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Welsh Coal Mines
Here are just a few photographs that will give you an idea of the people and conditions that were present in the Welsh coal works.
Above is an artists rendering of the Coal Works near Neath in 1798.
This photograph is of two miners waiting to enter the mine with a "canary" caged in a crate to test the quaility of the air. As long as the bird lives, the air is free of gases and fit for men.
This photo shows a miner hauling the coal ore from the interior of the mine to the surface using a horse drawn coal cart.
This photograph is of a group of Welsh miners waiting to go on shift. Their appearance is quite different when they emerge to return home. Their skin and clothes are pitch black from the coal dust which is also inhaled into the lungs and can cause a condition appropriately named, "Black Lung" from which many miners have died.
Although these photographs are Welsh examples, the methods, conditions and faces of the miners who worked and died in these mines is the same weather in the coalfields of the United Kingdom or in the the hills of Pennsylvania and West Virginia where my ancestors settled and worked. I still have many relatives who today descend down into the mines to make their livelihood. ** Photographs from "Welsh Coal Mines" from the Nat'l Museum of Wales.
