The Ashtrays of Treason

I was asked to write an article about my maternal grandmother by the magazine of the flemish adhd support group zit stil. She has nothing to do with the Ackholt farm story, but a link can be found here: Adhd in the family or Black Devil Granny and the Ashtrays of Treason.

Body Heat ,part 2

From my Christmas Present:

'The Coal Commission of 1866-72 considered this question, and the blood heat limit (98F) was thought to be the highest at which men could efficiently work in mines. '

An optomistic limit, but all the same half a century later Snowdon men were working well above it.

Principles of Coal Mining. University of the Underground

My Eldest son brought me this book for christmas.

As far as I can work out it is intended for coal miners, despite the inscription on the title page above. (Click on the image if it is not clear).

Preface says the book is necessary because through there are many excellent technical treatises , they are too large and too expensive for most students. The (many !) reprinted reviews suggest that this book is useful both for the engineering student and the miner.

Written in pencil inside the front cover is the inscription:

'Charles Rees
Penrhiolithin (the last 8 letters are not at all clear)

Brynnamen
morning class'





The handwriting is almost identical to the rounded script my Granny learnt at a Brixton primary 1899/1905.

I found Another copy offered for sale of principles on the internet insribed 'presented for regular attendance at night school in 1903'.

Small it may be, but the book is still very demanding covering the the ages of rocks from the cainozoic, geology of rock strata, chemistry, looking for coal, initial sinkings, methods of timbering shaft bottoms (aren't there a lot?), methods of working and so much more..

I'm rather frustrated as their seems to have been a national scheme for miners education but I can't find much about it.



Also very curious about Charles Rees, found his village, through it's now spelt Brymmanen, I can't find his mine, but if you look at the satellite on multimap , the village is surrounded by many disarded mine workings.

I found a little on the Ammanford council website(nearest town) about education in Amanford before the opening of a technical college in the twenties. Explains Charles Rees's classes, anyway:

"[Until] this time there were evening classes in a variety of subjects. These classes were quite popular, and often well attended. The same teacher would conduct two or three classes a week in the winter time, and would be doing this year after year. Often-times the boys looked upon the classes as a means of getting together and as a pastime, it was neither good nor bad. The pattern of many a local evening class was this – the pupils came every winter to support the teacher, who invariably lived in their midst, and canvassing for pupils was a common thing. It was quite natural for a young teacher to be anxious to supplement his income by taking evening classes, but unfortunately his prime purpose in doing so would be financial and personal, with the welfare of the pupils a secondary matter. Any pupil who had any ideas of furthering his education was immediately suspect, and sometimes victimised, and looked upon by the teacher and his fellow students as one whose presence would be unwelcome the following winter. Many such pupils embarked on correspondence courses, and succeeded.

Ammanford council site is wonderful by the way, vibrant history. A town where the only relevant political choice was to take your communism neat, or rebel with a dash of Trotsky.

Fordlandia

The tale of another new industrial village in the twenties- Fordlandia. An American village recreated in the jungle by Henry Ford- where he bizzarely imposed american culture on the workers- like requiring Ayleshamers to eat cucumber sandwiches and join the hunt at the weekend-

The Brazilian workers had spirit: - a major trigger of the eventual riots was the force feeding of hamburgers. Funny that, today we'll pay a big american corporation to eat them!

Ackholt farm under Victoria, and a Dark Secret

Nigel Russell has contacted me with a pre Snowdon tale of Ackholt farm.

His Great Great Grandfather Isaac Gilham 1806- 1895 featured as a widower tenant of the farm in the 1881 census

Isaac’s daughter Sarah Ann married Henry Russell .She was to be the first of Henry’s two wives, one of whom was according to a family story implicated in ‘a dark secret,’ a baby in the cupboard in the 1880s. Nigel thinks the scandal hit the nationals between 1880 and 1900.

The photo is of Frank and Elizabeth Russell , son and daughter in law of Sarah Ann, and Nigel's grandparents. If anybody knows any more of the Gilhams or the baby, Nigel and I would like to hear.

As far as I know the cupboard was not in Ackholt aka Misery Farm!

OK, so I like to play with the Amityville echoes but I am a rationalist- there were a lot of premature deaths, abandoned babies in those times. Ackholt was possibly not exceptional, and afterwards, once you sink a 3000 foot mine at the bottom of a field – shit happens!

Influx of Vampires , Kent, 1910

On this site are some recordings of Kentish voices from 1958 (frustratingly short on introductory details, researcher interested in accent rather then social history) An unnamed miner talks about a traming accident, and pit ponies. The mine and the year aren’t given, althru he says the mine goes beneath Nonington church.

Also recordings of farmers from close to Aylesham( first I’ve found) talking about a farm like grandad’s-apparently before motorised transport- speaker and his Dad had to leave at midnight to get to market for 4. you can listen here-

Also a shocking, kind fascist-y article( example:'The influx of these vampires should be stopped") about hop pickers, Horrors of the hopfield(my maternal granny , a brixton girl , daughter of a washerwoman, whose men lacked stamina, they died or upped and went,would have been among them). And a report on a family of 9 hoppickers hit by a car. As in the story of ut the parson and the burning boy, we are not told the adults but not the childrens condition

Rats in mines: Killers and Rescuers

Ken, our guide at the National Coal Mining Museum took us down Caphouse colliery(famous for it’s pot noodles!) and told us how they had to hang their snap (lunch) tins (metal to make it more difficult for the rats to gnaw open) from a rope. Even so the rats would walk the rope and fidget at the snap tins-

Before the strike (84-85) rats were populous, during the strike, they left never to return (the mine was closed soon after the return to work). I heard similar from1926, but that time the rats returned to the mines after the miners and the ponies. Rats prefer a mine with full board.

All memoirs and stories that I have found from British mines see the rats as a danger. (Correctly, they could transmit Weill’s disease in their urine, another common hazard of mine work)

Most British miners were acutely aware of this. Bob Smith caught a fellow miner scattering crumbs on the roadway, whistling coaxingly “What the hell are you doing?” Bob demanded angrily His mate wasn’t feeding rats but his ‘wee birds’. Swifts had built a nest 70 yards down the mineshaft, both men watched over them until the eggs hatched and the young fledged successfully. (But seems likely that the rats and not the swifts, insectivorous on the wing feeders were eating the crumbs)

But rats had their advantages, so it’s surprising that they were seen as unmitigated villains-

In America and China men fed and ‘tamed’ mine rats, if your rats didn’t drop by for lunch it was an indication of danger. An internet search gives you many stories of miners saved by rats - a few examples-

An Old miners story( America)

A Russian miner- They can't afford to feed the rats anymore

A miners best friend was the rat: Gary player

Bob Smith despite recounting a time when his and his mates’ lives may have been saved by rats- does not soften to then

In an old working, the passageway was suddenly blocked by an ‘army’ of rather agitated rats, neither he his mate or the fireman (the man responsible for safety underground) wanted to tackle them, so the fireman put up a ‘no road’ sign for the nonce. Bob left his kit there (a financial sacrifice- miners brought there own tools) the road collapsed that night.

Later in the miners hostel men told creepy stories’ that it was not unknown for rats to move out of a building or an area en masse before a disaster.’ It seems the pitmen saw it as ESP, and not a specific ability to detect vibrations or changes inn air or soil quality underground.

But all the same it seems odd that attitudes to rat infestation would be so different internationally, and I wonder what made the difference culturally. And the difference stretches back along way- they say that Yorkshire terriers were originally bred to hunt rats in the mines in the nineteenth century.