Mr. Brown Miners’ Agent
Researched by John Lumsdon
On Wednesday evening 26th March 1879 a meeting of miners was held in the Miners’ Lodge Room, Red Bull Inn, Butt Lane. The meeting was well attended. Mr. E. Edwards presided. The chairman remarked that union was much needed among the miners everywhere, he was glad to know that their own district had been able to withstand the storms of reductions and exactions and he had no fear of a collapse of the union in their locality. It was the duty of all union men to do all they possible could, in a reasonable and lawful manner, to influence all colliers who were not in union, to become members of the Association. He would not trouble the meeting with any further remarks, as he saw by the bills that Mr. Brown had stated that he would give the meeting a little of his experience through life.
Mr. Brown commenced his address by stating that all members were sober workmen who had seen a bill would consider it a little novel or strange when they saw the subject he has selected viz. His birthday and experience of life. He had no need to inform his hearers that he had a birthday; his father and mother had always told him that he was born on the 6th of March in the last year of the first quarter of this century, about five and a half years after the Peterloo massacre and about seven years before the Reform Bill of 1832 and one year before the repeal of the Combination Laws.
He never knew his grandfather or his grandmother Brown. His father was left in the cold charity of distant relatives when he was about four years of age and he had a very hard bringing up. He was sent to farm service when he was about seven years of age and worked as a farm labourer for nearly 20 years. His (Mr. Browns) mother was a daughter of Thomas Sheldon who was a miner and a very industrious man. He lived to a good old age and died in his 83rd year. He worked in the pit until he was 70 years of age or thereabouts. He had no much education but could read his bible and hymns in the Wesleyan hymn book and those two books constituted nearly the whole of his library. He might occasionally read a weekly newspaper but he could not often enjoy that luxury in literature. When he (the speaker)was between three and four years of age he had a very narrow escape with his life. Being a little mischievous and adventurous he by some means climbed to the top of a house for the purpose of pulling a sparrow’s nest and wile he was reaching out, he overbalanced and fell head foremost to the ground and the coping stones coming into contact with his head made so deep an impression as to make him unconscious for a time and he bore upon his forehead the scar at that moment.
When about six years of age he commenced to work as a juvenile gardener for the magnificent sum of 3d per day or eighteen pence per week. When about eight years of age his father left Rothwell and went to reside at Middleton Grange. He then got a little promoted and began to work in the fields occasionally for six pence per day. He could well remember pulling turnips along with his father, when both the ground and turnips were covered with snow. At nine years of age he was put to stone breaking, he had to walk three miles to his work and three miles back again every day. Then he had a shilling per day.
He would not be able to inform them or to give them a detailed review of his life and varied occupation, but he began to work underground when about thirteen years of age. Sometimes he “hurried” or what was called in this country “drawer” by himself. At other times he had what was called a “helper” which meant a big boy and a little boy pushing at the end of one tub. In these modern times that barbarous and slavish mode of working was almost done away with as it had been superseded by various kinds of machinery, ponies etc. Pit boys in those days as well as pit girls and pit women, were kept underground from six in the morning until six or seven in the evening, and the wages received for that kind of work were miserable which was as bad or worse than English slavery, and the boys of this day who were employed at similar work ought to be thankful of such gentlemen had ever lived as messrs. Macdonald, M.P. Burt M.P. the late John Normansell, the late John Dixson, the late J Booth, the late James Price and others whose names he did not remember, who had worked hard in their day for the amelioration of the condition of the young slaves who were kept in continual bondage for many years in succession and the present generation of miners ought to be thankful for such men who stood manfully upon the platform to denounce the wrongs the mining population were yet enduring and dared to denounce and censure all men who were mean enough to take undue advantage of simple but industrious colliers who new nothing or next to nothing of worldly matters, but to do a hard days work for such wages as the employers who deemed it right to give them. It brought to him a portion of a little rhyme which was composed by a North Staffordshire man where it said;
Pray tell me no more of the outlandish nations
Of African Negroes in bondage and thrall
For slaves maybe found amongst all occupations
But that of the miners surpasses then all
Up to 1842 girls, women and little boys could be worked and were cruelly worked any number of hours needy parents and greedy masters thought fit to work them.
At that day education for miners’ children was never talked of and one Member of Parliament who cuts a dash in the House of Commons in these days sneered at the idea of education the juvenile mining population, for that honourable gentleman dared to say on one occasion in a certain debate in the House of Commons, if the government considered the question of educating pit boys and agreed to do it or enforce it by force of law the gentlemen of England would find out at some future day that they would have to hew their own coal. And suppose they had, he (Mr. Brown) could not see that they could be employed at much more honest and dignified labour
It was in 1842 that the act was passed prohibiting female labour in mines; it was in 1872 that the Act was passed to protect the lads. Messrs. Macdonald, Burt, and all who stood by them while advocating the right and denouncing what they considered to be wrong, had laboured hard for many long years for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining what now all workmen who worked in and about the mines in Great Britain and every day the lived and laboured they were recipients of the great boon that had been given to them by law and they ought to be glad that their case had been taken up by men who well understood what they were doing and were determined never to rest satisfied until every wrong was redressed and all manner of oppression stamped out of existence. He (Mr. Brown had worked underground at various kinds of work for 25 years. He had worked as a drawer, hurrier, or putter; he had worked as a day wage man and hooker-on, he had worked in thin seams, worked in thick seams, in wet work, in dry work; and many in very dangerous places, in fact there are no hardships that a miner endured as a worker but he knew something about. He had been underground when explosions had occurred and on several occasions within a short distance of the fire, but he was thankful to say not a hair on his head had ever been singed nor had he ever been the leased injured by the effects of an explosion.
He was in a long strike in 1844, he was in a 40 weeks strike in 1858, he commenced being a miners’ agent in July 1863 when 1.400 men were locked out near Normanton in the West Riding of Yorkshire, he had travelled many thousands of miles by night and by day; he had addressed thousands of public meetings; he had Bourne the heat and the burden of the day as a miners’ agent; he had been both applauded and calumniated; he had been considered an honest man and denounced as a traitorbut all this had proved to him that facts could not be destroyed and honesty was the best policy. He was a believer of unionism among miners, but he never had any faith in the permanent benefit of strikes.
He never could see how colliers could be represented influentially but by they being thoroughly united. He had stood many storms, endured much hardship on account of the part he had taken in connection with the miners but amidst it all his confidence had never been shaken in unionism and the benefits to be derived there from. The union in 1844 did well; the union in 1858 did well; and the present National Union had been the means of securing better legislation for the mining population of Britain. He urged the miners of Butt Lane to buckle on their union armour a fresh and he would say through the press to every miner in North Staffordshire, from centre to circumference, be ye united for without union you are void of defence, but with union you can complain of wrongs and contend for the right.