Women of the Durham Coalfield in the 20th Century: Hannah's Daughter

By Margaret Hedley and Chris Lloyd

Life in the early twentieth-century coalmining communities changed very little for the women who dedicated their lives to their miner husbands. The women’s working days were much longer than the miners, who typically worked an 8-hour shift. Their living conditions were poor and lack of investment by the coal owners greatly challenged their homemaking skills as they faced life without many basics, such as clean water and sewerage systems. Health services were slow to develop and women’s health was only just beginning to be of some importance to the medical profession.

Coal-miner wives in the twentieth century also had to cope with demands put upon their families by the First World War, which highlighted the importance of solidarity, a feature of mining communities that had proved itself to be at the heart of colliery village life.

This follow-up book to the popular Women of the Durham Coalfield in the 19th Century continues with the story of Hannah’s daughter as she negotiates homemaking in the most challenging of conditions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Mar 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9780750996457

Margaret Hedley

Margaret has an MA in History and taught at secondary school. She is now a family history researcher in East Durham. Margaret is passionate about Duram's coal-mining history, and much of her research is related to this. She lives in Wheatley Hill.

Book preview

Echo

INTRODUCTION

My first book looked at an under-represented group of women who were married to coal miners during the nineteenth century. I used family history to highlight my great-great-grandmother, Hannah, who was one of these women and, due of lack of information from other sources, she told their story.

Hannah’s story and this book contain previously unpublished material and, as with the first, this book adds value to the family story by delving into the private aspects of the individuals concerned, bringing to the attention of the reader the human activity that never made it to the public record, offering insights and new ways of looking at the past – a past that included our ancestors, whatever the context.

This book follows the fortunes of Hannah’s family into the new twentieth century. I carried out a video interview with my grandmother, Hannah’s granddaughter, in 1995, two years before she died. The facts she gave me have provided me with the raw material and have been a great source of inspiration.

Anyone who reads this book will know that while the family story and its context are factual, as are the places, dates, weather conditions and events mentioned throughout, the conversations I have introduced are not. I couldn’t possibly know what my family were saying all those years ago, but I have represented the conversations that could have taken place in response to the situations they faced. By introducing this dialogue, I am highlighting and keeping alive the Durham vernacular and turn of phrase of the day, as well as the humour for which the folks of the Durham coalfield are famous – even in their most unhappy times, their dry sense of humour is legendary. I hope that I have addressed any gaps that may have arisen, through information not being available, in a plausible way and created a possible and realistic scenario.

There is no doubt that some women in the early twentieth century are well documented, including some married to coal miners as well as all other classes. We know of the work of the Suffragettes and the men’s work that women undertook during the First World War, such as becoming munitions workers, police officers, joining the armed services, driving trains and buses, and even playing football. There is much evidence available about this sort of commitment. However, many of these things were unattainable to women who were married to coal miners and living in the isolated pit villages of County Durham.

Their husbands may have continued to work at the pit and their commitment as wives and mothers was required to provide the backbone of family life. They still had to carry water and provide baths and meals for their men going out and coming in from their shifts. They continued to provide a cheery, welcoming home for their husbands returning from a day underground, and did so in appalling conditions without the benefit of running water or electric light, and in houses that hadn’t seen regular, or in fact any, maintenance since they were built in the 1840s.

Their husbands may have joined the armed services and gone to fight in the war, in which case they would be required to look after the family at home without the usual disruption caused by pit work. Whether their husbands were at home or at war, the emotional and physical burden on the women remained well into the new century. They worried that their men might be killed at the pit or at the Front. In both of these scenarios, they would be made homeless as they lived in accommodation provided by their husbands’ employers. They worried about what would happen to themselves and their children should their husbands not return.

This book covers the early part of the twentieth century and what it had to offer for the women of the coal-mining communities of County Durham.

1

LUDWORTH, COUNTY DURHAM

Despite the warm September day, the tall woman standing at the graveside was wearing a shawl and a hat. It wasn’t seemly to be seen outside without a hat, and especially in a churchyard. She stood at a grave halfway down the pathway on the left, at St Cuthbert’s Churchyard in Shadforth, County Durham.

To the casual observer, it may appear that she was paying her respects to the occupants of the grave, but a closer look would reveal that she was actually speaking – not loudly, but whispering. She was saying, ‘… also Hannah, wife of the above, who died 19 May 1901, aged 81 years.’

Susannah Jopling read these words from the newly etched headstone on the grave of her parents and siblings. She had arranged for her mother’s details to be added to the stone and was now paying a visit to check the stonemason’s work. She was pleased with it. He had done a grand job.

Susan knew that the inscription wasn’t quite accurate, as her mother had remarried after the death of her father and taken on another man’s name, but as they had separated shortly after their marriage, she felt it was justified to indicate to future generations reading the headstone that the second husband had barely existed and that Hannah died as the wife of John Porter, Susan’s father, and not John Archer, the second husband. A minor and necessary deception, in Susan’s opinion, as her mother should never have married for a second time and Susan didn’t want future generations thinking badly of her.

Illustration

The grave of John and Hannah Porter and their children.

Satisfied with what she had seen, Susan left the churchyard and made her way from Shadforth to her home in Ludworth, where she would tell her husband about the change made to the headstone. She wouldn’t tell her two daughters as she didn’t want the story of their grandmother remarrying and, worse still, separating, passing on through the generations.

Shadforth was the epitome of an English village at the beginning of the twentieth century with its village green and houses of different shapes and sizes around it, as well as several farms, a couple of public houses, a school and a post office-cum-shop. It was also home to St Cuthbert’s Church and its rectory and hadn’t been ravaged by coal mining, unlike its near-neighbour, Ludworth. Both villages were quite near to Durham city, but even in 1901 the road system into the city wasn’t good, particularly in wet weather.

Illustration

Ludworth pit.

Ludworth, on the other hand, was a small village that grew up around a coal mine that was sunk in the 1830s. It was typical of a hastily erected colliery village, with housing near to the pit head. There were three public houses in Ludworth, a couple of shops, a school and a chapel but it could never be described as pretty. Before the coal mine, the area had consisted of a few farms and, in common with lots of coal mines, the pit at Ludworth was situated in an isolated area of County Durham.

It developed a community reliant on a single industry. The owners of the pits, whoever they were, never lived in the colliery villages. They lived miles away in the country, which wasn’t affected by coal mining, in their palatial homes protected by strong gates and fences and patrolled by staff, some of whom carried guns. Many coal owners never visited the mines they owned, they employed agents to do this on their behalf.

The Thornley Coal Company was responsible for the sinking of Ludworth and neighbouring Thornley collieries in the 1830s. This company was financed by shareholders and had no use for the coal, other than its value at its point of sale, and as was the case with most coal owners they always put profit before the welfare of the workers and their families.

2

WELCOME

On 17 January 1902, at No. 15 First Cross Row (known locally as Cross Row) in Ludworth, Susan Jopling was in labour with her fifth child. Childbirth was considered a dangerous business and had been known to take the lives of women who were previously healthy before going into labour.

At 45 years of age, which was considered much too old to be having children, Susan worried about the outcome of this labour. However, things seemed to be progressing well, overseen by Nelly Sunley, a local woman who attended most births, Susan’s neighbour from across the street, Ellen Hudson, and Susan’s elder daughter, Rachel, who was doing the fetching and carrying.

‘It’s a little lass, Da.’ Rachel Jopling walked out of the parlour bedroom of the small pit cottage and into the kitchen where her father was sitting near the fire.

‘Oh, that’s grand lass, is everything all right?’ Jacob Jopling asked.

‘Why, Mrs Sunley seems to think it is. The bairn’s having a right old scream, as you can hear, and me ma’s tired.’

Jake was relieved. Only two of their four children had survived the first twenty-four hours after their birth, so he wasn’t ready to celebrate just yet. He’d like the bairn to live for at least twenty-four hours before he would be confident. He knew his wife Susan would be feeling the same.

Both babies were buried at Shadforth – one in 1888 and the other in 1895. Jake was surprised when Susan had told him that she was having another bairn after the death of their daughter, Annie. Not being familiar with women and their bodies, he thought that at 45 she might be too old, but it seemed that everything had gone well.

Mrs Sunley and Ellen came out of the parlour. ‘She says you can go in Jake, they’re all tidy now. By, she’s a bonny little lass with a headful of hair. We didn’t need the doctor either, which is a shame. Aah still haven’t met the new man at Thornley, Dr Mathieson.’

‘Aye well, aah’m glad you didn’t meet him the day, Nelly.’ Jake thanked Nelly Sunley and Ellen Hudson and walked over to the parlour door.

This was the bedroom he and Susan had shared since they moved into the cottage in 1884, just after they were married. Then, when Susan’s mother died in 1901, Susan had inherited the ugliest four-post bed from her. Susan loved it and had insisted that it be their marital bed. It took up most of the room and there was hardly any room to move around. The bed was made of solid mahogany and hung with red drapes. It had three steps up to it and these were carpeted in red, too. As he squeezed his way into the room, muttering under his breath as he always did when negotiating the bed, he saw Susan propped up with the baby in her arms. ‘Eeh lass, you both look a picture,’ Jake said to his wife.

‘Aah’m so pleased it’s all over and done with Jake. Aah’m that tired. Aah know aah planned to call the bairn Eva if it was a little lass, but aah think aah’ve changed me mind. What do you think about calling her after your Aunt Belle?’ Susan suggested.

‘Why, is it not a bit soon to be thinking about a name? We’ve got ages before we have to get her registered.’

‘No, aah want it sorted out, it’s been playing on me mind.’

‘Well, it’s funny you mention me Aunt Belle, aah’ve been thinking the exact same thing while aah was sitting out there in the kitchen,’ said Jake. ‘After all, me Aunt Belle just died in November and she was so looking forward to seeing this new bairn.’

‘That’s just what aah thought, it’s a grand idea,’ said Susan. ‘Let’s call her Belle’s full name, Isabella Jameson.’

‘Aye, Isabella Jameson Jopling it is then, but she’s bound to get Belle or Bella.’

There had been Joplings in Ludworth since the early 1840s. William Jopling came to the village, via Kelloe, from his birthplace in Washington, looking for the elusive new and better opportunity offered by a new coal mine. This was every miner’s dream – a new pit with owners who would put the welfare of their workers before profit. Of course, it didn’t happen, but it didn’t stop the miners from hoping.

William was a young, single pitman when he arrived at Ludworth and, as there wasn’t any accommodation for single miners, he found lodgings at The Blue House, Haswell Moor, a public house run by John Jameson, miner and publican. Will went on to marry the eldest daughter of the landlord, Rachel Jameson, in 1845. After their marriage they settled in Ludworth colliery houses and had four sons. Rachel’s parents also moved to Ludworth at around this time and took over the licence of The Ludworth Inn.

When Rachel died in 1870, aged 45, two of the lads were in their twenties and the two youngest in their teens. Youngest son, Jake, was 16 and took the death of his mother very badly. His Aunt Belle, Rachel’s sister, took him under her wing and Jake never forgot her kindness in the years after his mother’s death. Despite living to be 78 years old, Will Jopling didn’t remarry. He kept a general dealer’s shop in North View, Ludworth, and when he died in 1893 the premises were sold and opened up as a reading and billiard room.

Jake married Susan Porter in 1884 when they were 29 and 27. They had known each other since childhood and wanted to marry much earlier, but Susan’s mother, Hannah, had put obstacles in the way. Her main reason for preventing the marriage was that Jake’s grandparents, Jack and Annie Jameson, kept a public house and Hannah was strongly opposed to alcohol as she was well aware of the problems it could cause in families. Hannah had grown up during the 1800s with the pub–chapel divide that existed within colliery villages – a division that advised young girls only to marry men who were teetotal.

Not all pitmen were big drinkers, but some were, and Hannah saw first-hand how devastating domestic violence or shortage of money was to families who were barely existing to start with. Susan never went against her mother, feeling it was better to go along with her and hoping that at some time in the future she would change her mind.

Eventually, at the end of 1883 Hannah had given her blessing to the marriage. Susan and Jake were so happy and relieved. It wasn’t until after their wedding that Susan realised that her mother’s friendship with widower John Archer might have given her an ulterior motive to agree to the young couple marrying, because she herself was planning to marry for a second time. This would result in the loss of her small pension from the Permanent Relief Fund, which was awarded after the death of her first husband and Susan’s father, John Porter.

Susan felt manipulated and let down by her mother, firmly believing that when it suited her, it was alright for