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THE B"LACK COUNTRY. 85
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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_ 4 « We Have No Objection To Ours Being...
/ From ' these- and similar causes , their attendance at school is only at distant and fitful intervals in their extreme childhood ; that season
, passed women , may they do are about employed the blast on the furnaces pit-banks . On , and the bank in such they work assist as
-¦ in bringing the _" skip " ( or iron basket in which the coal is drawn ) to landhelp to unload it , and also load carts and wagons
up waiting to be , supplied , or stack the coal until wanted : at canal wharfs they are similarly employed in loading boats ; they carry
the " pikes" to and fro which want repairs ; candles , of which great quantities are consumed , and the - " pit drink . " Of this last , one
woman will often carry thirty quarts at a time . At the blast furnaces they are employed in riddling the refuse calcined iron , _carrying
water and attending to the coke fires ; they also wash the ashes from the puddling furnaces , or , as they are technically called ,
•*•* brays . " . The majority of females so occupied are young single girls loyed , and . in The an area coal of mines five miles Ci dip from " to the 500 south to 600 , and women in the are thick thus
coal emp -fields no women are employed . For these services their "wages from Is . Sd . to Is . Sd . per day ; for the same work a man
would vary be paid 3 s . Sd . per day ; and it is calculated that _Rve women do the work of four men , so that by employing women a
considerable saving is effected . We cannot -wonder if the young girl , shut out from the holy influences and quiet teaching" of home , her
strength in many instances taxed beyond its power , seeing nothing better than the coarse associations of the pit-bank and the
furnaceyard , her ears polluted from her cradle with fierce oaths and rude languageaccustomed to no higher enjoyments than those of the
sensesshould , seek her pleasures only in those things that she , 'knows ; nor can we wonder that in such an atmosphere the blessed
buoyancy of spirit so hard to kill in youth , so strong to hope , and striveand believeshould run riot , and lead its possessor into
unwomanl , y and unbecoming , levity of speech and conduct . An early marriagewith its new responsibilities of which she is
utterly ignorant , finishes , her girlish career , and the slatternly waste-: fill wifetoo often the mate of a drunken improvident husband , drags
up ( for one , cannot say brings up ) a family in the only way of which she has any knowledgeand thus the evil is widened and increased .
The use of stimulants , is a fearful evil of these districts , and is as much a custom among women as men—the child sent to the
ginshop to coax home her drunken father has the poisoned cup placed to her lips in maudlin kindness ; she is from infancy familiar with
such places : a few years , and she enters unabashed the gin-palace with her loverfor the glass which is the accustomed indulgence of
the holidahour , : inarriedshe has to fetch her husband often nightly from y Ms haunts ; w aiting for him she takes the tempting
liquid which raises her weary spirits , and makes her for a time :- increases forget her t troubles he fatal ha bit craving is irrevoca for b lformed false streng and of its excit effec ts ment our
, y ,
The B"Lack Country. 85
THE B _" LACK COUNTRY . 85
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Oct. 1, 1861, page 85, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01101861/page/13/
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