ABSTRACT
Death and disease in the workplace throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were largely accepted either as incidental to the nature of labour or as an act of God, that ‘no human foresight could prevent’.1 Limited scientific and medical understanding of the circumstances that gave rise to mining tragedies reinforced these notions.2 There was no attempt to establish a formal death rate in either sector. In some colliery districts, such as the northeast, it was not customary to hold inquests on miners killed at work until 1813, and even then juries were often directly or indirectly under the influence of the colliery owners.3 The local newspapers similarly played down the horrors of explosion.4 The Newcastle Journal claimed we have been ‘requested to take no particular notice of these things [pit disasters]’ and ‘we drop further mention of it’.5 The colliery owners, in particular, disliked enquiry into their managerial practice and pursued a vigorous policy of limiting the examination of pit deaths wherever possible.6 Mining labour inhabited a subterranean world that was largely invisible to the public eye.
