tal explosions frequently take place: the work-people are distressed by the quantity of carbonic acid gas which almost everywhere abounds, and of which they make great complaint, and the pits are so hot as to add greatly to the fatigue of the labour. While efficient ventilation,' the Report adds, is neglected, less attention is paid to drainage. Some pits are dry and comfortable. Many are so wet that the people have to work all day over their shoes in water, at the same time that the water is constantly dripping from the roof: in other pits, instead of dripping, it constantly rains, as they term it; so that in a short time after they commence the labour of the day their clothes are drenched; and in this state, their feet also in water, they work all day. The children especially (and in general the younger the age the more painfully this unfavourable state of the place of work is felt) complain bitterly of this.' It must be borne in mind that it is in this district that the regular hours of labour are not less than fourteen or sixteen a day. In the West Riding of Yorkshire, it appears that there are very few collieries where the main road exceeds a yard in height, and in some it does not exceed twenty-six or twenty-eight inches; nay, in some it is even as little as twenty-two inches in height; so that in such places the youngest child cannot pass along without great pain, and in the most constrained posture. In East Scotland, where the side-roads do not exceed from twenty-two to twenty-eight inches in height, the working-places are sometimes 100 and 200 yards distant from the main-road; so that females have to crawl backwards and forwards

with their small carts in seams, in many cases not exceeding twentytwo to twenty-eight inches in height. The whole of these places, it appears, are in a most deplorable state as to ventilation, and the drainage is quite as bad as the ventilation. The evidence of their sufferings, as given by the young people and the old colliers themselves. is absolutely hideous. In North Wales, the main-roads are low and narrow, the air foul, the places of work dusty, dark, and damp, and the ventilation most imperfect. In South Wales, in many pits, the ventilation is wholly neglected; and the Report complains of the quantity of carbonic acid gas, which produces the most injurious effects, though not actually bad enough to prevent the people from working. This, indeed, is the general result of the Report of the Commissioner for that district. With respect to the mines in Glamorganshire and Pembrokeshire, he states the ventilation to be most imperfect, and productive of a manifest tendency to shorten life, as well as to abridge the number of years of useful labour on the part of the workpeople."

After these statements he proceeded to describe the nature of the employment practised in these localities.:" Now, it appears that the practice prevails to a lamentable extent of making young persons and children of a tender age draw loads by means of the girdle and chain. This practice prevails generally in Shropshire, in Derbyshire, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in Lancashire, in Cheshire, in the East of Scotland, in North and South Wales, and in South Gloucestershire. The child, it appears, has a girdle bound round

its waist, to which is attached a chain, which passes under the legs and is attached to the cart. The child is obliged to pass on all-fours, and the chain passes under what, therefore, in that posture, might be called the hind-legs; and thus they have to pass through avenues not so good as a common sewer, and oftentimes as much neglected. This kind of labour they have to continue during several hours, in a temperature described as perfectly intolerable. By the testimony of the people themselves it appears that the labour is exccedingly severe; that the girdle blisters their sides and causes great pain. Sir,' says an old miner, 'I can only say what the mothers say, it is barbarity-absolute barbarity.' Robert North says-'I went into the pit at seven years of age. When I drew by the girdle and chain, the skin was broken and the blood ran down. If we said any thing, they would beat us. have seen many draw at six. They must do it, or be beat. They cannot straighten their backs during the day. I have sometimes pulled till my hips have hurt me so that I have not known what to do with myself.' In the West Riding, it appears, girls are almost universally employed as trappers' and 'hurriers,' in common with boys. The girls are of all ages, from seven to twenty-one. They commonly work quite naked down to the waist, and are dressed-as far as they are dressed at all-in a loose pair of trousers. These are seldom whole on either sex. In many of the collieries, the adult colliers, whom these girls serve, work perfectly naked. Near Huddersfield, the Sub-Commissioner examined a female child. He says -'I could not have believed that

I

I should have found human nature so degraded. Mr. Holroyd and Mr. Brook, a surgeon, confessed, that although living within a few miles, they could not have believed that such a system of unchristian cruelty could have existed.' Speaking of one of the girls he says- She stood shivering before me from cold. The rug that hung about her waist was as black as coal, and saturated with water, the drippings of the roof.' In a pit near New Mills,' says the Sub-Commissioner, the chain, passing high up between the legs of two girls, had worn large holes in their trousers. Any sight more disgustingly indecent or revolting can scarcely be imagined than these girls at work. No brothel can beat it.' Sir," continued Lord Ashley, "it would be impossible to enlarge upon all these points without going too far into the evidence, from which the most abundant selections might be made. I will say, however, that nothing can be more graphic and touching than the evidence of many of these poor girls. Insulted, oppressed, and even corrupted as they are, there exists oftentimes, nevertheless, a simplicity and kindness in these poor beings, which render tenfold more heart-rending that system which forces away these young people from the holier and purer duties which Providence appoints for them, to put them to occupations so unsuited, so harsh, so degrading. It appears that they drag these heavy weights, some 12,000 yards, some 14,000 yards, and some 16,000 yards daily.' In the East of Scotland,' says the Commissioner, 'the persons employed in coal-bearing are almost always girls and women. They carry coal on their backs on unrailed roads,

with burdens varying from cwt. to 3 cwt.-a cruel slaving,' says the Sub-Commissioner, revolting to humanity. I found a little girl, only six years old, carrying cwt., and making regularly fourteen long journies a day. With a bur then varying from 1 cwt. to 1 cwt., the height ascended and the distance along the roads, added together, exceeded in each journey the height of St. Paul's Cathedral.' Thus we find a child of six years old with a burthen of at leastcwt., going fourteen times a day a journey equal in, distance to the height of St. Paul's Cathedral! The Commissioner goes onAnd it not unfrequently happens that the tugs break, and the load falls upon those females who are following; who are of course struck off the ladders. However incredible it may be, yet I have taken the evidence of fathers who have ruptured themselves by straining to lift coal on their children's backs.' But, if this is bad enough for the fathers of the children, the case is still worse for pregnant women: it is horrible for them." Lord Ashley observed, "that he had ever found these people most accurate in their evidence on their own condition. 'I have a belt round my waist,' says Betty Harris, and a chain passing between my legs, and I go on my hands and feet. The road is very steep; and we have to hold by a rope, and, where there is no rope, by any thing we can catch hold of. It is very hard work for a woman. The pit is very wet. I have seen water up to my thighs. My clothes are wet through almost all day long. I have drawn till I have had the skin off me. The belt and chain is worse when we are in the family way.' 'A woman has gone

home,' says another, taken to her bed, been delivered of a child, and gone to work again under the week.' The oppression of coalbearing,' says E. Thompson, 'is such as to injure women in afterlife and few exist whose legs are not injured, or haunches, before they are thirty years of age.'

:

Jane Watson had two dead.children; thinks it was so from the oppressive work. "A vast number of women have dead children, and false births, which is worse, as they are not as able to work after the latter. I have always been obliged to work below till forced to go home to bear the bairn ; and so have all the other women. We return as soon as able-never longer than ten or twelve days; many less, if they are much needed. It is only horse-work, and ruins the women; it crushes their haunches, bends their ankles, and makes them old women at forty." Another poor girl says. We are worse off than horses: they draw on iron rails, and we on flat floors.' Another witness, a most excellent old Scotchwoman, Isabel Hogg, says-From the great sore labour, false births are frequent, and very dangerous. Collier-people suffer much more than others. You must just tell the Queen Victoria, that we are quiet, loyal subjects; women-people here don't mind work, but they object to horse-work; and that she would have the blessings of all the Scotch coal-women if she would get them out of the pits and send them to other labour.' Well, Sir, and I say so too," added Lord Ashley.

The next point related to the hours of work. "When workpeople are in full employment," says the Report, the regular hours of work for children and

young persons are rarely less than eleven; more often they are twelve; in some districts they are thirteen. In Derbyshire, children, &c. work sixteen hours out of the twentyfour, reckoning from the time they leave their home in the morning until they return to it in the evening." As regards the East of Scotland, there is "overwhelming evidence. The labour is often continued, on alternate days, at least fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen hours out of the twenty-four." Anne Hamilton, seventeen years old, says, "I have repeatedly wrought the twenty-four hours; and after two hours of rest and my pease-soup, have returned to the pit and worked another twelve hours." "In the great majority of these mines night-work is a part of the ordinary system of labour. The labour is generally uninterrupted by any regular time set apart for rest and refreshment; what food is taken in the pit being eaten as best it may while the labour continues. In the coal-mines of Ireland a fixed time is allowed, at least for dinner."

ex

The physical effects on the workpeople are not so visible as might be supposed until a certain time of life; though some children suffer severely from mere haustion. One phenomenon is a preternatural and unhealthy muscular developement. The physical effects of this system of labour may be classed under these heads stunted growth, crippled gait, irritation of head, back, and feet, a variety of diseases, premature old age, and death. "Several," says Dr. Scott Allison, "become crooked. Diseases of the spine are very common and very serious. Several of the girls and women so employed

become asthmatic. Dr. Scott Allison says, that between the ages of twenty and thirty, many colliers become more and more spare: "the want of proper ventilation," says an old miner," is the chief cause; the men die off like rotten sheep." There was also another new disease, of which the House now heard perhaps for the first time-the awful melanosis or black spittle, attributed to the want of oxygen to decarbonize the blood, and by Dr. Makellar to a carbonaceous infiltration into the substance of the lung. The disease is incurable and fatal. The colliers, says Mr. Massey, Clerk to the Wellington Union, are disabled at forty; and one of the Commissioners says, that each generation of that class of the population is commonly extinct soon after fifty.

Lord Ashley then proceeded to describe the moral effects of the system as being equally ruinous and fatal. It superinduced a feeling of ferocity among the men, who exercised gross acts of cruelty upon the boys employed under them, sometimes inflicting fatal injuries upon them; such outrages, however, were so common as to excite no sensation. People would say, "Oh! it is only a collier;" and no more feeling was exhibited than if the same cruelty were exercised upon a dog. With respect

to the women, between overwork and demoralization, they were rendered wholly unfit for the duties of their sex. It appears that they are wholly disqualified from even learning how to discharge the duties of wife and mother. Matthew Lindley, a collier, says" I wish the Government would expel all females from mines: they are very immoral; they are worse than the men, and use far more indecent language." George Armitage says, "Nothing can be Nothing can be worse. John Simpkin openly avowed the part which he had repeatedly taken in destroying the morals of the girls. Now, the corruption of the men is bad enough; but if we suffer the women to be corrupted, it is perfectly obvious that we are allowing the waters to be poisoned at their very source. Indeed, it appears that wherever girls are employed the immoralities are scandalous. The Reverend Richard Roberts says, "The practice of working females in mines is highly objectionable, physically, intellectually, morally, and spiritually." "It is awfully demoralizing," says Mr. Thornely, a Justice of the Peace for the county of York: "the youth of both sexes work often in a naked state." The Sub-Commissioner says, "The employment of females in this district is universally conceived to be so degrading, that all other classes of operatives refuse intermarriage with the daughters of colliers who work in the pits." Joseph Fraser, a collier, says, "The employment unfits them for the duties of a mother: the men drink hard, the poor bairns are neglected; in fine, the women follow the men and drink hard also." "Under no conceivable circumstances," says

the Sub-Commissioner, "is any one sort of employment in collieries proper for females: the practice is flagrantly disgraceful to a Christian as well as to a civilized country." "I have scarcely an exception to the general reprobation of this revolting abomination." "I am decidedly of opinion," says Mr. Thornely, "that women brought up in this way lay aside all modesty, and scarcely know what it is but by name. I sincerely trust that before I die I shall have the satisfaction of seeing it prevented and entirely done away with." "Now, I know," added Lord Ashley, "that the Commissioners have not by any means told the worst of the story. They could not, in fact, commit to print for general circulation all the facts and circumstances that have come to their knowledge in connexion with this system: but it does not require any very vigorous imagination on the part of those who have read or heard these statements, to draw from them conclusions amounting to a state of things which is not only disgraceful, but highly injurious to the country."

After reciting these painful details, the exposure of which produced a strong sensation of indignant surprise and reprobation in the House, Lord Ashley proceeded to state the means which he should call upon the Legislature to adopt for an immediate removal of the most hideous and appalling features of the system which he had described. The first provision, demanded by the most urgent and imperative necessity, was the total exclusion of female labour from all mines and collieries in the country. Few, he believed, had any real interest in keeping the women so employed. The motives