found our way out, and were nigh starved
to death.

"I was strong of my age, and the butty
said I had some sense in me, and set me to
to use the pick sooner than is usual. In
general the miner does not use the pick, and
become a holer or undergoer [those who go
into holes and undermine masses of coal] till
he is one-and-twenty. I was set to do this at
nineteen, and earned four shillings a-day, and
sometimes more. Got badly burnt once at
this work. I was lying in a new working
where the air was bad, and I was obliged to
use a Davy lamp. I had bought a new watch
at Tipton, and I wanted to see what o'clock
it was by it—else, what was the use on it?
—and as I couldn't tell by the Davy, I
just lifted off the top—and pheu! went the
gas, and scorched my face all over, so that
the skin all peeled off. It was shocking to
see. I was laid up with this for two months
—and sarv'd me right, I say now, but it was
hard to bear at the time.

"As for accidents from the explosion of gas,
I say there's no help for them, and never can
be, so far as the men themselves are concerned.
I have been oftentime very careless myself, as
I've told you, and so are all miners, and
always will be. You may cure the mine of
gas, perhaps, but you'll never cure the men.
Nor I don't well see how you're to cure the
gas, at all times, neither. When a heading [the
working at the end of an excavation] is made
up a slant, the gas collects in the upper end,
and to disturb this gas, as you must do, and
distribute it, and drive it away, a'nt so safe
and easy a matter, without a chance of a bit
of an explosion or two. The worst time of all
is when an up-hill heading is united to another
heading, for then you're almost certain to
have a rush down of the gas, and if there's an
uncovered light in the way, you 're sure of an
explosion. Well—then, don't have a light in
the way, on such occasions; make the
juncture of the two headings in the dark. That's
easy said; and so we 're ordered, and so
we ought to; but to get men to do it,
that's the job. Besides, if it was all being
done in the dark, a boy might come
running that way with a lighted candle in his
hand, a-singing 'Susannah'—and then where
are you?

"You want to know if there's no authority,
and no order down in the mines—nobody
to walk about and prevent accident from
carelessness? Well there's the butty, as gives
out the work; and there's the doggy, who is
always a-walking about to see it done. But
what's one man to miles, and miles of
darkness underground, with gas or bad air
everywhere, and roof and walls always liable to
fall in? The overlookers have enough to do
to take care o' theirselves, at times. Some
years ago—1838 about—at Tamworth—a butty
coming to his work in the morning, walked
right into the pit's mouth with two candles
in his hand; and only t'other day, in one of
our mines here, a doggy had his head blown
off with the wild-fire.

"It doesn't come of drink, this carelessness
of the miners; it's just in our natur not to
care—that's all. We do drink and eat too,
a good deal; but not in the mine. Our
dinners there, are not much, except on
particular days, when there is a feast: but when
we come up from the pit, we have hot suppers
at night in our cottages. The doctors say that
a miner needs to eat near three times as much
as a mechanic who sits at his work all day;
and we do eat three times as much. We're
not a drunken set o' people; only on Mondays
there's a many drunk, and not very
handsome-like on Tuesdays. We mostly lie in
bed and sleep half Sundays. Some of us are
tee-totallers—but a werry, werry few. The
Marquis o' Hastings, who's a great coal-
owner, once told a collier that he knew a
miner who had never drank a quart of beer
in all his life, put together, yet he had lived
to the age of ninety. But the collier said,
that if such a man without beer could live to
be ninety,—if he had but ha' drunk a quart
of ale a day, he 'd have lived for ever!

"After I had been an under-goer three
years, I had a large piece of coal fall upon
me from the roof in one of the workings
which broke my leg. My mother was dead,
and I was not married at this time, because
the girl I should ha' married, took up with
somebody else; so I went to my sister to be
nursed. She and her husband were going
to live at Durham, and persuaded me, when I
was well, to go along with them. I soon
went down into the pit again, and used to
earn five shillings a day. It was here that
happened one of those very bad explosions I
told you of when you first spoke to me about
this last business. The one I now speak of
was in the Willington Colliery.

"It was in the Bensham seam of this
colliery that the explosion I am going to
tell on took place. It took place on the
19th of April, 1841, at a little arter one
P.M. The Bensham seam lies about a
hundred and forty fathoms from the surface;
the coal is over four feet in thickness in most
parts, and the pit is good nine feet four wide
from wall to wall. The coals are drawn up
in iron cages; two tubs on each cage. The
pit had been in work some time. We had
advanced two hundred and eighty yards from
the bottom of the shaft. Besides this, there
were two north headways, each seven feet wide,
which had advanced more than two hundred
yards. Holings were made between each of
the headways for air. We had an up-cast
shaft, called the Edward Pit, by which the
air ascended to the surface, after ventilating
all the workings. The current of air, you
understand, descended by another shaft, as
was called the Bigge Pit. One current went
one way; another current another. There
was pains enough taken to give us enough
wholesome air.