QUEEN VICTORIA'S REALM 1837-40: 
WHITE SLAVERY: VICTORIAN COAL MINES

INTRODUCTION

In their previous adventure, see White Slavery: Victorian Cotton Mills, Jane and Sam had rescued two Victorian children, Alice and Tom, from a life of slave labour in a cotton mill. Jane and Sam are living with Lord Ashley, a famous campaigner for children’s rights. They are looking forward to a quiet day at home ….

WHITE SLAVERY: MINING CHILDREN

The Coal Fire The coal fire was burning fiercely in the heavy iron grate. Sam and Jane were roasting chestnuts on toasting forks. They had just driven from their home across London through a whirling, stinking coal fuelled fog. Coal smoke belched from every house and factory chimney. Mining coal was now a huge industry that had grown quickly in the past forty years. Mine owners had sunk large, new deep mines in Wales, Northumberland and the Midlands. Steam engines drained the mines and hauled the coal up from deep below ground. The children looked up, Lord Ashley had come into the room. A fierce scowl was on his face; he looked white as he read a letter.

White slavery ‘Slavery, pure slavery. Buried alive under ground. Such cruelty. I have decided that you will go tomorrow by stagecoach to Shropshire in the Midlands with Mr Mitchell. He is Tom and Alice’s guardian, the children you rescued from the cotton factory. The government has asked him to inspect a coalmine in Shropshire. Mr Mitchell needs your help to find out about British children working as slaves in mines. If mining children are to be brought up as Christians they will have to be saved from working as white slaves and go to a Christian school.’

The Plan ‘I fear Mr Mitchell might not be able to talk to any mining children, the mine owners may hide them from us. We need to find out at first hand about their lives. So, I have decided that you will spend a day down the Hills Lane coalmine at Madeley near Coalbrookdale in Shropshire. As spies you will find out what you can about how the mine owners treat children. We have already sent Alice and Tom to work there as child miners. I told them that they had to be really well disguised. 

The Ironbridge family They have gone to live with a Christian family in Ironbridge. They sent the government reports about how badly Mr Rose who runs the Hills Lane mine treats children. They have told Mr Rose that Alice and Tom have come to live with them as their parents are dead. Alice and Tom will have to earn their living by working down the mine. Mr Rose agreed to employ them. They started work last week. We need you to go to the mine to confirm their evidence about white slavery.’

Jane and Sam looked at each other and nodded in agreement. They knew that Alice and Tom went to a church school where they had learned how reformers like Lord Ashley and Mr Miller had fought to free British slaves in the West Indies five years ago. Then fight to free black slaves had been long and hard. The slave owners had fought tooth and nail to stop their slaves from being freed. Jane and Sam both wondered if the fight against White Slavery be as fierce?

The Journey Next morning Mr Mitchell, Sam and Jane began the trip to Shropshire’s coalmines. They took the train to Birmingham and then a stage coach that ran along turnpike or toll roads with their level, well-drained gravel surfaces. The stagecoach passed through towns, villages and mile after mile of woods and fields, many of them newly fenced. That night they stayed in a coaching inn. The coaching inn was a large, red brick buildings that faced on to the road. Behind it was a walled yard where the coach was parked and the horses stabled. The children looked forward to the evening meal of roast beef or mutton, roast potatoes and cabbage, carrots and leeks with lashings of gravy. Dinner started with Mr Mitchell reading from the Bible and saying grace. 

COALBROOKDALE, THE IRONBRIDGE AND MADELEY top

Coalbrookdale and Madeley After an hour’s travel next morning the landscape changed in a flash from fields and woods to scenes from hell. The road now skirted iron works, blast furnaces and coal mines with their winding gear, steam engines and vast cone shaped black mounds of coal waste. The coach reached the top of a steep wooded valley, Coalbrookdale. At the bottom of the valley the children could see furnace pools and the huge iron works of the Coalbrookdale Company with its furnaces and forges belching out thick smoke. As the coach lurched down the road they could hear the terrible din from steam engines, furnaces, coke ovens, forges, trip hammers and rolling mills. Smoke and flames shot into the sky, the air stank. 

To Ironbridge The road left the iron works behind and quickly reached the River Severn where stood the Coalbrookdale Company’s tall red brick warehouse. At its wharf wooden river barges waited to be loaded with iron girders, pots, pans and boilers. A cast iron milestone showed that it was one mile along the riverbank to Ironbridge. Ten minutes later the stagecoach drew into the yard of the Tontine Hotel, a coaching inn where Mr Mitchell, Jane and Sam were staying. They stepped out of the coach and in awe walked across the world’s first iron bridge that spanned the river. Sam gasped with amazement at the Ironbridge. It was like a giant meccano model. Its single arch was made from hundreds of cast iron girders, struts, roundels and arches bolted together. Jane looked down, she felt dizzy as the dark water swirled below. 

Rescue Her seeing mirror throbbed, someone was in danger. She spotted two children drifting in a small, round boat, a coracle, towards the rapids below the bridge. They had lost their paddles. 

‘Help Sam’, she screamed in panic, the children were certain to drown. Sam knew he had to act at once. He kicked off his shoes and dived off the top of the bridge into the deep pool below. With rapid strokes he caught hold of the boat and swam with it to the river bank. A small boy and girl climbed out of the coracle and ran off before thanking him. Sam guessed that they must have stolen the boat. From their filthy black faces Sam wondered if they worked in a local coal mine. Back at the hotel Sam had a hot, soapy bath and changed into dry clothes. 

Bull baiting Mr Mitchell then asked Sam and Jane to find out how to get to the Hills Lane coal mine on the other side of the village of Madeley. They decided to walk to Madeley. The road to Madeley climbed up a hill until it reached a large village square at the centre of streets of soot black terraced houses. Sam spotted that a crowd of miners, women and children had gathered around a giant brown bull with long, curved, sharply pointed horns. A strong rope tied it to a stake hammered into the ground. A group of men, each holding a snarling bulldog on a lead, were talking. Jane could hear what they said. In a couple of minutes they would set the dogs on to the bull, even though bullfighting and cock fighting had just been banned. 

The bull fights back She burned with anger, such cruelty! The terrified bull bellowed, tossing its head, straining on its rope as the men approached to set their fierce, barking dogs on it. Jane knew that any bull that beat off the dogs was allowed to live peacefully for the rest of its life. She pointed her wizard chip ring at the bull, muttered a mind spell, and the rope came out of the ground with the stake tied to it. The bull charged the group of men and their bulldogs. It tossed the bulldogs up into the air, they ran off yelping, the men rushed to escape. Ten seconds later the bull had gone, galloping off down the road to freedom. 

The mine From the other side of the village square Sam and Jane could see the Madeley Hills Lane coalmine in the distance. Two steam engines with tall chimneys stood in their shoe box shaped brick engine houses on one side of the mine’s winding gear. One engine pumped water from the mine and fresh air down the shaft, the other turned the winding gear that hauled cages with coal to the surface. Sam knew that in the morning they would climb into one of these cages to go down the mine. As the children turned to go home for supper and to bed, the thought of spending a day down a mine filled them with horror.

THE COAL MINE top

Breakfast Mr Miller, Jane and Sam had to get up really early next day, the mine started work at 6.00 a.m. It was pitch black when the maid woke the children and made sure that they washed by candlelight and dressed for breakfast. Sam had put on thick leather boots and wool socks into which he tucked his brown cord trousers. Over his check shirt and jersey he wore a tweed coat that reached up to his neck. A brown cloth peaked cap covered his hair that was well tucked in as he would spend the day down a mine full of coal dust. Jane’s long sleeved dark blue and brown check cotton dress reached the ground and was tightly buttoned up to her throat. On her feet were stout brown leather boots, laced up to just below the knee. A black bonnet she had fastened tight under her chin made sure that her hair would not get too full of coal dust. In silence Mr Miller and the children ate a breakfast of boiled eggs, brown bread and butter fingers and strong tea. A long and harrowing day lay ahead.

To the mine The rain poured down as Mr Miller and the children trudged in their long oilskin raincoats up the road to the Hills Lane coalmine in Madeley. It was still dark although dawn was rising. Miners with hunks of bread, pasties, and bottles of beer in bags were also making for the pit. There were no children to be seen. Mr Miller talked to one of the miners who told him that Mr Rose the charter master, who ran the mine, hired the child workers. 
‘Where are the children?’ asked Mr Miller. The miner grunted.

The holiday ‘Mr Rose has given them a holiday. Nothing like this has happened before. We can’t think why. He told us we will get our full wages even when we don’t have the little ones to help us.’
Betrayal! Mr Miller knew that news had leaked out that a government inspector was visiting the Hills Lane mine to find out about child slave labour. The charter master, Mr Rose, had tricked him, making sure that there would be no children to talk to. 

The mining children As Mr Miller, Sam and Jane climbed the last part of the hill towards Hill Lane mine Sam spotted two children sheltering from the rain in a doorway. Yes, they were the two children that he had rescued from the coracle! Sam and Jane quickly crossed the road. Sam said, 
‘Don’t worry, I am your friend, don’t you remember me from yesterday? I saved your lives when you were about to be swept down the river. I won’t hurt you. We are from London.’ 
The two skinny children smiled when they realised who he was and stuttered their thanks. They were dressed in filthy clothes, their dirty faces were covered in coal dust and they looked tired and hungry. Jane took out her packed lunch of ham sandwiches, apples and cheese and gave half of it to them. They wolfed it down greedily. 

Jane’s questions Jane asked, 
‘What are you doing? Where are you going? What are your names?’ 
The boy replied,
‘I’m Ebenezer, this is Rachel. We are off to work in the mine, each day we have to go to Mr Rose who tells us what to do.’
Jane guessed that they had not heard about the holiday, here was their chance to find out about children’s work in mines. She piped up,
‘Come with us, we are going to spend the day in the mine. We are trying to find out how children like you are treated when you work down a mine. The gentleman with us will give you a guinea each if you help. We are about to meet Mr Rose.’

The mine The mine loomed into sight, a gaunt, grim structure like a giant, black preying mantis. The winding gear was already whirring, lowering miners in the wire cage down the shaft. The two ancient beam engines thudded as their pistons pushed up and sucked down the huge oak beams that worked the mine’s winding gear and water and air pumps. Smoke and steam from the engines’ chimneys polluted the air. The children choked, coughed and spluttered. Mr Rose, who ran the mine, was waiting by the cage that would lower the children down the mine. He looked shocked at seeing the two ragged mine children. Mr Miller said that Sam and Jane would be going down the mine with the two children to find out about child labour.

Mr Rose Mr Rose snarled,
‘They’re wasting their time. It is pitch black, they won’t be able to see a thing. Only the miners at the coal face have candles. And, we have no young children under the age of ten working in this mine.’ 
‘That’s a lie’ said a miner standing by Mr Rose, ‘My brother’s boy is only six years old. He began work in the pit two years ago. He has just gone down the mine because his mother is sick and his father had to bring him to work with him. The child could not have a holiday today like the other children.’

Mr Miller scribbled this comment down in his notebook. Sam smiled when Mr Rose said that they would not be able to see a thing. Sam had read a book all about mining before they left London. He had made sure that Mr Miller had bought the latest Davy safety lamp so that they would be able to see in the mine. Sam had also told Jane about how canaries could help detect poison gas and fire damp, a gas that caused explosions. So Jane had used her transformit spell to turned Cocky Pheasant into a canary. Cocky was sitting in a tiny cage she carried, singing his heart out. Cleo was tucked safely inside her dress; she would explore the mine, using her pencil torch eyesight to see what was going on. Leader meanwhile was fast asleep in the cauldron back in their bedroom in the Tontine Inn. With the help of Ebenezer and Rachel, Jane and Sam would find out what life was really like for children below ground.

The mine shaft Mr Rose spotted Sam’s safety lamp, it was a later model than the one he used, the only one in the mine. Mr Rose knew that he had to act fast, otherwise the truth about how he used child labour would come out,
‘I will go down the mine with the children. If I find that the six year old has been made to work, I will send him to the surface at once. His father must have smuggled him down the mine shaft without telling me.’ 
The steam engine had burst into life as it wound a strong, square wire cage to the surface. The cage was full of coal, a team of women quickly shovelled it into solid square wooden carts that ran on rails. The empty cage was now ready to take Mr Rose and the four children down the mine. 

DOWN THE MINE top

Down the mine The wire door of the cage swung open, Mr Rose and the children climbed in, the door slammed shut. At once the cage on its thick cable plunged quickly two hundred metres to the bottom of the mine. Sam’s Davy lamp showed a tunnel a metre high that led to the coalface three hundred metres away. The tunnel rose slightly towards the coalface. Mr Rose and the children crawled along the tunnel with only his and Sam’s safety lamps to show the way. One hundred metres into the mine Rachel warned them that they were approaching a thick wooden door. It swung open as they approached. Behind the door Jane could see a tiny, crouching child. In his hand he held a piece of rope tied to the door, he pulled the door open when anyone approached. 

The trapper This must be the boy they had heard about. The boy knew Ebenezer and was happy to talk about his job,
‘I start work at 6.00 each day and sit here for 12 hours. It is pitch dark, although now and then a miner gives me a bit of a candle to see by. I have bread, dripping and a flask of water for lunch. Because I work for 12 hours I only see daylight at the weekends in winter.’

The child spent all day in pitch blackness. There was no toilet. The stench was awful. At once Mr Rose told the boy to go back to the mine shaft and wait to be hauled up in the cage to the surface. Jane was horrified at what she had just seen, heard and smelt. On they crawled towards the coal face.

Miners Jane and Sam knew they were getting close to the mine face as they could hear the steady thud of picks hammering away at the coalface. The coal seam was less than half a metre thick. Light from the Davy lamps showed a row of miners lying on their sides, each with the feeble glow from a candle to help them. Sam spotted that they were naked from the waist up, lying on thick blankets. Sweat ran down their faces from the hard work and the heat: the mine was very hot. A layer of black coal dust covered their sweat streaked bodies. Sam knew that breathing in coal dust would shorten their lives. The walls were running in water that drained away in a channel. A metre thick pillar of rock cut off each miner from his neighbour: the pillars kept the mine roof up. The miners worked in silence.

The chain and girdle Ebenezer and Rachel at once got to work, lifting huge lumps of coal into a sledge called a corve that was behind each miner. Tom and Jane helped while Mr Rose looked on. The sledges ran on rails that led back to the mine shaft. When the sledges were full Jane and Sam were horrified to see that Ebenezer put a harness, a girdle, around his waist to which the sledge was fixed by chains. They gasped as he arched his back and thrust with his legs to pull the corve along the rails, crawling on hands and feet, just like a pit pony. Worse, five minutes later 

Rachel Rachel also put on a girdle and began to pull a second corve the three hundred metres to the mine shaft. Jane realised that on Rachel’s elbows and knees were blisters; cuts on her back were from hitting the tunnel roof. When a corve was emptied into the mine cage they would drag it back and fill it with another load. And this would go on for twelve hours!

Fire damp Cleo had crawled off to explore the rest of the mine. In five minutes she came scurrying back. The cat told Jane that a cloud of fire damp was approaching. At that second Cocky, the canary in the cage she carried, fluttered lifeless to the bottom of his cage, gasping for breath. Jane turned to Mr Rose and said,
‘Danger! my canary has just fainted. There must be fire damp in the mine; there could be an explosion. If we hurry back to the shaft we might escape in time. I know that there have been hundreds of death from accidents in the Shropshire mines, we need to flee at once. Two weeks ago a miner was crushed to death by a firedamp explosion that brought down tons of rock.’

To safety Mr Rose ignored Jane until he noticed that the candle of the miner furthest away from them had flared up - a sure sign of fire damp. He screamed at the top of his voice,
‘Flee, run for your lives.’
At once the men scurried like ants back along the tunnel to the mine shaft, cursing and swearing as they went. Mr Rose, Jane and Sam followed, crawling as quickly as they could. Their Davy lamps lit up the tunnel. By the time they reached the mineshaft the miners, Ebenezer and Rachel had all been hauled to the surface. Would the cage come back to rescue them? 

Rescue They waited and waited, finally the cage arrived. Slowly it hauled them to the surface, they spilled out just as from below ground they heard a dull boom and felt a rush of hot air up the mine shaft. Jane looked in her seeing mirror. There had been an explosion at the coalface they had left five minutes ago. The roof had caved in just where they had been standing. Shaken, the four children walked the ten yards to the mine office where Mr Miller was waiting.

Reunion The children and Mr Miller sat in Mr Rose’s office, Mr Rose had disappeared. Bright sunshine shone in through the window and lit up Ebenezer and Rachel’s faces. Jane gasped, she realised who they were, Alice and Tom. Mr Miller hugged them both and thanked them for how well they had done to find out about child slave labour in coal mines. When they got back to the Tontine Hotel he would ask them many questions and write down in detail what they told him. And here was the guinea each that Jane had promised them! Straight away Mr Miller and the happily chattering children walked quickly back to the Tontine Inn where they bathed and changed into clean clothes. Then Tom and Alice answered Mr Miller’s detailed questions. 

To London After a huge lunch of Turkey pie, boiled potatoes, cabbages and carrots with rhubarb and custard for pudding they caught the stagecoach back to London. When they reached Mr Miller’s house Lord Ashley was waiting to greet them. He listened carefully to what Mr Miller and the children told him about slave labour in Hills Lane coal mine. A look of horror crossed his face, he could hardly believe what he heard. It was worse than how the British sugar planters had treated their black slaves in the West Indies.
‘I will go straight to see the Prime Minister and show him your report and those from other inspectors about children and women working like animals in the mines of England. Your evidence from Shropshire, based on eyewitness accounts, will be vital. I will try and get the government to back a law that will ban women and children aged under ten from working down mines.’