David Tonks

ver the winter I went to a Family History Fair with my mother and picked up a couple of Society of Genealogist publications, namely My Ancestor was Coal Miner and My Ancestors were Methodists. The latter is pretty much just a list of potential source material and its locations. All very well in its way but not really what I was looking for (especially since it says all the Methodist Baptism, Marriage and Burial records are on the Mormon website and I can't find any of my Methodist ancestors (and I have quite a lot them) there). My Ancestor was a Coal Miner was much closer to the sort of thing I was looking for - combining an overview of the main features of coal mining life with the kind of listing of source material in the Methodist book. In fact its lists of sources are rather better including a good range with sufficient description that I could immediately tell that some might be worth checking for my ancestors. Its discussion of coal mining history is slightly in the style so lampooned by 1066 and all that - lots of little facts designed to tell the neat story of the rise and fall of the industry without much scope for discussion, but then if I'd wanted a definitive history of coal mining in the UK I'd have purchased something different. I was, however, particularly struck by the horror expressed over female mine workers. I can understand why the Victorians got themselves into a bit of a tizzy on discovering women worked undergroud but find it hard to see why someone writing at the start of the 21st century should do so. "Incredibly" muses David Tonks, the author, "it was not until 1 July 1972 that the final two women surface workers were made redundant". What seems more shocking to me, as a 21st century woman, is that the Victorian (and later) reaction was to bar such women from what was, presumably, an important source of family income rather than to ensure that they enjoyed equal protection and equal pay to their male compatriots*.

* NB. I've no reason to suppose they didn't get equal protection (i.e., not much) nor equal pay since Tonks didn't deem it relevant to mention whether or not they worked on a more or less equal footing.… (more)