ABSTRACT
Barnsley was the sixty-first county borough by size in 1931, with a population of just over 70,000. It was situated in the heart of the South Yorkshire coalfield, the Barnsley seam running in a line roughly from north to south through the town. Along this seam lay numerous pits which comprised the central group of collieries in the coalfield. In the area surrounding Barnsley almost ninety pits can be identified between 1840 and 1880, of which at least ten were located within the inter-war boundaries of the borough. Even after merger and reorganisation, there were still thirty-one large pits in the Barnsley area in 1948.1 Coal dominated the local economy, and this dominance was strengthened in the borough by the boundary extension of 1921 which took in mining areas to the north and east of the town in the Ardsley and Monk Bretton wards. Moreover, the colliery influence on the town's occupational structure was intensified by the fact that many miners were known to live within the bo~ough but travelled every day to work at pits outside the town? Unsurprisingly, coal-mining was by far the largest male occupational group in Barns ley, comprising 44 per cent of the total in 1931. Only Merthyr in South Wales had a higher proportion amongst the county boroughs. There was no other industrial sector that provided significant levels of male employment. Typically of a mining town, opportunities for female employment were also restricted. Just over 20 per cent of the female population was included in the industry tables of the 1931 census, one of the lowest figures amongst the boroughs. The relatively small number of women workers were concentrated mainly in domestic service, shop-work, and the clothing industry.
