Taken from The History, Topography, and Directory of the County Palatine of Durham by Francis Whellan. Second edition published in 1894.

Of the necessity for an efficient system of ventilation in coal-mines it needs no argument to prove. It is in a high degree essential to take thought for the replacement of vitiated by fresh air in the low and often complicated chambers of coal-mines, where many men and horses are engaged in hard work, and where numerous lights, with the gunpowder smoke and (lust, aid in contaminating the atmosphere. But in colliery workings additional causes come into play; a slow yet constant change takes place in the surface of the substances exposed to the air, and the general result is the absorption of oxygen; a large amount of watery vapour requires removal, the poisonous gas, carbonic acid, is frequently given off, and more commonly the insidious fire-damp, or carburetted hydrogen, exudes from the surfaces of the bared coal, or sometimes bursts from it in violent jets. The amount required for health and safety will therefore vary very much in different localities; and whilst in some cases the slightest movement of air may keep a small colliery salubrious, in fiery coals worked over a large area an actual whirlwind must be forced through the passages in order to sweep away the noxious exhalations.

Natural ventilation under favourable circumstances may be made to pass many thousands of cubic feet of air per minute through a mine; but where the pits are deep and in good order, this is enormously increased by the application of a furnace at the bottom of the shaft. Great improvements have been effected, and a vast number of mechanical appliances have been introduced, in recent years, for the purpose of establishing a constant supply of fresh air in the workings. When the shafts are ample enough, the plan of what is called splitting the air has been adopted, by which means a number of separate currents are obtained. This method has been proved to be most effective in the airing of pits, and has, when under nice management, the advantage of confining danger or the results of accident within narrow limits. Fans as a means of ventilation are successfully used at many of the pits in this county, and have partially superseded the furnace system – as many as four are employed in some of the larger collieries. Many of the fans as now constructed are of large dimensions, some of which are capable of circulating air at the rate of 150,000 cubic feet per minute. When we learn that the forcing of about 7000 cubic feet of air through a mine was considered a notable achievement seventy years ago, the fact that some of the Durham collieries now succeed in passing through their workings the enormous volumes of from 150,000 to 440,000 cubic feet per minute will be seen to be a wonderful step in advance.

A good plan of the works, with adequate ventilating power, wilt not ensure safety in a colliery unless there be a vigilant administration of all the mining affairs, united with due subordination, constant inspection, and effective discipline. It is not too much to say that the daily work of a colliery should be conducted on the supposition that danger is always to be looked for, and always to be provided against. The great mines in the north may be said to be established upon a system of effective and excellent discipline, which has been arrived at by degrees, and has been much improved within a comparatively recent period. Few collieries are now found without regular maps, which are on a large scale, and show the extent as well as the progress of the workings, the courses of the air, and the lines of dislocation in the strata, sections of which are generally formed, and sometimes adorn the office walls, while large drawings of furnaces, shafts, engineering arrangements, &c., are now frequently under keeping of the managers of the collieries.

The actual condition of the mine may at any minute be known to the resident viewer or the consulting viewer the former of whom is supposed to be, and very generally is, personally acquainted with all the workmen. A practice is now becoming general of making the most eminent viewers in the district consulting viewers, and, therefore, the highest authority of two or three principal or lesser mines, which they visit periodically. The general charge of the mining operations is delegated to the under viewer, who is expected to examine the mine daily; and in addition to his own personal inspection of the workings - the waste, the state of the air courses, and the quantity of air passing in the different currents, the ventilation, and the state of the mine generally – he is to receive a daily report from the overmen and master-wastemen on the workings and operations under their charge. As the result of his own observations, and of the reports made to him, he is to take measures for correcting irregularities and for obviating all discoverable sources of danger. The viewer is his superior officer, to whom he must, from time to time, and instantly, in all cases of emergency, make reports. The overmen have the charge of the working of the pit, and more especially of the safety of the men, whence their name. Their duty is to attend to the lighting of the pit, inspect the lamps, direct whatever candles or lamps shall be used in exploring drifts or while working, and see that lamps are always used in pillar working. They are assisted by deputies, whose duty it is to go into the pit every morning, one hour before the hewers, to examine every working place in the pit, and especially to ascertain that it is in a safe working condition. They also examine all safety-lamps before passing the "caution board," and lock them so that the men cannot tamper with them. No hewer is allowed to enter his working place until he has been examined by the deputy of his district. To the deputies also belong the laying of the tramways, the securing of the workings by timber, &c. Besides these officers, there are the master-wasteman and his assistants, who travel daily in the waste, or old workings of the pit, see that the air-courses everywhere are in good order, remedy faults of the roof, build or prop up where requisite, remove impediments to the movements of the air, and generally attend to the precautions of good ventilation. Two wastemen, travelling together, go over the whole of the waste at least once a week. At the close of each day’s labour the deputies see all the men and boys out of their respective working-places, and examine that no lights are left in the pit, that the doors are closed, and that the ventilation is in good order.

The persons engaged in a colliery are subdivided into a greater number of classes than might, perhaps, be supposed, and generally speaking, the technical designations of these classes are more significant than is usually observable in other industrial occupations, but some of these sound strangely enough to the ears of the uninitiated. They are distinguished into the two groups of "under-ground," and "upper-ground" establishments, the former engaged in the pit, and the latter in conducting the open-air arrangements. The chief of them are occupied in a way which may be illustrated in the following connected view.

The actual coal getter is called the hewer, and is the one who is directly employed in digging and filling away the coal. This work while it lasts is of all the occupations in a coal-mine the most laborious. Whether the seam be so narrow that he can only creep into it on his hands and knees, or whether it be lofty enough for him to stand upright in, he is the responsible workman who loosens the coal from its bed. All the arrangements below ground are made to suit him; he is in fact the centre of the mining system. The hewers are divided into what are called fore-shift and back-shift men. The former are usually roused by the caller at three in the morning, commence work at four, and leave off at eleven. The back-shift men start at ten, and cease work at four. All the men work in each shift one week alternately. For all the working places in a colliery "cavels" or lots are drawn as to which places the men are to work during the ensuing three months. This system prevents them from being subject to the caprice or favour of the overmen, and may account in some degree for the spirit of sturdy independence which so strongly characterises the northern miner. The width of the coal face or working places in Durham mines varies from two to ten yards, according to the system being worked – and the thickness of the seams, as already shown, vary considerably.

The wages of the hewer in every case depend upon the amount of mineral sent out by him. In narrow workings a price is paid for each lineal yard the place is driven. Next to them come the putters, who with the drivers and offhanded men commence their labours at six o’clock. The work of the putter, which is both laborious and dangerous, consists of bringing the coal in single tubs from the "hewer" to the "flat" or siding, from which they are taken by the driver to the landing, and thence by a self-acting incline, endless chain, or hauling engine to the shaft. The work of the putter is paid for at so much per score of 21 tubs, varying from tenpence to two shillings, plus any percentage of the County average.

The putters were formerly divided into trams, headsmen, foals, and half-marrows; these were all boys or youths, and their employment consisted in dragging or pushing the corves containing the coals from the workings to the passages. Now small waggons called trams are generally used. When a boy "put" or dragged a load by himself, he was designated a tram; when two boys of unequal age or strength assisted each other, the elder was called a headsman, and the younger a foal; and when two boys of equal size worked together, they were styled half-marrows. Before the introduction of metal plates and waggons, the labour of the putter was of the most exhausting kind, and was often performed by boys too weak for the purpose. The carves were generally dragged over a fir plank or even the bare floor, but now the whole way being laid with metal, even up to the workings, one boy can perform the previous work of two. The hours of the putters are now regulated by agreement between master and men, and limited to ten hours from bank to bank, and their ages range from sixteen years upwards, at which age they generally start to "hew." The trappers are the youngest boys employed in a mine. When a boy of thirteen first goes down in the pit, he is sent to "trap" or mind a door, which consists of opening and shutting one of the ventilating doors (so as to allow the passing of the waggons) used for the purpose of directing air through the workings. After being employed for a short time in this capacity, he is promoted to drive a pony used in drawing the tubs, which are in sets of from two to six, from the "flats," to which they are brought by the putters. The working hours of the trappers and drivers, who are usually under sixteen years of age, are restricted by Act of Parliament to ten hours from leaving the surface to coming back. It was formerly the practice to send down boys of not more than six years into the mine as trappers, and there to remain in darkness and solitude for the space of eighteen hours, for which he received fivepence as wages. As he usually went to work at two o’clock in the morning, his chances of seeing daylight oftener than once in a week were very slight.

The rolley way is a road or path sufficiently high for a horse to walk along it with the rolley, and is kept in repair by the rolleywaymen, stonemen, and gatewaymen, all of whom are engaged in keeping and repairing the tram roads and waggon ways, and who generally do their work in the night, when the coal drawing is not going on.

From the enumeration of the officers and men given above, the reader will plainly perceive that colliers are not merely black-faced diggers and shovellers, who attack the coal wherever they meet with it, and roam about in a dark pit to seek their coaly fortunes. All is pre-arranged and systematic; every one knows exactly whither he is to go, and what he has to do. But the preceding list, formidable as it appears, does by no means include all those engaged at a colliery – they are nearly all of them the "under-ground" hands, who could not transmit the coal to the market without the aid of the "upper-ground" establishment, which comprises banksmen, brakesmen, waiters, trimmers, staithmen, screen-trappers, and many others.

Hard as a pitman’s life seems to be, yet it is agreed by those who have a knowledge of the system in vogue at the northern collieries sixty or seventy years ago, that it was then much more laborious. "In the olden time," says the late Mr. Wilson, "the early years of a pitman’s life - that is, from the time of taking his ‘seat’ behind the door until he took up his ‘picks’ to ‘hew,’ or in other words, from his being a trapper at six years of age, until he became a ‘hewer’ about twenty – were nearly all spent ‘belaw,’ with frequently only very short intervals of rest. The youthful portion of the pitman’s life in those days was passed in the most galling slavery – eighteen or nineteen hours a day for weeks together being spent in almost insupportable drudgery. The putters of the present day would not be able to comprehend how such incessant toil could be endured." Although this state of things might not be permanent as regarded the long hours, yet the labour was always extreme.

The application of gunpowder has been a great improvement in the labour of hewing. Formerly, after a man had got ready his "top" or "jud" as they call it, he would often have to drive the wedges for an hour or two before he could "get her down," but now, instead of so distressing an exertion, a little powder blows the whole down at once. These two improvements in "putting and hewing" have made a complete revolution in undergro und affairs, and made the labour tolerable, which was formerly almost beyond human endurance.

It is satisfactory to learn, if it is not so easy to believe, that the young children and boys who were formerly employed in the mines did not suffer in health through their exclusion from daylight, the open air, and from the unnatural position in which many of them ‘had to labour, to the extent one might be led to suppose; still we might naturally conclude from the descriptions which have been given of the pitman’s outward appearance forty or fifty years ago, that the excessive labour and long hours the child was compelled to undergo must have had a pernicious effect upon the physical aspect and constitution of the man. He has been described as being diminutive in stature, misshapen and disproportionate in figure, with bowed legs and protruding chest. His features were equally unprepossessing, hollow cheeks, overhanging brow, forehead low and retreating. That this unflattering picture was to a certain extent true two or more generations ago, there is little reason to doubt. But when we call to mind the long hours he was compelled to labour in his early childhood, not unfrequently accompanied by brutal treatment – when, in other walks of life, children of the same age were tasting the comforts of parental care, but which through force of adverse circumstances were denied to him, the long hours and severe toil of his youth and manhood, such as we venture to say no slave has been called upon to perform, and for which he was generally but poorly paid – our wonder is, that he did not more fully resemble the foregoing exaggerated picture.

Mr. Wilson, in his poem "The Pitman’s Pay," gives an admirable description of some of the characteristics of the pitmen and their doings on a pay-night, from which we make the following extracts graphically depicting some of the phases of collier life as seen fifty years ago