Memories of old days at mine

Stories of pioneering prospectors are usually linked to the American Wild West. But in the Black Country hundreds of small, walk-in drift mines were created, often by local families who had acquired mining rights.

"My family were very enterprising when they started their own drift mine," revealed Janet Aston from Oak Street, in Coseley, Wolverhampton. "I have a photo of them at the front of the mine, which I think was taken sometime in the 1920s. The mine was situated near where the Black Country Living Museum is now, close to where the old Tipton Arms Hotel was later built.

"I also know that they sold coal at three pence per bucketful," she added.

The photo shows Janet's father William Hunt, his brother Samuel, Janet's mother Annie Doris and next to her is her father Thomas Owen and mother Fanny Owen.

"They worked in highly hazardous conditions and at the time the picture was taken my mother was pregnant but she sadly lost that child," says Janet, who works at the Black Country Living Museum as a guide and demonstrator. "My mother had a hard life and went on to have ten more children, but only three of them survived."

"As you can see from the picture the props don't look too strong – life was more dangerous in those days because health and safety didn't exist," she added.

Janet says that as well as working down the mines, women in her family took on extra work to bring in more money.

"My granny Owen started another business, a little general store in Dudley," she says. "However, because she couldn't see children going hungry, she allowed too much credit and went bankrupt.

"My mother Annie Doris, acted as a midwife and helped with many safely born babies. "One baby boy, who was prematurely born, was saved by heating bricks in the oven and using them to make a box around him. Years later, that man always stopped to give my mother a hug," she said. Janet remembers her mother's sadness at losing so many of her own babies.

"One baby was stillborn and so the tiny nailed-down coffin was taken to Tipton Cemetery to be buried along with whoever was being buried that day," she says.

"It was taken there by my two younger sisters and an older cousin. On their return, they told my mother that since they didn't see anyone, they had left the coffin on a bench beneath the cemetery arch.

"In those days it was usual after childbirth for a woman to stay in bed for a couple of weeks. However, mum was so upset that she got out of bed, saying 'What if something takes it?'. When she arrived at the cemetery, two of the groundsmen assured her they had placed the tiny coffin in a grave close to the wall," she explained.

"My elder sister Edith was adopted by Mum and Dad, she was my father's brother Samuel's child. Her mother had died during childbirth. She went into the Women's Land Army. When she came home in her green and cream uniform, I used to think she looked like a film star.

"The next youngest sister is Renee. I remember Renee used to sand her legs during the war, since there were no stockings, and she got me to draw a seam up the back of her legs with an eyebrow pencil.

"My schoolfriend lived in a back-to-back and used a tin bath from the brewhouse.

Janet says her father died when she was four-years-old."My family have always told me how my Dad carried a wounded soldier across the battlefield," she says.

By Cathy Spencer.