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Deaths in British
Coal Mines, 1838
One of the
features of British industry which most worried reformers was the
large number of children who were killed in work-related accidents.
These accidents were particularly common in coal-mining and were
more likely to be fatal than in other industries. The following
table gives a breakdown of deaths in coalmine accidents for 1838,
with figures for children (under 13 years of age), adolescents (13
to 18 years of age) and adults (over 18 years of age).
| Examine
the figures in the table below and answer the following questions:-
1.
How big a problem were child and adolescent death in British
coalmining in 1838?
2.
What were the most likely causes of death in each of the three
age groups? (You may wish to use percentages)
3.
What do these figures reveal about the division of labour
between adults, adolescents and children in coal mines?
4.
Are there other causes of death which are not mentioned in
the table but which may have been work-related? What are these
other causes of death?
5.
How reliable is this type of statistical evidence in assessing
industrial working conditions in England in the nineteenth
century?
6.
What other types of evidence would you need in order to make
a fuller assessment of working conditions in British industry?
|
An imperfect
abstract from the registration of deaths for the year 1838, gives
a total, in England alone, of 349 deaths by violence in coal mines,
and shows the most common causes of them:-
|
Cause
of death
|
Under
13
years
of
age
|
13
and not
exceeding
18
years
of age
|
Over
18
years
of
age
|
Total
|
| Fell
down the shafts |
13
|
12
|
31
|
56
|
| Fell
down the shaft from the rope breaking |
1
|
—
|
2
|
3
|
| Fell
out when ascending |
—
|
—
|
3
|
3
|
| Drawn
over the pulley |
3
|
—
|
3
|
6
|
| Fall
of stone out of a skip down the shaft |
1
|
—
|
3
|
4
|
| Drowned
in the mines |
3
|
4
|
15
|
22
|
| Fall
of stones, coal, and rubbish in the mines |
14
|
14
|
69
|
97
|
| Injuries
in coal-pits, the nature of which is not specified |
6
|
3
|
32
|
41
|
| Crushed
in coal-pits |
—
|
1
|
1
|
2
|
| Explosion
of gas |
13
|
18
|
49
|
80
|
| Suffocation
of choke-damp |
—
|
2
|
6
|
8
|
| Explosion
of gunpowder |
—
|
1
|
3
|
4
|
| By
tram-wagons |
4
|
5
|
12
|
21
|
| Total |
58
|
60
|
229
|
347
|
This table
is taken from John Saville (ed.) Working Conditions in the
Victorian Age (Westnead, Gregg International, 1973)
©Michael
Share
Department of History
University of Hong Kong
|
