IN EARLY MINES

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 68, 21 March 1931, Page 24

IN EARLY MINES

The Cornish mines formed one of the irradles of engineering in England, and the names of some of the mines and of the engineers connected with them are written large across the history of metalliferous mining and mechanical engineering. Mining has been carried on in Cornwall from time immemorial, but with tho application of steam to pumping in the eighteenth century an entirely new chapter was opened. As captain of mines or otherwise there were the Trevithicks, the Woolfs, Harvey, Bull, and Vivian, all contemporaries of Boulton and Watt, and it is around tbeir lives that much of the interest in Cornish mining centres. In ■writing the lifo of Richard Trevithiek (1771-1833) Francis Trevithiek, in 1872, used some of the old mine account books, which go back as far as 1765. These have, fortunately, been preserved, and through a further examination of them Mr. A. Titley, in a paper on Cornish Mining read to the Nowcomen Society, was able to give many interesting particulars of tho organisation of the mines during the latter half of tho eighteenth century. Under the old law, says "Engineering" (from which this artielo is printed), it required six shareholders or adventurers to form a cost book company, and it was into the cost book all important transactions had to be eu-

WHEN WOMEN WORKED

tercd. Under the captain or manager of a mine would be pit and. shaft men, engine and firemen, kibbal lauders, whim drivers, burning house men, carpenters, smiths, masons, and others. The real miners wore divided into two classes—"tut workers" and "tributers" —the former employed in sinking shafts and driving lovels, while the latter worked out tho ore. The tributers beeamo specialised geologists, depending for their success on their knowledge of ores and their capacity to judgo tho probable yield. Work underground was carried on in three eight-hour shifts or "cores," each eight-hour shift ranking as a "stem" for payment. Fines were imposed for breaches of tho regulations, small monthly deductions were made for medical attendance, and gratuities were paid on the occasion of a holiday. The maximum pay of any individual appears to have been about 40s to 50s a month. Women did some of the work, such as bucking or breaking the ore with a hammer. Against tho name of Ann Heather, for instance, is the entry, "Bucking 319 barrows of calcined work at 6d per every 15 barrows, 10a 7d." Ono of tho account books quoted from by Mr. TitJey gives a list of no fewer than 80 mines producing ore in 1777-79, together with the assay of the ore, the price offered and realised and the purchasers.