Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/294

 Rh At the Edinburgh Social Science Meeting, Miss Emily Faithfull read a paper on the "Unfit Employments in which Women are Engaged," in which she alluded to the female colliers of Lancashire. "Hundreds of women," said she, "are employed as common labourers at the coke-works and coal-pits at Wigan. Working at men's employment, they imitate men in their dress, and are easily mistaken for men. Very lately, a gentleman visiting the Wigan relieving officer expressed a wish to see some of the women who were employed as labourers. Several were pointed out to him as they returned from their work. 'These,' said he, 'are men, not women;' and he was only convinced of the contrary by hearing the answer given to the officer, who accosted one of them with, 'Betty, how is your husband? The incredulity of the gentleman alluded to by Miss Faithfull was but natural. Some few months since, happening to be in Wigan, my attention was directed to the, to me, unwonted spectacle of one of these female colliers returning homewards from her daily labour. It was difficult to believe that the unwomanly looking being who passed before me was actually a female, yet such was the case. Clad in coarse, greasy, and patched fustian unmentionables and jacket, thick canvas shirt, great heavy hob-nailed boots, her features completely begrimed with coal dust, her hard and horny hands carrying the spade, pick, drinking tin, sieve, and other paraphernalia of her occupation her not irregular features wearing a bold, defiant expression, and with nothing womanly about her except two or three latent evidences of feminine weakness, in the shape of a coral necklace, a pair of glittering ear rings, and a bonnet which, as regards shape, size, and colour, strongly resembled the fantail hat of a London coal-heaver; she proceeded unabashed through the crowded streets, no one appearing to regard the degrading spectacle as being anything unusual.

Some weeks later I was enabled to visit one of the collieries at which a few of these females were employed. It was a dull, cheerless scene. Green fields, leafy hedgerows, or stately trees there were none. The face of the landscape seemed as though it had been swept by a pestilential blast, which had left in its track a broad expanse of dried-up grass, stunted coppices, and leafless trees. In the midst of the dreary picture rose the huge, unsightly, and black-looking mound of refuse and cinders which forms the invariable adjunct to every colliery, and which had to be surmounted and crossed before the sombre and gallows-like erection over the pit mouth could be reached. Picking my way through minor piles of ashes, muddy pools, and dilapidated coal trucks, I reached the edge of the vast mass of seemingly useless rubbish, from the summit of which I beheld a spectacle utterly repugnant to my feelings, and according but ill with the character of the age. In various directions might be witnessed women with bared arms, one or two with short pipes in their mouths, performing labours totally unsuited to their sex. All were attired in male habiliments, but some had thrown aside their coats and jackets, and merely wore coarse shirts and trousers, the braces being passed, sailor fashion, over the shirts. Several of the women were using the pick, others were busy with their spades, and a few were engaged in sifting coal. None were idle, that being an

offence of the first magnitude in the eyes of pit-managers and overlookers, and punishable by fine and stoppages. No stranger, unless previously informed of the fact, could have imagined that these busy labourers were females—English females, the wives and daughters of English working-men. One woman pointed out to me was a wife, and the mother of several children, the eldest of whom were employed in a cotton factory. Her husband worked in the pit. The younger children were allowed to roam about the streets, the baby being placed under the care of a woman who gained a living by taking charge of a certain number of infants during the day. This family, according to my informant, earned large wages; yet, as might have been expected, they scarcely knew the