100 YEARS AGO.

Grey River Argus, 13 January 1927, Page 7

100 YEARS AGO.

“A girl hauling a loaded truck in a coal mine—one of the horrors revealed by the report of the Royal Conimision, 1842. ‘They were joined to the truck by a girdle with a chain that passed between their legs, and so they crawled, dragging the truck. We are told that not many under six or seven years of age were employed in this particular way. Some of the passages Mere only 18 inches high.” Economical Waters “Economical History of England”). Ihe drawing is from a. contemporary engraving, says “Plebs. ” NOT 100 YEARS AGO, BUT NOW Miss Ellen Wilkinson, M.P., in a recent “Lansbury’s Weekly:—“We are collecting money to save the women and children from starvation; but, after all, men also eat, and it might also be as well if people realised something of the work they do for the meagre bread they get. The seams in the Somerset coalfield are thin, and the galleries too narrow for ponies. No less than 1,500 boys and young men are employed as tuggers. Stark naked, on all fours with a rope round their waist, and a chain between their legs hitched on to a wagon, they pull the coal through the work“The rope rubs off the skin, until callosities are formed. The dirt gets in, and septic wounds are the result. A doctor in the district has commented on the increase of septic sores, owing to the poor nourishment of the boys. A woman in one cottage told me how she wept every time she had to wash her son’s back, all bleeding and chafed from the rope. ‘ ‘ The nation prosecutes if a pit pony is worked M f ith bleeding sores, and abraded skkin. No one worries M r hen it’s only a lad at 9d. an hour. He iy cheap--1 er than horseflesh, anyway.