Living conditions

Cornwall and west Devon possess many examples of relict mining landscapes dominated by impressive granite engine houses and mine stacks, for which industrial historians can provide much technical information. But what was life like for the people who depended on the ‘bal’ or mine, for their livelihood and where did they live?

Living conditions for many families at the time would today be judged shockingly hard. Miners, whose families were often large and who frequently took in lodgers to supplement their incomes, generally lived in granite or cob cottages possessing only two or three rooms. In 1861 well over 60% of the lodgers employed in the mining industry in Camborne and Redruth were accommodated in the houses of fellow miners (Brayshay, 1980). Some occupied cottages on smallholdings and had access to a few acres of land, some in terraces or rows of cottages which might have gardens where food for the table could be grown. The majority lived in towns, however, where gardens were small or replaced by courtyards offering little opportunity of supplementing the table with garden produce. The sleeping arrangements in many cottages were often complicated, several children sleeping in one bed. There would be no indoor water supply or bathroom, the lavatory being an earth closet outside, and the only heat that from an open fire or later, an iron made Cornish range. Accommodating big families in damp overcrowded cottages with a lack of adequate sanitation meant a daily struggle to maintain standards of respectability - a challenge for even the most inventive housewife. An example of how overcrowded housing in mining communities was can be judged by the example of Mary Tavy, where in the mid 1800s a population of 1,500, mainly miners, was accommodated in just 66 houses. But not all those connected to the mining industry found life so hard.

At the other end of the social spectrum were those who had made their money from mining – small businessmen, entrepreneurs and mine captains who were able to rent or purchase a more spacious residence, some boasting the labour-saving inventions of the modern industrial age. While upward social mobility meant that new money was able to move to more attractive areas of towns and villages, the landed classes, many of whom made huge fortunes form the mining industry, were keen to reflect their success and status. During the expansive period of industrialisation many new estates were built, such as that at Scorrier constructed by the Williams family and Carclew, the home of William Lemon. Older estates underwent elaborate transformations, Tehidy, the seat of the Basset family being such an example. The mansion was rebuilt by John Francis Basset in 1861reflecting the fortunes he had made from local mines, his yearly income from the Basset mines, Dolcoath and South Frances, being about £20,000, a fortune even by today’s standards (Tangye, 1984). These elegant mansions boasting well stocked libraries, music rooms and conservatories crammed with plants were shielded from the source of their wealth - acres of mine tips and industrial buildings that ‘scarred’ the landscape - with lavish ornamental gardens (see Pett, 1998).

The Cornish copper mining industry was expanding rapidly in the early nineteenth century with mines being opened up in rural areas remote from established settlements. As the mining industry gathered pace in mid and east Cornwall there was a marked movement from St Austell to Liskeard and St Cleer and longer distance movements of miners and their families from west to east, for example, from Gwennap to Calstock and Breage to Menheniot. Villages such as Pendeen, Lanner, Four Lanes, Menheniot and Mary Tavy grew up haphazardly around new mines, while older towns nearer the mines like Redruth, St Just and Tavistock, grew rapidly to accommodate an influx in population. Between 1841-1861 Menheniot’s population doubled; it rose from 1,221 to 1,944 a decade later, while Gwennap’s population which stood at 4,594 in 1801 rose to 10, 794 in 1841and Redruth’s from 4,924 to 11,504 between 1801 and 1861. In the Tavistock District, the population rocketed from 6,272 to 8,147 between the 1841 and 1851 censuses, an increase of 43%. Camborne grew from a small village to one of the largest towns in west Cornwall, witnessing significant in-migration from 8 other districts (Deacon, 2001). Such rapid industrialisation helped to create social problems similar to those encountered in other industrial areas of Britain, as the following description from the 1864 Condition of All the Mines in Great Britain makes clear:

"In Camborne I was taken to a row of thatched cottages, each consisting of only two dark and low rooms, and all of which had no privies, and no system of drainage whatever, the inmates throwing everything either into a small back yard or common dust heap in the street."

In the mid-nineteenth century at Buller’s Row, a long terrace of cottages built on the road leading from Redruth to Falmouth at the foot of the hill below the dressing floors of Wheal Sparnon and Trefusis mines, one cottage in 28 had a privy. At nearby Plain an Gwarry there were 133 houses and 11 privies, causing people to relieve themselves behind walls and hedges, making many suburbs of the town most offensive (Tangye, 2001). Moreover, the town’s wells were sometimes contaminated with sewage from overflowing communal cess-pits sited uncomfortably close to people’s doors. The evocative names of such Redruth housing - Dung Pit Houses (bottom of Fore Street), Poverty Court and Dirty Court (Plain an Gwarry) - reflect the poor nineteenth century conditions in this mining town.

In the Menheniot mining district in 1868 a mining family was found in a position of severe poverty brought to light by the death of a seven year old child through malnutrition and disregard, and fear was expressed for the remaining children. Their home contained one table, one form and one bed with very little covering. In the late nineteenth century between a quarter to one third of people living in the Liskeard district were estimated to have been at risk of falling into poverty (Deacon, 1989).

At St Just, the Commissioner of the 1864 Report found many defective cottages, overcrowded with inadequate ventilation and sanitary arrangements, which he considered the root cause of a fatal outbreak of typhoid fever. In damp, overcrowded cottages, diseases such as typhus were endemic, and typhoid, measles, smallpox and diphtheria were widespread. During the cholera outbreak of 1848/9, figures for the Cornish Registration Districts show that locality was strongly linked to the level of fatalities, which were usually highest in densely populated, unsanitary large towns and mining districts (Rowe and Andrews, 1974). The public outcry against the serious housing shortage and gross overcrowding in the Tavistock area was one reason which prompted the Duke of Bedford to construct purpose built accommodation for his estate and mine workers.

Many rural areas were little better. At Wendron in 1864 the Commissioner discovered cottages housing large families in which the bedrooms of some were indecently overcrowded and utterly lacking ventilation. In Gwennap parish, St Day was reported to be exceeding unsanitary in places and Lanner’s open sewer was periodically condemned as a breeding ground for disease. It was only with the increased public health legislation of the late nineteenth century that conditions began to improve, but it was not until the mid twentieth century that most mining villages received piped water or sewage systems. This did not occur in some of the former mining villages of the St Just and Gwennap districts until the 1960s.

What was life like in the mining communities? Many of Cornwall and west Devon’s mining towns and villages were rough, uncompromising places where rioting, fighting and heavy drinking were commonplace. Rioting was noted in Redruth market in 1785, 1793, 1795, 1801, 1812 and 1847 as miners appealed to the ‘moral economy’ in times of hardship, demanding for example, lower prices for goods. Miners often met in a one of numerous local pubs or ‘kiddleywinks’ (beer shops) to split the monthly earnings of their ‘pare’ or team of workers. Gambling, singing and heavy drinking often ensued, leading to ‘Maze Monday’, when men were still too inebriated to turn up for work. Too much drink on pay day was often the cause of disturbances as an incident that occurred at Liskeard in 1842 relates. The success of the mines in the neighbourhood had led to the commencement of several new works, and in consequence, an extraordinary increase of the mining population. Several hundred miners congregated at Liskeard on pay day one Saturday night. The West Briton of 13th May 1842 relates that at about eleven o’clock, a party who had been drinking in one of the local pubs were refused any more drink, attempted to force the Landlord to supply them, and a disturbance arose in consequence. The police were then called in, when several of the ring leaders were taken into custody; upon this a general cry of "one and all" was given, and a party of nearly 200 speedily gathered around the house, which they attacked, demolishing the doors and windows, in an attempt to rescue their companions. The police and some of the inmates were ill-treated and the whole neighbourhood kept in a state of fear and tumult until nearly six o’clock the following morning. The disturbances caused by insobriety and its connection to poverty led to Temperance Societies in some towns setting up Coffee Taverns as an alternative to the pubs or kiddleywinks, that of Redruth being built in 1880.

Prostitution flourished in many mining towns. The row of stones opposite Wheal Betsy engine house at Mary Tavy earned the sobriquet "Annie Pinkham’s Men", an echo of the former prostitution in the village, while passengers leaving the railway station at Redruth in the late nineteenth century were said not to be safe from the prostitutes and pickpockets employed about their evil trades. Desperate times often called for desperate measures and reports of concealment of births by women who had become pregnant out of wedlock made their way into the nineteenth century press with depressing regularity.

But episodes of crime, rioting and prostitution were only one side of life in mining communities. Mining towns and villages were also places where people could forget their worries and problems by attending events organised by local chapels, such as improvement societies, bazaars, penny readings and even choral ensembles. The music of Bach and Mozart were not unfamiliar in towns such as Redruth! The annual Sunday School Tea Treat, parish feast day and annual harvest were keenly awaited events in the social calendar. Lamp societies were inaugurated to raise money to put up gas lighting in mining villages such as St Day and Lanner in the late nineteenth century and women were involved in charity organisations such as the Dorcas Society to raise money for clothing and bedding for the most needy. Later in the nineteenth century, civic pride resulted in towns such as Liskeard, Truro, Redruth and Camborne making great attempts to outdo each other erecting grand municipal buildings and elaborate shop fronts, as well as improving facilities such as public parks and gardens.

Clearly not all mining families lived in squalor in crime ridden settlements. Although residing in humble surroundings, pride and thrift, qualities encouraged by Methodism which was popular in most mining villages, meant that the miner’s home was usually clean, his children as well fed as possible and their clothes, although old, were laundered and neatly patched. Although many had a reputation for roughness, Cornish mining villages were usually close knit places where people were often related and looked out for one another. Relationships with the gentry, although sometimes strained, were not always bad. Appeals to them by the most needy for help during periods of economic hardship seldom fell on deaf ears, with the local squire usually willing to get up a subscription to raise money for food and fuel. Miners took an immense pride in their work and for better or worse, life was the mine and the mine was life, as captured in the verse of Gwennap poet, William Francis in 1845:

"A vast population increasing around
Depend for subsistence on work underground;
‘Mines are nor productive of fruit or of grain’.
True - but they yield work and do myriads maintain."

Living conditions

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