Leaving a young family behind

[Colin Cruddace]

I have often seen references to coal miners (and others) setting off for the promised land, leaving their wives and children behind to join them later when they had made enough to send for them.

I am wondering how a wife with 2 or 3 young children would be expected to live 

Would she be allowed to remain in a miner's cottage if none of the family actually worked in a pit, and how would she eke out a living 

It sounds an impossible situation but it did happen. I doubt if she would qualify for Parish relief, so how did they do it?

Colin

[kathyw75]

I'm quite sure they wouldn't have been allowed to live in the cottage. At one museum I visited, the guide said if for example the man of the family was killed in an accident underground, the family would have to leave the cottage on the same day as his funeral. For that reason, if there were grown-up sons still at home, they would work a different shift fromtheir dad, so as to leave a current pit worker still resident.

[bugcatcher]

My G grandfather so I am told left his wife and 3 small children to go to the goldfields in the late 1890's . I have no idea how she coped and have been unable to find them on the 1901 census. He did not return and my g grandmother later remarried. It would have been a hard life for them. 

[Arranroots]

A relative of mine moved back in with her mother when her husband went to Ohio to the coal mines from mining in Monmouthshire, and she joined him a few months later. 

She is enumerated with her parents and younger siblings, though no mention is made of her own daughter, who must have been asleep in a back room when the enumerator called!   

When Emma joined her husband the daughter is mentioned and so she was clearly about 6 months old at the time of the UK census!

[Colin Cruddace]

Thanks for your interesting stories. They more or less confirm what I thought but mine seems to buck the trend. They start their family in the pit villages but in 1856 a son is baptised in the Church where the mother was raised but unfortunately just over a year later this son dies back in the pit village. In the 1861 census they are still in the same village where mother is the head, with a 7 year old son, a scholar, and an 11 year old son, a miner! A couple of months later another son is born. Although he is registered as normal, the baptism does not acknowledge the father of the child, he was the son of the mother, a miner's wife

I'm trying to pin down when the husband left to help in finding an immigration record. I'm tempted to say it was before the birth of the son in 1856.

Thanks again,
Colin

[Jeuel]

Husband may have sent money or family may have helped.  But its likely that the woman herself would have earned money, maybe as a washerwoman or taking in lodgers.  Lots of women are just listed as "wife" on the census but in reality worked from home as well as raising children.

[Colin Cruddace]

Thanks Jeuel. The census details for dependents, ie wives and children, were very good at masking the true situation. Factories employing children were supposed to provide a couple of hours of schooling each day, so they were listed as scholars. 

I've just been going through the pages of the 1861 census for the village to see if there were any relatives and was surprised by the number of unoccupied houses, so perhaps she was allowed to continue to rent the property rather than being thrown out.

Colin

[Cell]

Hi colin,
Most of my coalmining families - my females  (wives and children) worked on top of the pits , many of mine were  also recorded in the census as doing this ( especially the female children).

In most coal mining families the wives , and female children worked  on top.( for example my G grandmother was only 14 when she was working on top in 1891).

If your relative had any children who were  boys they would have had been underground -(depending on their age  and what era)


Kind regards

[stanmapstone]

1842. AN ACT "to Prohibit the Employment of Women and Girls in Mines and Collieries, to Regulate the Employment of Boys, and to make other Provisions relating to Persons working therein." (5 & 6 Vict., c. 99.) This is the first of the series of Mines Regulation Acts. The employment of females within any mine or colliery was absolutely forbidden, and indentures relating thereto were declared to be void. The employment of boys under ten was similarly forbidden. Inspectors were to be appointed to see that the provisions of the Act were properly carried out. Women and girls were not employed underground in the coalfields of Northumberland and Durham, or in Leicestershire and Derbyshire.

1887. THE COAL MINES REGULATION ACT. (50 & 51 Vict., c. 58.)This further regulates the employment of children in, on, or about coal mines. The statutory provision relating to employment  of women and girls or of boys under twelve is extended to coal mines, and rules are laid down about overground work as follows:
1. No boy or girl under twelve years of age shall be so employed.
2. No boy or girl under the age of thirteen years shall be so employed:
(a) For more than six days in any one week; or,
(b) If employed for more than three days in any one week, for more than six
hours in one day, or in any other case for more than ten hours in any one day.
Employers are entitled to pay the school fees, if any, not exceeding twopence per week, and to deduct the same from the child's wages.

1900. MINES REGULATION ACT (PROHIBITION OF CHILD LABOUR UNDERGROUND). (63 & 64 Vict., c.21.)This is a very short Act, containing practically only one section, which is as follows: "A boy under the age of thirteen years shall not be employed in, or allowed to be for the purpose of employment in, any mine below ground, and accordingly Sections 4 and 5 of the Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1887, and Section 4 of the Metalliferous Mines Regulation Act, 1872, shall be read and have effect as if for the word 'twelve' the word 'thirteen' were substituted therein."

Stan