< Back

Earnings of Pitmen [Coal Mining Broadside].
Publisher: Printed at the Journal Office...by John Hernaman, Newcastle upon Tyne;
Date of Publication: 1844
Stock Code: 5575
Broadside approximately 27 x 22 cm. Single sheet in bold type with title underlined. Minor loss to left-hand edge with associated creasing (margin only, text unaffected); faint creases from historic folding. Fingermark to lower edge and single spot of foxing to reverse. A clean copy. List of current earnings for Mark and John Barnes and Joseph Charlton, with notes on the “unreasonable demands” made by the pitmen for an increase in their wages, with details of offers of increased pay made to and declined by the miners. The background to this was the 1844 Miners’ Strike, a long and bitter struggle during which many miners and their families were evicted from their tied cottages and blackleg workers were brought in to the area from other parts of the country to take their jobs. The hostile tone of this broadside makes it clear that the writer was firmly on the side of the mine owners. A rare survivor, unsurprisingly unrecorded. £200.00