Page:The South Staffordshire Coalfield - Joseph Beete Jukes - 1859.djvu/240

222 common to find those important works omitted for long distances, and the men working in a confined space charged with foul gases and firedamp almost to the explosive point.

A great deal might be said on the details of this and the previous subjects, but I would hope that these short notes may only serve as a record of rude practices soon to be improved, and must refer the reader, desirous of further information on these heads, to the evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1835, of the House of Lords in 1849, to the report of Mr. J. Kenyon Blackwell, to Smith's Miner's Guide, published in 1836, and to Mr. Gibbons's pamphlet on his method of ventilation. No one. I believe, even practically unacquainted with the subject, will rise from the perusal of those statements without feeling that in the waste of a treasure of unique richness, and in the abandonment of an energetic and honest class of workmen to the dangers resulting from the absence of mental training, we have hitherto deserved as a nation but little credit for the stewardship of some of our finest coal-fields.

The following extracts from Plot's Natural History of Staffordshire, published in 1686, may serve to show the state of the South Staffordshire district, as regarded its coal and iron at that time. Speaking of the common coal then raised at Wednesbury. Dudley, and Sedgley. Dr. Plot says, "of which sort there is so great plenty in all parts of the country, (especially about the three above mentioned places,) that most commonly there are 12 or 14 colery's in work, and twice as many out of work, within 10 miles round, some of which afford 2,000 tuns of coal yearly, others three, four, or five thousand tuns. The upper or topmost beds above the ironstone lying sometimes ten, eleven, or twelve yards thick,. * * * * * Nor indeed could the country well subsist without such vast supplies, the wood being most of it spent upon the ironworks."

Alluding to the attempts which were made to smelt iron with coal or coke, he says, "The last effort that was made in this country for making iron with pit coal, was also with raw coal, by one Mr. Blewstone, a high German, who built his furnace at Wednesbury, so ingeniously contrived that only the flame of the coal should come to the oare, with several other conveniences, that many were of opinion he would succeed in it. But experience, that great baffler of speculation, showed it would not be. The sulphureous vitriolic steams that issue from the pyrites, which frequently, if not always, accompanies pit coal, ascending with the flame, and poysoning the ore sufficiently to make it render much worse iron, than that made with char coal, though not perhaps so much worse, as the body of coal it-self would possibly doe."

The different kinds of iron made are mentioned under the heads of 1. Redshare; 2. Coldshare; 3. Blend metell; and tough iron, the last being the best, and chiefly made from ores obtained at Rushall. The ores were first calcined on the open ground, "with small charcoal, wood, or sea-cole." After this they were taken to the blast furnace, where they were smelted with charcoal, one basket of the latter being used to one basket of calcined ore. The iron run from the furnaces was then taken to the forges, which were of two kinds, one known as the Finery, the other as the Chafery, and made into bars. For cutting the iron into rods it was taken to Slitting mills, and there cut and rolled.

Speaking of the improvement then made in iron smelting. Dr. Plot remarks, "we shall find it very great, if we look back upon the methods of our ancestors, who made iron in foot blasts, or bloomeries, by mens treading the bellows, by which way they they could make but one little Jump or bloom of iron in a day, not 100 weight, leaving as much iron in the slag as they get out. Whereas now they will make two or three tuns of cast iron in 24 hours; leaving the slag so poore, that the founders cannot melt them again to profit. Not to mention the vast advantage they have from the new invention of slitting mills, for cutting these barrs into rodds, above what they had antiently."

It would appear that the first successful smelting of iron ore by means of coal, then usually called pit or sea coal, was effected by Dud Dndley in the year 1619. Other unsuccessful attempts by Simon Sturtevant, John Rovenson, and others having been previously made.