swill down grog until he saw double. Not everyone left his wages in the back alley on the way home, betting on everything from cards and marbles to games of pitch-and-toss. There were other diversions, particularly after Parliament passed legislation in 1847 limiting the workday to ten hours. Suddenly the sporting life—whether bare-knuckle boxing, bull-baiting and cockfighting, or more civilized pastimes like football, rugby andcricket—became more popular. Some went to church—mainly the Church of England, although by the mid-1800s virtually every mining community had its own Catholic chapel. Others raised animals, gardened, even competed in regular flower shows.
It wasn’t a particularly learned society. Estimates are that by the early 1800s only 48 percent of men and 17 percent of women could sign their names to the marriage register. Nonetheless, some miners formed theatrical troupes and criss-crossed the coalfields. The most serious among them took to reading rooms and libraries and attended evening lectures at the miners’ institutes that began to spring up. Music—in the form of brass bands that materialized wherever factories were opened and pits sunk—was particularly popular. The instruments were simple to master and relatively cheap to buy. In many places the employers sponsored their workmen. As early as 1827, every large colliery in Northumberland and Durham was said to have its own band. Some of them could even carry a tune. In 1869 a group of workers from the St. Hilda Colliery, located in South Shields, an industrial town on the northeast coast, got it in their heads to form a brass band even though not one of them played an instrument. With the help of professional trainers they won England’s national brass band championship in 1912, 1920, 1921, 1924 and 1926.
So miners and their families weren’t—as the educated classes seemed to feel at the time—just knuckle-draggers and subhumans. The colliery folk of Lancashire and Lanarkshire, of Durham and Derbyshire, of Northumberland and Yorkshire, had the usual hopes, dreams and ambitions. In their cold, brutish world they found warmth by banding together in friendly societies that insured them against accidents. Somehow, they managed to start co-operatives to fight the monopoly of the coal company’s “truck”system. In virtually every coalfield in the land, they made their first steps toward forming unions to offset the immense power of the colliery owners.
Moving onward, however haltingly, was the defining theology in this age of aspiration and progress. My people were no different. One day in 1891, twenty-year-old John William Briers stood inside St. George’s church—“majestic in its capacious design and originally built to seat 2,200 worshippers,” according to the history section of the church’s website—at the top of St. George’s Street in Chorley A.G. Leigh was likely seated at the organ that day; J. Alfred Pattinson—vicar from 1890 to 1903—may have been officiating. For it was an auspicious occasion: the day John William Briers married the woman who would become my great-grandmother, Margaret Rigby, a nineteen-year-old Chorley calico weaver whose family, like every Lancashire clan, had deep ties to coal mining.
Their courtship ritual likely followed a predictable path. After cleaning up after work—in a tin bath in front of the kitchen fire—John William would have joined the other lads and lasses strolling up and down Market Street, near the centre of town, eyeing the talent. In Chorley this was known as the monkey walk. And it was a necessity in a place where it was frowned upon for unmarried people to visit any of the local pubs: the Colliers’ Arms, built in the late Victorian period; the Black Horse, built in 1820, named after the pit ponies that hauled the coal; the Blackamoor, almost certainly named as a pun on the black-faced miners who frequented it. Money for drink was scarce. John William would have handed
It wasn’t a particularly learned society. Estimates are that by the early 1800s only 48 percent of men and 17 percent of women could sign their names to the marriage register. Nonetheless, some miners formed theatrical troupes and criss-crossed the coalfields. The most serious among them took to reading rooms and libraries and attended evening lectures at the miners’ institutes that began to spring up. Music—in the form of brass bands that materialized wherever factories were opened and pits sunk—was particularly popular. The instruments were simple to master and relatively cheap to buy. In many places the employers sponsored their workmen. As early as 1827, every large colliery in Northumberland and Durham was said to have its own band. Some of them could even carry a tune. In 1869 a group of workers from the St. Hilda Colliery, located in South Shields, an industrial town on the northeast coast, got it in their heads to form a brass band even though not one of them played an instrument. With the help of professional trainers they won England’s national brass band championship in 1912, 1920, 1921, 1924 and 1926.
So miners and their families weren’t—as the educated classes seemed to feel at the time—just knuckle-draggers and subhumans. The colliery folk of Lancashire and Lanarkshire, of Durham and Derbyshire, of Northumberland and Yorkshire, had the usual hopes, dreams and ambitions. In their cold, brutish world they found warmth by banding together in friendly societies that insured them against accidents. Somehow, they managed to start co-operatives to fight the monopoly of the coal company’s “truck”system. In virtually every coalfield in the land, they made their first steps toward forming unions to offset the immense power of the colliery owners.
Moving onward, however haltingly, was the defining theology in this age of aspiration and progress. My people were no different. One day in 1891, twenty-year-old John William Briers stood inside St. George’s church—“majestic in its capacious design and originally built to seat 2,200 worshippers,” according to the history section of the church’s website—at the top of St. George’s Street in Chorley A.G. Leigh was likely seated at the organ that day; J. Alfred Pattinson—vicar from 1890 to 1903—may have been officiating. For it was an auspicious occasion: the day John William Briers married the woman who would become my great-grandmother, Margaret Rigby, a nineteen-year-old Chorley calico weaver whose family, like every Lancashire clan, had deep ties to coal mining.
Their courtship ritual likely followed a predictable path. After cleaning up after work—in a tin bath in front of the kitchen fire—John William would have joined the other lads and lasses strolling up and down Market Street, near the centre of town, eyeing the talent. In Chorley this was known as the monkey walk. And it was a necessity in a place where it was frowned upon for unmarried people to visit any of the local pubs: the Colliers’ Arms, built in the late Victorian period; the Black Horse, built in 1820, named after the pit ponies that hauled the coal; the Blackamoor, almost certainly named as a pun on the black-faced miners who frequented it. Money for drink was scarce. John William would have handed
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