Shropshire Routes to Roots

British Parliamentary Papers
Children's Employment Commission
Appendix to First Report of Commissioners
Mines
1842

The employment of females

In this district [Shropshire] no females are employed in any kind of under-ground work in the ironstone-mines, but great numbers of girls and young women are employed on the bank in breaking up the pieces of clod and gathering out the "pennystone", as the most abundant ironstone in Shropshire is called.

The carriages or waggons containing the pennystone are drawn to the foot of the shaft, and are then hoisted up by the steam-engine or gin, and afterwards pushed by men, or drawn by horses, along a railway to a part of the pit-bank, and emptied out. Here may be seen at all seasons of the year a number of young women and girls breaking up the pieces of clod, and gathering out the pennystone, and putting it on baskets as they are called, but which are small vessels made of iron, and when one of these is filled a girl, with the assistance of another girl, takes it upon her head, and carries it and empties out the ironstone into a large heap in a place by itself, where it lies exposed to the sun and air.

In cold weather the young women and girls are clothed in warm flannel dresses and great coats like those of men, with handkerchiefs round their necks, with hats and bonnets on their heads, and seem to be comfortably protected from the weather. They are always smiling, laughing, and singing, and when observed at their work manifest a consciousness of how well they would appear if in better attire. The employment seems very healthy, being light and in the open air. It has been stated by one medical gentleman that the loads which they took upon their heads were too heavy for them, and caused injury; but if so that might easily be remedied by giving to the smaller girls baskets of a less size; and besides this, it is their own fault if they load them more than they find agreeable. Young women at this employment earn about 8s. a-week.

[British Parliamentary Papers
Industrial Revolution, Children's Employment. Volume 7. (Irish University Press Series, 1968). Shropshire Archive reference; 328.42 ]