ABSTRACT
After 1887 the issue of female pit labour lay dormant for some years. The Seventh International Conference of Miners at Aix-la-Chapelle did pass a resolution against female labour about coal mines in 1896 but in Britain women continued to work on the surface and in a number of countries they still worked above and below ground (see Appendix II). 1 In the same year and again in 1908 the pit brow women were briefly discussed in connection with proposed mines legislation but recruitment was not affected adversely. In fact at the end of the nineteenth and during the first years of the twentieth century the number of British pit brow lasses was on the increase – by 1909 there were 6,168 at work. 2 They had been used as a test case in the 1880s. Now the pit lasses and other outdoor work for women appeared to be secure.
