British Coal Mining Research Articles

Maximum likelihood estimation of a change point for Poisson distributed data

In this study we develop a change point methodology to identify and estimate changes in the parameter of a Poisson distribution. The proposed methodology considers the case when the Poisson parameter changes abruptly at an unknown point of time. For this case, the maximum likelihood estimate of the change point and its asymptotic distribution are pursued. Mainly, we carry out a large scale simulation study for evaluating the appropriateness of the asymptotic distribution of the mle from the view point of finite samples, and also for evaluating the closeness under known and unknown parameters. The simulations study also compares the mle with that of a Bayesian estimate. Then, the methodology is applied to three examples. First, we uncover changes in the number of homicides in California using monthly data from January 2002 until December 2020. Secondly, data about deaths of females caused by stomach cancer is considered to detect possible changes in the numbers recorded from 1930 to 2011. Thirdly, British coal mining disasters from 1851 to 1962 in which more than 10 men were killed are analyzed.

:Disability in the Industrial Revolution: Physical Impairment in British Coalmining, 1780–1880

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsDisability in the Industrial Revolution: Physical Impairment in British Coalmining, 1780–1880. By David M. Turner and Daniel Blackie. Disability History. Edited by Julie Anderson and Walton Schalick III. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018. Pp. xii+228. £25.00.Helge WendtHelge WendtMax Planck Institute for the History of Science Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 95, Number 1March 2023 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/723339 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

‘The Best Job in the World’: Breadwinning and the Capture of Household Labor in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century British Coalmining

This article explores the effects of gender inequality and women's disempowerment in the context of historical coalmining. Across the United States and Europe, ex-coalmining regions are characterized by significant deprivation. While there are many reasons for persistent problems, this study focuses on the restrictions imposed on women's involvement in economic life. Families in mining communities exemplified the male breadwinner structure, in which men's earnings supported wives and children who provided domestic services in return. Using evidence from Britain, this article exposes a different reality of household economics characterized by dominance and subordination: All family members were integrated into the coalmining production process and the creation of profit. Women's unpaid work did not simply provide domestic comfort; it transferred well-being from women and children to men and simultaneously contributed to the colliery companies’ profits. These findings revise accounts of mining families while explaining the intransigence of deprivation in ex-coalmining areas. HIGHLIGHTS Women's disempowerment in historical mining communities had adverse effects that persist today. Pit women's labor propped up profits and wages and discouraged infrastructure investment. Breadwinning secured increased leisure time and higher income for men not women. Hours and incomes of “double shift”” factory women compare favorably to pit women. Regeneration must confront the gendered identities embedded in ex-mining communities.

Strikes in British Coal Mining, 1893–1940: Testing Models of Strikes

Unlike earlier studies, which focus on one model, I use data on British coal mining strikes to test several models of strikes, for example, the war‐of‐attrition, one‐sided asymmetric information and joint costs models as well as the safety valve hypothesis, which is related to “forest fire” models of strikes. I determine whether the data and estimates are compatible with these models as well as how observers in retrospective and contemporary accounts viewed these strikes. I find that the empirical and narrative evidence is supportive of the safety valve hypothesis, but is often at odds with the other (more commonly used) models.

Disability in the Industrial Revolution: Physical Impairment in British Coalmining, 1780-1880, by David M. Turner and Daniel Blackie

Reviewed by: Disability in the Industrial Revolution: Physical Impairment in British Coalmining, 1780–1880 by David M. Turner and Daniel Blackie Jessica Meyer (bio) Disability in the Industrial Revolution: Physical Impairment in British Coalmining, 1780–1880, by David M. Turner and Daniel Blackie; pp. xii + 228. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018, £25.00, $36.95. In 2001 Douglas Baynton wrote, “Disability is everywhere in history, once you begin to look for it, but conspicuously absent in the histories we write” (“Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History” in The New Disability History: American Perspectives, edited by Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky [NYU Press], 52). In the nearly two decades since this reflection, the field of disability history has expanded enormously, both in the Americas and across the globe. Much, however, remains to be explored by the use of disability as a lens through which to examine the past. In Disability in the Industrial Revolution: Physical Impairment in British Coalmining, 1780–1880, David M. Turner and Daniel Blackie demonstrate just how significant the application of this analytic lens can be for the [End Page 712] re-evaluation of a subject we think of as familiar. Focusing on three mining areas—central Scotland, northeast England, and south Wales—between the transition from burning wood to coal in the late eighteenth century and the enactment of the Employers’ Liability Act of 1880, they investigate not only the extent of disabled experience in industrializing Britain but also the intersections of such experience with historical fields including economic, labor, medical, gender, and political histories. Central to Blackie and Turner’s analysis is the assertion that “bodily non-normativity defined workers in industrialising Britain” (7). Disability history, they argue, should not be viewed as a niche perspective on industrialization in the past but rather treated as a central and indeed formative element. A new approach is needed that “takes into account the multi-faceted nature of industrial change and explores the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion within particular cohorts or occupations, and in different settings” (7). Additionally, “highlighting and examining the diverse range of roles occupied by disabled people in the past enables their historical agency to be brought more fully into the spotlight, revealing the ways in which they have actively shaped their own lives and those of people around them” (11). In chapters that address disability and work, medicine and the body, welfare provision, family and community support, and political reform, the authors locate the imperfect and damaged bodies of mine workers firmly in the center of the industry over the course of the century. In doing so, they provide insight not only into the agency and social significance of the individuals discussed but also into important related aspects of the social history of industrialization, such as the meaning of occupational hierarchies, the significance of age and life cycle, and the development of welfare debates and practices. While thematic in structure, the chapters form a rough chronology. The first chapter, on disability and work, explores shifts in labor practices from “bord and pillar” extraction to longwall cutting (42), and the rise of “industrial time” from the late-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries (44). The final chapter focuses on the development of legislation in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. In between, chapters on medicine, welfare, and the family cover changes over time within mining communities. The result is an analysis that makes important interventions into a range of historiographies while also maintaining coherence in putting forward the case for the centrality of the disabled to the history of the Industrial Revolution. As a result, the reader comes away with little doubt as to the importance of disability history as a way to understand the changing world of nineteenth-century Britain. The source material is well balanced, with the authors drawing on, where available, personal testimony of disabled workers and their communities, as well as on official documentation, institutional reports, and newspaper articles. The material is thoughtfully contextualized, with sources allowed to speak for themselves, reinforcing the book’s underlying argument that the disabled, far from being marginalized in this period, had access to a number of forms of agency and expression...

Review of Disability in the Industrial Revolution: Physical Impairment in British Coalmining, 1780-1880 by David M. Turner and Daniel Blackie

No abstract available.

Carbon copy

PurposeBy juxtaposing fatal colliery explosions in early twentieth-century Britain and in 2010 at Pike River, New Zealand, this paper aims to investigate the generalizability of the mock bureaucracy concept to underground coal mining disasters.Design/methodology/approachThe main source is published official accident inquiries; a methodological reflection justifies the use of these materials.FindingsMock bureaucracies existed in the British underground coal mining milieu from the time when safety rules were first formulated in that industry context. As for Pike River, it is an exemplary case. The development in 1970s Britain of a new approach to safety management (the Robens system), and its subsequent export to New Zealand, means that a contemporary coal mine under financial duress, such as Pike River, is a prime site for mock bureaucracy to flourish.Originality/valueAlthough the concept of mock bureaucracy has been applied to an explosion in an underground coal mine before, this is the first paper to explore the concept’s historical usage and generalizability in explaining the environing context of such explosions.

Urban demographic decline in the traditional industrial regions of the Urals (1959–2010)

This article considers the demographic disaster that occurred in traditional industrial Ural cities between the 1960s and the 2000s and demonstrates its scale. A ‘depressed city’ is a term denoting a stage in a city’s development: it is characterised by a decline in production, the emergence of unemployment, and a decrease in investment and migration, all of which is followed by a fall in population. This research is based on calculations and comparisons of the demographic dynamics found in the All-Soviet Union and All-Russian censuses of 1959, 1970, 1979, 1980, 2002, and 2010 from the perspective of a number of individual Ural towns. The Urals have faced the same problems as American cities of the Appalachian region, German cities of the Ruhr district, and British coalmining and metallurgical regions in the 20th century. The author proposes a method for revealing depressed settlements. It uses two demographic criteria: first, a decrease of population exceeding five percent per decade and, second, the stability of a negative demographic balance across several decades. In accordance with this method, it is established that during the late Soviet period (1959–89) 18 Ural towns could be characterised as depressed. Between the 1960s and 1980s, such tendencies had a local nature in the Urals, mainly affecting mining areas and some metallurgical centres. However, between the 1990s and 2000s structural economic reforms and a shift to market forms of economic management caused a dramatic decline in production, mass unemployment, and a drop in living standards: 56 Ural cities thus became depressed. Only the cities of Bashkortostan, where petrochemical production has a significant presence, showed population growth, while other regions witnessed a significant loss of population. Once a local problem, depression became a sub-regional phenomenon striking entire agglomerations and territorial production complexes. Major Ural cities were unable to absorb all of the migration from settlements and towns of the region, which caused an outflow of population from the Urals. The two post-Soviet decades can be characterised by large-scale urban decline in the Urals: there was, on average, a 6.4 per cent population decrease in all the cities of the Ural macro-region.

The Rise and Fall of Autonomous Group Working in the British Coal Mining Industry

The group organization of work in the British coal mining industry brought to the workers involved significant levels of autonomy; the ability to define the social relations of work; high levels of control over the labor process; and a strong and lasting commitment - to the group. This autonomy was to survive a series of managerial attacks, in the form of changed payment systems and the introduction of new technologies, and was not finally lost until the imposition of full automation that included surveillance systems that made the labor process transparent.

Introduction to “The Rise and Fall of Autonomous Group Working in the British Coal Mining Industry”

Introduction to “The Rise and Fall of Autonomous Group Working in the British Coal Mining Industry”

Accounting and economic returns in British coal mining: The Carlton Main colliery, 1872–1909

Various estimates, both ex ante and ex post, have been produced of the accounting rate of return on investments in the late nineteenth-century coal industry, with some ex post figures also being calculated for individual firms engaged therein, such as the Consett Iron Co. Ltd. No one, however, has previously tried to calculate the economic rate of return from investing in a single coal mine over the duration of its life. In this article we examine both accounting and economic rates of return for the Carlton Main colliery, from its sinking during the 1870s through to its closure in 1909. Our results enable us to judge the accuracy of previous estimates of returns for the late nineteenth-century coal industry, and of contemporary estimates of the potential rate of return in coal mining. We also offer insights into the efficacy of using accounting rates of return as an indicator of the economic rate of return during that period.

Effect of dust exposure and nitrogen oxides on lung function parameters of German coalminers: a longitudinal study applying GEE regression 1974–1998

Workplace limits for dust and nitrogen oxides are under review in Germany and the EU. We conducted a study on German coal miners to determine the effects of exposure on lung function. Longitudinal inception cohort study (1974-1998) on miners who began working underground at two coal mines between 1974 and 1979. We determined the number of shifts worked underground, the exposure to coal mine dust, quartz dust, nitrogen oxides (NO, NO(2)), smoking behavior, and three lung function parameters (FVC, FEV(1), FEV(1)/FVC). General estimation equation (GEE) models were fitted. 1,369 miners worked an average 3,017 shifts (S) underground. The mean respirable coal mine dust concentration was 1.89 mg/m(3) (quartz: 0.067 mg/m(3)), and the nitrogen oxide concentrations were 0.58 ppm (NO) and 0.007 ppm (NO(2)). On average, 9 measurements of lung function were available per miner. Compared to reference values, the findings were unexceptionable (103, 101, and 99%) on average. GEE-regression models did not reveal detrimental dust exposure effects. Nitrogen oxides (NO (x) = NO + NO(2)) showed small but clearly insignificant effects on lung function: delta FVC = -0.0008 ml/(220 ppmS), P = 0.86, delta FEV(1) = -0.003 ml/(220 ppmS), P = 0.50 and delta FEV(1)%FVC = -0.07%/(220 ppmS), P = 0.22. The effect of dust exposure on lung function described in older British and American coal miner studies was not confirmed. This can be explained partly by differences in methods (here: longitudinal studies, no prior exposure), but also by lower dust levels. NO (x) exposures showed no relevant influence on lung function-a result confirming findings from British coal mining.

Miners' Lung – A History of Dust Disease in British Coal Mining – By Arthur McIvor and Ronald Johnston

Miners' Lung – A History of Dust Disease in British Coal Mining – By Arthur McIvor and Ronald Johnston

Arthur McIvor and Ronald Johnston, Miners’ lung: a history of dust disease in British coal mining, Studies in Labour History, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007, pp. xviii, 355, £60.00 (hardback 978-0-7546-3673-1).

Coal mining is the classic dangerous trade. There are few, if any, occupations that have taken so many lives or caused so many injuries among its workforce. Mine collapses, explosions, suffocation and starvation of miners “buried alive” are just a few of the possible catastrophes that have caused suffering and pain among miners and their families in coal towns around the globe. But, the pain does not stop there. As McIvor and Johnston's elegant study details, even those that escape the immediate dangers of the pit are subject to years, even decades, of pain, laboured breathing and eventual death. The dust created by the picks, hammers, and especially the pneumatic tools that were introduced in the twentieth century crept deep into the lungs of the otherwise powerfully built, healthy workers, eventually incapacitating them, ruining their bodies and killing them. McIvor and Johnston relate the distressing story of towns where healthy young men are slowly transformed into hunched-over, crippled and diseased elderly. The various ways that dust affected these men is a testament to the evils of the mining system: silicosis, chronic bronchitis, coal workers pneumoconiosis (CWP), pneumonia, and tuberculosis all took their toll and were all identified by a variety of physicians, commissions, expert panels as the peculiar costs of Britain's industrialization. By the 1930s, one in twenty workers in Britain was a miner, yet miners accounted for 25 per cent of all workplace injuries and an untold percentage of industrial diseases in the UK. This text, sprinkled with moving testimony of workers themselves, tells us of the cost in lives lost to Britain's industrial power, highlighting the centrality of the industry to British life.

Arthur McIvor and Ronald Johnston. Miner's Lung: A History of Dust Disease in British Coal Mining. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007. xviii + 355 pp. ISBN 13:978-0-7546-3673-1, $99.95 (cloth).

Arthur McIvor and Ronald Johnston. Miner's Lung: A History of Dust Disease in British Coal Mining. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007. xviii + 355 pp. ISBN 13:978-0-7546-3673-1, $99.95 (cloth).

Miners' Lung: A History of Dust Disease in British Coal Mining (review)

Reviewed by: Miners' Lung: A History of Dust Disease in British Coal Mining P. W. J. Bartrip Arthur McIvor and Ronald Johnston. Miners' Lung: A History of Dust Disease in British Coal Mining. Studies in Labour History. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2007. xviii + 355 pp. Ill. $99.95 (ISBN-10: 0-7546-3673-9, ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-3673-1). The history of occupational health has flourished in recent years. McIvor and Johnston have themselves made notable contributions to this burgeoning literature, particularly with their book, Lethal Work. A History of the Asbestos Tragedy [End Page 483] in Scotland (2000), but also with a string of articles. Scotland looms large in the present study but, unlike several of their previous collaborations, Miners' Lung also considers England and Wales. Since coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP) was particularly prevalent in the huge South Wales coalfield, the Welsh connection is prominent. McIvor and Johnston describe work-induced respiratory disease among coal miners as "the largest occupational health disaster in British history" (p. 2). It could hardly be otherwise given the size of the workforce, which peaked at substantially over a million laborers, a large proportion of whom worked in extremely confined areas and dusty conditions deep underground. The neglect of labor and medical historians is, therefore, surprising. Contrast this position with the plethora of studies on asbestos-related disease. Even the multivolume History of the British Coal Industry (1984–93) provides scant coverage. So the appearance of Miners' Lung is a long-overdue addition to the historiography. In many ways, the book does for Britain what Alan Derickson's Black Lung: Anatomy of a Public Health Disaster (1998) did for the U.S. Unlike Derickson, however, McIvor and Johnston have used oral evidence: mainly interviews with miners born between 1909 and 1953. This personal testimony provides a valuable insight into the experience of living with chronic pulmonary disease. Recognition that the inhalation of coal dust could impair health came slowly. Coal dust was long thought to protect against tuberculosis, and a British expert continued to insist in the 1930s that coal dust was benign. Although CWP became a compensable disease in 1943, the precise nature of the coal-dust hazard remained in doubt; as Archie Cochrane, a leading expert, wrote in 1951, "the factors which may make coal dust dangerous are not yet known" (p. 112). Only in the 1990s, when British coal mining had virtually ceased, were bronchitis and emphysema accepted as diseases of coal miners. Scholars have often blamed high rates of occupational disease on exploitative industrialists. Governments, organized labor, and the medical profession, with their eyes on other issues, have also been criticized. As for the workers, they are usually portrayed as helpless victims. McIvor and Johnston do not fully subscribe to such interpretations. They criticize the prenationalization private coal owners but are much more generous (unwontedly so, perhaps, given their numerous caveats) in their appraisal of the National Coal Board. Medical science, which created a "long tradition of high-quality research into miners' lung disease" (p. 124), is largely exonerated from blame. The policies and practices of the labor unions and Trades Union Congress are viewed far more sympathetically than is often the case. Miners are seen as victims but also as architects of their own ill health through refusing to wear respirators, "cutting corners," working excessive hours, and engaging in dry hewing. They accepted a high degree of risk partly because such an attitude suited the hard-man culture of which they were a prominent part. It is pleasant to encounter a volume with that rarest of paraphernalia in modern academic publishing: footnotes. Unfortunately, praise cannot be heaped on McIvor and Johnston's index and bibliography, both of which are far from satisfactory. [End Page 484] Numerous individuals mentioned in the text, some of them significant figures, do not appear in the index. Similarly, many publications cited in the notes are absent from the bibliography. This complaint apart, Miners' Lung is a thorough, balanced, and readable study; it will be a standard reference for years to come. P. W. J. Bartrip University of Northampton Copyright © 2008 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Miners' lung: a history of dust disease in British coal mining – By Arthur McIvor and Ronald Johnston

Miners' lung: a history of dust disease in British coal mining – By Arthur McIvor and Ronald Johnston

McIVOR, Arthur ; JOHNSTON, Ronald . Miners’ lung. A History of dust disease in British coal mining

McIVOR, Arthur ; JOHNSTON, Ronald . Miners’ lung. A History of dust disease in British coal mining

Miners' Lung: A History of Dust Diseases in British Coal Mining

Miners' Lung: A History of Dust Diseases in British Coal Mining

Path dependence, fragmented property rights and the slow diffusion of high throughput technologies in inter-war British coal mining

This article examines the importance of path dependence effects in impeding the diffusion of high throughput mechanized mining systems in the British coal industry. It demonstrates that the industry had become ‘locked in’ to low throughput underground haulage technology, on account of institutional interrelatedness between Britain’s traditional practice of extensive in-seam mining and its unique system of fragmented, privately owned mineral royalties. Fragmented royalties prevented the concentration of workings and introduction of high throughput main haulage systems that underpinned the rapid productivity growth of European producers. Meanwhile, technical interrelatedness between the haulage systems taking coal to the pit shaft and operations further ‘upstream’ created bottlenecks which both slowed the overall rate of mechanization and limited the productivity gains from the mechanization that did occur.