Title
Whitwick Colliery
Subject
Whitwick Colliery
Description
Francis Smith talks about working conditions at Whitwick Colliery during the 1920s and 1930s.
Creator
East Midlands Oral History Archive
Source
EMOHA
Publisher
EMOHA
Date
1985
Contributor
Photograph courtesy of Whitwick Historical Group. To use seek permission from whitwick@ntlbusiness.com
Rights
You may use this item in accordance with the licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/
Format
.mp3
Type
Oral History
Original Format
.mp3
Duration
1min 36sec
Transcription
It was 1926 I remember. I was 14 years old and went to work with my father. I worked in the pit bottom and he of course worked in a stall, that’s a place where the coal is hewn, three of four of them in one piece of coal face… We had no electric lamps in those days, we had safety lamps and the visibility was probably 6 feet in the stidgin’ darkness. The darkness you feel… My aim was to get with my father as a collier and it took me until having done all kinds of jobs in the pit from pony driving to tipping, to supporting roadways and I went to the coal face at the age of 17 years and 1 month…and he showed me, because he was a good collier, showed me how to get coal… So I worked with him right until 1944 when he had an accident. He was dragged up the shaft in a cage and he suffered an injury from which he never really recovered, and finished his work on the surface, on the screens… So many problems aggravated the coal mining industry but the physical part of mining is one that I always said should never be tolerated by workmen of any type, of any kind, if they could get jobs on the surface. It was too arduous, too dangerous…to work in the dark for 8 hours or more, to not see daylight during the course of a winter week, when you were working full time of course. I don’t think man was meant to work like that and I’ve said that.
Interviewer
F. Matterson
Interviewee
Francis Smith
Location
Whitwick, Leicestershire
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