Who Do You Think You Are? Encyclopedia of Genealogy (39 page)

Records for the naval dockyards are held at The National Archives and the National Maritime Museum. Most of the staff records are with The National Archives, while the National Maritime Museum holds a number of letter books, correspondence papers and plans of individual dockyards. Further information can be found about their holdings in their research guide available online at www.nmm.ac.uk. The museum also has a card index of senior dockyard officials from the mid-seventeenth century to 1832. The National Archives also has some documentation relating to correspondence between the dockyards and the Navy Board in series ADM 106. These records are currently being catalogued by name by a volunteer project and can be searched by name of individual. This is also being done for series ADM 354, which contains the same type of records as held by the National Maritime Museum.

The main staff records held at The National Archives can be found in the following series:

•
 
Yard Pay Books in ADM 42, ADM 32, ADM 36 and ADM 37

•
 
Payments to widows from the Chatham Chest in ADM 82

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Pension records, 1836 to 1928 in PMG 25; for earlier periods, ADM 23

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Apprentice records for dockyard workers in ADM 1, CSC 10 and CSC 6.

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Photographs of work being carried out in ADM 195

Royal Naval dockyards also used the labour of convicts (kept in prison hulks) and slaves during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many black slaves, and former slaves, were used in naval dockyards in the West Indies, and the latter were paid. Their pay books can be found for Antigua in ADM 42/2114, and for Jamaica in ADM 42/2310. Bermuda's dockyard was constructed by convicts during the nineteenth century and further information can be found at http://www.bermudaonline.org/rnd.htm.

The Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth has created a website dedicated to the history of the Royal Navy during the twentieth century at www.seayourhistory.org.uk. The site also contains pages relating to the Royal Naval dockyard at Portsmouth and details the many different types of roles people had whilst working in the dockyards and what each role entailed. As such it is a very useful way of understanding the exact nature of the occupation your ancestor was involved in.

There were also a large number of commercial shipyards concentrating on constructing and maintaining commercial ships. The work would have been hard and very physical; the hours would have been long, and workers would have had few rights.

The main industrial ports where the largest shipyards were situated were Southampton, Hull, Liverpool, Glasgow and Belfast, although there were many others in such places as Tyneside and Sunderland. Scotland and Ireland had particularly strong traditions in shipbuilding. The River Clyde in Scotland became the centre of the shipbuilding industry and by the 1870s the area was producing a quarter of the world's ships and 80 per cent of Britain's. At the peak of the industry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the number of shipyards
building ships and employing workers would have been in the hundreds. The industry as a whole began to decline in the decades after the Second World War.

Suggestions for further reading:

•  Coastguard: An Official History of HM Coastguard
by W. Webb (London, 1976)

•  Something to Declare! 1000 years of Customs and Excise
by G. Smith (London, 1980)

•  Family Histories in Scottish Customs Records
by Frances Wilkins (Kidderminster, Wyre Forest Press, 1993)

•  Naval Records for Genealogists
by N. A. M. Rodger (London, 1998)

•  Records of Merchant Shipping and Seamen
by K. Smith, C. T. Watts and M. J. Watts (Public Record Office Publications, 1998)

If you discover that your ancestor was employed in a shipyard, they would most likely have worked in a one local to where they lived. Surviving staff records for shipyards are not held centrally and may not survive for every shipyard. The Maritime Museum in Liverpool has a number of records for shipbuilding companies in the Merseyside area, which may include individual staff records. More details of their archival collections can be found on their website at www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime. The Scottish Maritime Museum (www.scottish maritimemuseum.org) also has similar documentation in its archive in its branch in Irvine. One of the largest and most famous shipyards in Belfast was Harland & Wolff, the company that built the
Titanic
in 1912. Their archives can now be found at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. Indeed most surviving shipyard records will be held at the appropriate local repository. If you know the name of the shipyard your ancestor worked at you can search for the exact location of any documentation on the National Register of Archives database at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra.

One of the most physical lines of work was, and remains, coal mining. With so much of the Industrial Revolution dependent on coal, thousands of men across the country literally carved out a living below ground. Although the industry and the once vibrant mining communities have declined, there are still many places you can visit to find out what life would have been like. This chapter explains what material survives, and how you can use it.

Mining has formed a substantial part of the British economy over the past millennium. The Domesday Book mentions mining activity in 12 counties and there are frequent references to mines in documents dating back as early as the twelfth century. The demise of the mining industry, moreover, only really began twenty or so years ago as a consequence of market competition from abroad and from cleaner sources of fuel, and due to technological advances requiring less manpower in the industry.

‘Miners' records can be hard to find; workers moved from pit to pit and were paid cash-in-hand.'

The type of mining your ancestors would have been employed in depended on where they lived. Scotland, Northern England, the Midlands and Wales were rich in coal deposits; therefore people living in those areas were needed to work the coal mines, while Cornwall and Devon were once famous for copper and tin ore and Kent for its chalk and lime quarries. Migration was commonplace among mineworkers, particularly into the nineteenth century when the demands from industrialization rapidly opened new pits around the British Isles, and
advances in the development of machinery made existing pits much larger. As one pit was run down a new one would be opening elsewhere, which in some cases led to people migrating to the other side of the country in pursuit of work. Tin miners in Cornwall in the 1840s moved to Yorkshire to work in the coal mines at times of recession in the tin industry, while coal miners from Yorkshire moved to new pits in Kent in the early twentieth century in search of a higher income. Learning about how your ancestor's occupation changed during his lifetime may help to explain their movements (and vice versa).

The economic hardship endured by early miners meant that child labour was an integral part of the industry. Though it is difficult for us to imagine now, children as young as five were employed in mines. In the 1840s a Royal Commission investigated child labour and produced a report depicting children working in mines, carrying heavy loads, leading and pulling horses into the pit. These reports and emotive pictures prompted an outpouring of concern and rage directed at mine owners from the educated classes within Britain. Subsequently in 1842 a Mines Act was passed, establishing a Mines Inspectorate to regulate employment conditions in privately owned mines. The act also banned women and children under the age of ten from working underground.

Mining was a highly dangerous occupation and many of those who did not meet an untimely end while at work had to live with a number of ailments and diseases as a result of their working conditions. Pneumoconiosis and silicosis, both lung diseases caused by dust (the former also referred to as ‘black lung' and the latter as ‘Grinder's disease' or ‘Potter's rot'), bronchitis and rheumatism were common among miners, as were lesser irritations like ‘pit knee'. If you find a mining ancestor who died at a fairly young age it might be interesting to order his death certificate and find out whether his untimely death was intrinsically linked to his occupation.

Tin mining is believed to have started in Cornwall and Devon as early as the first century AD. These two counties provided the majority of the United Kingdom with tin and copper. Up until the sixteenth century Devon was the main source of tin production. Tin was mined at stannaries, where steam engines pumped out the mines, and there were Stannary Courts for Devon and Cornwall that administered justice among the tinners, as they were known. In King John's time the tinners negotiated the right to their own Parliament and Stannary Courts continued to keep law and order over the tinners until the 1896 Stannaries Court Abolition Act. The records of the Court of Stannary are held at Cornwall Record Office in Truro.

From the mid-sixteenth century onwards the Devonshire Stannaries were worth very little and Cornwall became the principal supplier of both tin and copper. Copper mining was at its height in the eighteenth century when Cornish copper demanded a high price, mainly because there was little competition. With the discovery of copper deposits elsewhere in the world in the nineteenth century and Cornish reserves running out, tin started to fuel the mining boom in the south west of England. Tin was found below copper deposits, which simply meant that many former copper mines were mined deeper to get to the tin.

Although the tin mining industry was at its peak in the nineteenth century, the industry was unstable and suffered setbacks in the 1840s following the abolition of the Coinage Laws. Although there was a revival in the demand for tin in the 1870s, tin rushes in several foreign countries in the latter part of the nineteenth century created tough competition within the industry. Tin mining did not provide as much employment as copper mining had done, so migration from tin mining areas was high among workers. By the 1920s there were few tin mines left in Britain, and most of those that survived were mined for by-products like arsenic. The international tin price crash of 1985/6 led to the dwindling of the industry in Britain. The last tin mine closed in Cornwall at South Crofty near Camborne in 1998 (although it is due to re-open and start production again in 2009).

Owing to the importance of metal mining to the Cornish economy, the Camborne School of Mines (CSM) was established in 1888 to teach mining and education in hard rock materials. It now forms part of the University of Exeter. Records of the Camborne School of Mines are held at Cornwall Record Office, while some registers of attendance and admission are kept at Torrington Museum. The existing CSM website has a virtual museum where you can explore the history of mining in Cornwall and the school's heritage at www.ex.ac.uk/cornwall/academic_departments/csm.

This chapter will concentrate on the most common types of mining in Britain – coal, tin and copper – although Britain was also mined for lead and iron ore and quarries were mined for slate and lime among other materials. However, the methods for locating records for these various types of mines remain roughly the same whatever type of miner your ancestor was.

The report of the Children's Employment Commission on Mines was published by the Irish University Press and may be found in major reference libraries and archives. It is an insightful read for anyone with a mining ancestor in the 1840s and contains many names and descriptions of interviews with individual miners. An online index to the names and biographical details given in the report of those people interviewed from Cornwall, Cumberland, Durham, Northumberland and the Forest of Dean can be found at www.balmaiden.co.uk/Indexes1842.htm
.

There is evidence that coal has been mined in Britain since Roman times, but the industrial mining of coal that most family historians look to trace their heritage back to has its roots in the eighteenth century. Deep-shaft coal mining, by which miners would be lowered down to an underground pit in a cage, began in the eighteenth century in Britain, but saw its heyday in the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries as industrialization, a shortage of timber
for fuel, and the two world wars increased pressure on the demand for fossil fuel.

Coal miners were thought of as a different breed of people. They worked long hours under harsh conditions, and were often portrayed to the general public as being feckless drunks. The first large-scale mines opened in the eighteenth century were all privately owned and the miners who worked for them earned hardly enough money to survive on, and were not guaranteed to earn the same each week. But they were usually provided with subsidized housing built by the mine owner. This benefit could, however, be a disadvantage at times of unrest within the workforce, as employers were known to evict miners during disputes even into the twentieth century. There was rarely enough housing to accommodate all the workers at a colliery so you may find an ancestor lodging with several colleagues at a fellow-miner's cottage when looking at a census return.

In the 1880s coal-cutting machines became available, prior to which time miners had to cut the coal by hand. There were no regulations restricting the number of hours miners were expected to work underground until 1908, when the Coal Mines Regulation Act, commonly called the Eight Hours Act, was passed. Before this time your ancestor may have been expected to work over 12-hour shifts.

During the First World War the State tightened its control over the mining industry and the resources it produced. On 1 March 1917 the government took control of coalfields for the war effort through the
Coal Mines Department. Fewer men were conscripted into the Army from the coal mining industry than most other industries because their work at home was considered just as vital to the war effort. Mines were returned to their private owners after the war, until in 1947 the National Coal Board (NCB) was established following the Coal Industry Nationalization Act of 1946.

The NCB took possession of the assets of over 800 private collieries and their employees, and integrated them into a newly tiered system. The coalfields each had a colliery run by a manager, which were then grouped into 48 geographical areas under the control of an area manager. The areas were in turn grouped into eight geographical divisions, each with its own divisional board that would report to the NCB. This system survived until the 1980s when, amongst much controversy, Margaret Thatcher's government privatized the coal industry, which at that time was considered to be unprofitable. In 1987 the NCB was replaced with the British Coal Corporation, which in turn was superseded by the Coal Authority in 1994.

As already stated, employment records for miners can be very difficult to track down because the majority of the industry remained in private
ownership through most of its history. Very few records were kept at smaller mines and those that did were rarely retained after the mine was closed. Workers tended to move from pit to pit as labour was often casual and was paid cash-in-hand; therefore lists of employees are hard to come by. If you do find any surviving records of the mine where your ancestor worked it is worth sifting through what is there as you may find a familiar name mentioned among some of the more general administrative records. If your ancestor was affected by a mining disaster then you should have more luck locating some evidence of the event at least, and if they were killed this, ironically, should make finding proof of their employment an easier task.

… find where a miner worked

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The easiest way of discovering what mines were in the vicinity of your ancestor's home is to search maps and local trade directories
.

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The National Archives has many maps showing the locations of mines throughout the ages, including mining maps dating back to 1895 for several counties, which can be located in series POWE 6/85
.

•  The Tithe Maps of England and Wales: a cartographic analysis and county-by-county catalogue
, by Roger J. P. Kain, indicates where pits and shafts are shown on the tithe maps produced in the 1830s and 1840s
.

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There are many region-specific maps that can be found in local record offices as well, so a trip to the local archive may help you to locate a map for the area you are interested in from around the time your ancestors were living there
.

•  
Ordnance Survey (OS) maps were produced regularly from the mid-nineteenth century, and these will have mining works and entrances labelled. Copies of OS maps are kept at county record offices
.

The vast majority of records concerning individual mines and employment papers for miners are located in local and county record offices, and sometimes in family or company archives. Many employment records for miners will not survive because they were not required to be deposited at a national-level archive, and so their continued existence depends on the relevant mining company's decision to deposit them locally or to hold onto them. The only exception to this rule is the records of coal miners who worked after the industry was nationalized in 1947.

Employment records for coal miners who worked under the National Coal Board from 1947 until the 1990s are held by Iron Mountain Records Management at

Rumer Hill Industrial Estate

Rumer Hill Road

Cannock WS11 8EX

Tel: 01543 574 666

You can request a copy of a miner's records (for free) if you can provide a full name and date of birth as well as their National Insurance number if known and the last colliery they worked at. The documents usually include training records and information about where the miner worked, the type of work he did and any promotions he was awarded with.

The Mineworkers' Pension Scheme holds records about pensions issued by British Coal from 1961 onwards. These pension records give information about a miner's start date, where they worked, the quarries they worked in and any strikes they were involved with. If you have
a mining relative who retired after 1960 you can request a copy of their pension record by writing to

The Coal Board's Record Office

Mineworkers' Pension Scheme

Sutherland House

Russell Way

Crawley RH10 1UH

giving the miner's full name and date of birth or National Insurance number.

David Tonks' book
My Ancestor Was a Coalminer
published by the Society of Genealogists has an excellent directory of the local archives, libraries and museums that cover the coalfields of England, Wales and Scotland
.