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• Introduction
• What jobs did children do undergound?
• The Royal Commission
• Health
• Wages
• School
• The dangers of working underground
• Using evidence

Coal Mining and the Victorians

Health

Working in a mine often meant long hours and poor working conditions, which greatly affected children’s health.

Children could spend up to twelve hours underground, six days a week. This meant that in winter sometimes they would not see daylight from one day to the next. Having only one day off a week on Sunday, also meant that there wasn’t much time to rest, play or go to school.

The work was very dangerous and the fact that there were often few safety rules resulted in many serious injuries and deaths. Health was also affected by the constant damp, draughts and coal dust. The children’s diet was quite limited and mainly consisted of potatoes and gravy with meat occasionally on Sunday.

The sub-commissioners were very interested in children’s health and how they were affected by working in a coal mine. Their report includes tables of information about the children’s height, weight and ‘physical condition’. On one of them you will see it has been reported that a child was ‘sadly deformed in spine and shoulder’.

Suggested Activities:

• What questions do you think that the sub-commissioners might have asked the children to find out about their health?

• Describe what a typical healthy ten-year-old child should be like. You could think about height, weight, diet, amount of exercise. Are there any other things you should include to measure how healthy someone is?

Using the Resources on This Page

• Use the information in the tables to plot a graph showing the ages and heights of the collier girls and boys examined.
• Create your own chart by collecting the ages and heights of pupils in your class. How does your class compare with the collier boys or girls?
• Look at the data collected in the tables. Use this to look at averages – mode, mean and median of the data.
• Produce a modern-day version of the sub-commissioners’ report by creating a database using the data in the tables.
• Students could create graphs or charts to show comparisons between the children that worked down the mine and those that worked on the farm.