Week 43: Dig a little deeper #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

My grandfather, John McAra, was a coalminer. The generations of McAras before him had worked with iron, originally in Cramond, Midlothian, then subsequently in Lanarkshire. We find him in the 1881 census at age 17 already a coalminer and five years later, when he married my grandmother, Christina Walker, his address was given as 'Spoutscroft'. Later on, documents show the family moved to nearby Greenhill and subsequently Whitehill and by 1921, at the age of 57, when the census first records a place of work, he was employed by the Murdostoun Coal Company.

I was interested in finding out where he might have worked in those earlier years, so I decided to 'dig a little deeper' and do some research on mining in that area of Lanarkshire. I believe I found what I was looking for. The Greenhill Colliery Company Ltd is one of the many mining concerns listed on their site - and, they housed their workforce at both Spoutscroft and Greenhill! 

                                                                                                   Source: www.scottishbrickhistory.co.uk

The company had a workforce of about 400 miners, 75% of them being underground workers in poor conditions. There is no doubt that working conditions had improved since the mid 19th century, but for the hewers and underground workers, the cramped conditions. often lying on their back or looking upwards for long shifts, with coal dust everywhere and the risk of accidents, they were far from ideal. However, in 1898, a mining engineer, in a presentation to the General Meeting of the Mining Industry of Scotland stated "while the coalminer is liable to accident in a greater degree than most other workmen, the occupation is a particularly healthy one ; and that as regards mortality from all causes, even including accident, the miner is more favourably situated than his fellow men."  Phthisis (pulmonary tuberculosis) was seemingly thought to be protected against by the miners inhalation of coal dust!!!

As for the housing provided by the coal company at Spoutscroft and Greenhill, I came across the following at www.scottishmining.co.uk:

So my grandparents were probably living in one of the one apartment houses or, if more fortunate, in one of the two apartment houses - in either case,  damp housing, with an outside midden for the toilet shared by other families and no internal plumbing at all. All bar two of their thirteen children were born into those conditions. Four of them died. This would have been commonplace. The 1919 Coal Industry Commission V II  Report and Minutes of Evidence of the Second Stage of Enquiry stated that there was a high mortality of infants living under these conditions and that a majority of this housing was deemed unfit for human habitation.

Of the children who lived, my Uncle Lamond is recorded in the 1911 census as being a hewer with the Murdostoun Coal Corporation at 15 years old. In 1921 he is still an underground worker. I don't know when he left mining, but he died aged 36 of a chronic asthma attack.

                    Lamond Walker McAra ( 1895-1934)

My Uncle Will is also recorded as being a miner with the Murdostoun Coal Corporation in 1921, though he became a poultry farmer in later years. He survived the pit - unlike his brother, my Uncle James, who died at the age of 36 in a roof fall at Kingshill No. 2 Colliery in 1940, leaving behind a young wife and two small children.

Digging a little deeper into the 'diggers' in my family has been interesting. Mining has left its scar on the Lanarkshire landscape, but it has also left its mark on many Lanarkshire families, mine being one of them. 

Added later: While researching another ancestor I came across two death certificates - one  from 1855 of my 2 x great uncle Andrew Johnstone. Another mining tragedy at the age of 36. He had been a driver below ground in Shotts Mines.

The other from his brother David from 1867 - drowned in the shaft of a coal pit!