Miners' Lung
Miners' Lung

Author: Mr Arthur McIvor

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2013-06-28

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1409479617

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Arthur McIvor and Ronald Johnston explore the experience of coal miners' lung diseases and the attempts at voluntary and legal control of dusty conditions in British mining from the late nineteenth century to the present. In this way, the book addresses the important issues of occupational health and safety within the mining industry; issues that have been severely neglected in studies of health and safety in general. The authors examine the prevalent diseases, notably pneumoconiosis, emphysema and bronchitis, and evaluate the roles of key players such as the doctors, management and employers, the state and the trade unions. Throughout the book, the integration of oral testimony helps to elucidate the attitudes of workers and victims of disease, their 'machismo' work culture and socialisation to very high levels of risk on the job, as well as how and why ideas and health mentalities changed over time. This research, taken together with extensive archive material, provides a unique perspective on the nature of work, industrial relations, the meaning of masculinity in the workplace and the wider social impact of industrial disease, disability and death. The effects of contracting dust disease are shown to result invariably in seriously prescribed lifestyles and encroaching isolation. The book will appeal to those working on the history of medicine, industrial relations, social history and business history as well as labour history.

The Riches Beneath our Feet
The Riches Beneath our Feet

Author: Geoff Coyle

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2010-04-22

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0191613975

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Britain's mining and quarrying industries date back to the Stone Age flint mines of 2500 BC and still exist. In that period of more than 4,000 years the country's miners have produced colossal amounts of copper, tin, lead, zinc, iron, a lot of silver and some gold, and smaller amounts of just about every other metal from arsenic to uranium. The metals were the foundation of our industrial wealth and ease of living but they were driven by King Coal, which at its peak employed a million men and produced more than 200 million tons a year. Granite from Scotland, limestone from Southern England, sandstone and Welsh slate provided our homes, factories, roads and harbours. None of this could have been achieved without the genius of engineers such as James Watt, and the invention of powerful steam engines and many other technical advances. Our good fortune in this cornucopia of wealth derives from the Island's astonishing geological history: what is now Southern England was once on the Antarctic Circle. Professor Geoff Coyle, a former mining engineer and from a mining family himself, sketches the story of how mining has shaped Britain. The account is wide ranging, involving stories of the mineral wealth of Britain and its expliotation, from simple quarrying to the advent of mass production. There are tales of the miners' lives and the great mining families, as well as accounts of the miner's work, the conditions in the mines, and mining disasters. Coyle weaves his personal experience and passion into the story, illuminating the industrial history, geology, and technology. Each chapter highlights one of the main mining fields and explores the mineral in question, its exploitation, and how technological changes affected the mining techniques used.

The Shadow of the Mine
The Shadow of the Mine

Author: Huw Beynon

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2024-03-19

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 1839767987

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No one personified the age of industry more than the miners. The Shadow of the Mine tells the story of King Coal in its heyday – and what happened to mining communities after the last pits closed. The Shadow of the Mine tells the story of King Coal in its heyday, the heroics and betrayals of the Miners’ Strike, and what happened to mining communities after the last pits closed. No one personified the age of industry more than the miners. Coal was central to the British economy, powering its factories and railways. It carried political weight, too. In the eighties the miners risked everything in a year-long strike against Thatcher’s shutdowns. Their defeat doomed a way of life. The lingering sense of abandonment in former mining communities would be difficult to overstate. Yet recent electoral politics has revolved around the coalfield constituencies in Labour’s Red Wall. Huw Beynon and Ray Hudson draw on decades of research to chronicle these momentous changes through the words of the people who lived through them. This edition includes a new postscript on why Thatcher’s war on the miners wasn’t good for green politics. ‘Excellent’ NEW STATESMAN ‘Brilliant’ TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT ‘Enlightening’ GUARDIAN

Regulating Health and Safety in the British Mining Industries, 1800-1914
Regulating Health and Safety in the British Mining Industries, 1800-1914

Author: Catherine Mills

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9780754660873

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This book explores the emergence and growth of state responsibility for safer and healthier working practices in British mining and the responses of labour and industry to expanding regulation and control. As such it will be valuable to all those with an interest in medical history, occupational health, legal history, and the social history of work in the nineteenth century.

Coal Mining in Britain
Coal Mining in Britain

Author: Richard Hayman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-08-25

Total Pages: 64

ISBN-13: 1784421227

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Coal heated the homes, fuelled the furnaces and powered the engines of the Industrial Revolution. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the coalfields – distinct landscapes of colliery winding frames, slag heaps and mining villages – made up Britain's industrial heartlands. Coal was known as 'black gold' but it was only brought to the surface with skill and at considerable risk, with flooding, rock falls and gas explosions a constant danger. Coal miners became a recognised force in British political life, forming a vociferous and often militant lobby for better working conditions and a decent standard of living. This beautifully illustrated guide to Britain's industrial heritage covers not just the mines, but the lives of the workers away from the pits, with a focus on the cultural and religious life of mining communities.

Money Pits: British Mining Companies in the Californian and Australian Gold Rushes of the 1850s
Money Pits: British Mining Companies in the Californian and Australian Gold Rushes of the 1850s

Author: John Woodland

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 1317094263

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Between 1849 and 1853 shares in nearly 120 public companies to exploit the booming goldfields of California and Australia were offered to the British public. The companies were collectively capitalised at over £15 million, but in the end only some £1.75 million was actually raised between 42 of them, with only one company surviving what the newspapers of the day described as a ’gold bubble’. This book provides an overview of the entire bubble event, its antecedents and its outcomes. A number of researchers have investigated an earlier boom in the mid-1820s to reopen gold and silver mines in Latin America and several have studied individual company operations of that period. This is the first detailed investigation of the British gold bubble companies of the 1850s and their involvement in the almost simultaneous gold rushes on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.