be recorded.
In the 1921 census, Samuel shows that his occupation was “Miner. Coal getter.” But in the next column, he indicates that he was “out of work” and that his last employer was Stringer and Son Colliery and the place of work was the Waterloo Main Colliery, Temple Newsam. This colliery was situated just under 4 miles east of Leeds city centre. The area where this mine was located was a private estate that is now a heritage site with a museum in the grand manor house and trails around the former mine. A brochure for the site, called "A Blot on the Landscape," recounts the history of the mine.
"In 1815 William Fenton contracted with the landowners—the Ingram family—to sink a deep mine on the estate at nearby Thorpe Stapleton. Named Waterloo Colliery to commemorate the famous battle of that year and with several pits, it produced coal for its owners for over 150 years. The Temple Pit operated from 1913 until 1966 and this is likely the site that is referred to in the census."
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| Waterloo Main Colliery, Temple Newsam in Leeds, Yorkshire England as it looked in 1968. |
Samuel’s sons, William 17 and Samuel 15, both show on the 1921 census that they too were out of work and their last employer was Waterloo Main Colliery. William's occupation was Miner, Driver, while Young Sam's was Miner, Trammer. There are various definitions of the term 'trammer,' including: a person who loads broken rock on tramcars and delivers it at the shaft. But trammers are also shows as assistant miners in all the work a miner does such as loading the broken mineral onto shaker or belt conveyors, filling and hauling the mine cars, bringing in the mine timber and other materials to support and equip the mine workings, serving the mining and transport machines, and working also as auxiliary mine timbermen.
Apparently, Samuel had secured jobs for his son at the mine where he worked, so all three had been locked out. The lockout lasted for three months until the miners were starved back to work in July. Although they accepted wage reductions, they were not as drastic as had been originally proposed by the mine owners and were in the range of 20 percent. The union had had strike pay available for less than two weeks, which means the family would have had no income for all those weeks. This must have been a devastating time for the Pickles household, which had six people in it. Samuel had grown and married children who may have helped by lending them money or sharing their food. And it was reported that grocery stores provided credit or free food to the families of locked-out workers.
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| A train designed to carry coal from the mine. |
One of the few types of memorabilia from the coal mining era in the United Kingdom is the 'pit check.' Pit checks, also called miner tokens, tallies, and motties, were introduced in the 1860s or 1870s as a way to identify miners going into pits. Pit checks were made from materials such as brass, aluminum and leather and could be round, square, rectangular or even hexagonal or octagonal. Typically each was stamped with a location and number. Each miner was issued a token with a number that was identified specifically with him. The tokens were often used to mark a specific lamp that was used by that miner but were ultimately designed for work attendance tallies. In a disaster, the numbers were used to determine which miners were in the pit.
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| A pit check from the mine where Samuel and his sons worked. |
By 1900 pit checks were in common use in the UK and by 1913 had become mandatory as a way to take attendance, especially during a mine disaster.
While the use of pit checks varied from mine to mine, in one system, the token had a corresponding safety lamp with the same number. Each miner was issued a token and a lamp. At the beginning of shift, the miner exchanged the token for his lamp. When the lamp was returned, the miner received his token back, which he took home with him. In an emergency, the tokens showed which miners were currently in the pit. The practice of using these pit checks continued until the 1980s or 1990s when electronic systems using ID cards replaced them.
Samuel died of chronic bronchitis/arterio sclerosis 19 February 1932 at the age of 64. His death certificate lists him as a retired Colliery Hewer. His place of death on the certificate was 123 Beckett Street. This address was a workhouse in 1904 but appears to have been St. James Hospital by the time he died. He had likely been ill for some time with bronchitis, which was common in miners and resulted from years of breathing in toxic air, gases and fibres.
For more information on the Waterloo Colliery visit: https://eastleedsmemories.wordpress.com/tag/waterloo-colliery/
For more information on Temple Newsam heritage site visit: http://www.dmm.org.uk/colliery/w203.htm
For more information on pit checks visit: http://www.mining-memorabilia.co.uk/Checks.htm
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