Anecdotes about Pit Ponies

...Glitter was a mild-tempered animal who would work like the rest up until 9 o'clock in the morning and would then refuse to work until the haulier who was in charge of him gave him a piece of twist tobacco. After this he was all right again...

...There was one called Mouse, he did not drink the water in your bottle but would eat the cork, and if he found your clothing he would chew off all the buttons. When you had to hook his limber to the tub he knew whether you had put your foot between the rails or the plates as they were called, and he would kick out and catch your leg...

...Wallace used to wait until you were putting his harness on in his stall and he would feel about with his left foreleg until he got onto your toes. All he had to do then was to lean on you and you can imagine the yells that used to come from the stall!... He caught quite a few of us like this.

..Little Vane was one of those who counted the clank of the coupling chains, but he was in a Union of his own - he would pull only two tubs.'...

...One instance was when I was pony-driving from the coalface to the top of the jinny. The youth controlling the jinny had hung his waistcoat up with his snap* and watch in the pockets. The pony had nosed around until he got the scent of the snap, and in the finish had chomped the snap, the waistcoat and the pocket-watch, so there was neither snap nor time left!...

* Food

...We had one called Honesty, you know, there was what you call a bait-hole, was shot out of the side, there was a choppy-box in there. Now, the foreshift lads, if we went down about four o'clock, and the backshift lads came in about nine, they had to take our ponies while we got our snap back of the choppy-box, you see ... you put your bottle on there, and if Honesty was there, he would have your bottle and the cork out before you could say Jack Robinson. With his lips ... he'd lie down ... with his lips, and the cork wus out... he used to waste half of it, you know, drink as much as he could like… aye…Honesty ... I'll not forget him ..a skewbald...’

...Several of the ponies used to like a pinch of snuff ... you used to put a pinch on the back of your hand and give it to the pony and he used to curl his nostril up, just us if he was laughing, then sneeze.'...

...He would pull 6 or 7 full tubs at once, he would get down on his knees to grip the ground and pull away and without a word from me he would know when to stop pulling and he would cross out from the road us I unhooked his chain and the tubs would run on into the other tubs. This pony was very intelligent, and I thought a lot of him, that much that I had a tattoo of Bloom's head put on my right arm in 1931 and it's still there, a reminder of those great, hardworking little animal who would never give up or be beaten...

...This is about a horse called Eagle, who was put down the pit before he was ready, for the sake of the costs. The hauler who was put in charge of him could do nothing with him, or any other hauler in the pit. After about two weeks he broke away while being hitched to some full trams of coal, ran away from the coalface and ran into a broken roof support and was killed. There was a management enquiry. My father represented the hauler. My father claimed that Eagle should not have been down the pit without being correctly broken in for the work of hauling trams of coal. He won the case, and so the hauler was not held responsible for the death of Eagle. The funny part of this story is that the hauler told his wife that the manager had blamed him and that he had to pay the cost of the horse - £25 to be deducted from his pay packet at two shillings and sixpence [12.5p] a week. The haulier used then to write at the bottom of his pay docket “Horse – 2/6d”. So he had an extra five pints of beer each week, beer being sixpence [5p] in those days. After about a year his wife found out the truth and gave him one hell of belting….

...His name was Piper. What a rebel, a rebel who employed passive resistance as his most formidable weapon. Piper was a stint pony, which meant pulling twenty empty drams and the haulage rope in-bye for about three-quarters of a mile. The first two runs of drams he would pull till his belly touched the floor and take the run of empties in-bye without a murmur. The third run of empties Piper pulled his act. The driver would fasten his limbers into the tube and shout, "Come on, Piper". Piper would just cock his head on one side, look at the river as if to say "You'll be lucky" and gently sink to his knees and lie down. Nothing on earth, or underneath for that matter, would shift Piper. He would lie there oblivious of anyone about him. The drivers got that used to him playing this stunt that they played the same game and sat down beside him. After a short period he would, with assistance, struggle to his feet and carry on until he felt the need for having another rest.'

……There was a period when another young chap and I had to start work an hour or two before the others on the shift started. We had to go a mile in-bye to the stables. We would collect six ponies and bring them out-bye to the new district. We would bring them out of the stables, set them on their way, and he and I would follow behind and chat and sometimes have a sing-song. Then when we got close to our destination one of us would go to the front with our first pony. Then, one morning, we found one missing. I went back to investigate and found him in the stable. This happened several days, and always it was the same pony missing! Mack was his name and he was jet-black. So we had to keep our eyes open really wide and it happened that halfway out I spotted him in a man-hole, just waiting fro us to pass him, and then he’d make his way back to the stables!…..

…..I had Bumble a while, when I was a driver. When we first went at start the shift and he was in the mood he used to get under a certain piece of head timber and rub his back on it, an he would not move until he was ready. The rule was that he had to be brought out last, but the drivers used to bring him out first, jut out of mischief, and of course no-one could get past him, and there was only one way out of the stables……..

...Major was one for going for a walk back to the stables if he got the chance, but I had one ace up my sleeve to stop him wandering off. He had one weakness, he would not open ventilation doors as most ponies did. To keep him safe and to know where to find him I used to put him between two ventilation doors, which were about 15 to 20 yards apart. Although he wouldn't open the doors he would try to kick them down, and one day I left him, kicking the doors as usual. I knew he couldn't hurt the doors, they were sturdily built. About two hours later, when I came back, there was Major at the other door, belting away at it like mad. I went and calmed him down, but he had another kick at he door whilst I was holding him, and I thought at the time that was unusual. Then I heard a voice on the other side of the door - "Have you got hold of that bloody horse?" It was the Deputy. He said, “I've been trying to get through that... door fur an hour, and every time I pushed it open that ... horse kicked it shut!'

...Then I saw him turn round towards me and I sensed that something was wrong and Tim had sensed it. It was then I heard a sound I'd heard before, a runaway of drams coming towards us. I scrambled out of the dram; I knew I could do nothing for Tim, the road was too narrow and I had only seconds to try and find a "manhole", where the side was cut away at intervals to provide a shelter for such an event. I couldn't find one and all I could do was to squeeze myself upright against the side wall as the runaway drams roared past me, breaking the bottle of tea which was in a "poacher's pocket" on the inside of my waistcoat, and my oil-lamp was hit and extinguished, and then I heard the crash as the runaway drams hit Tim and the empties he had been pulling, just a few yards away. I was scared stiff and for what seemed ages I couldn't move, then with the smell of the dust in my nose and hearing Tim groaning, I just sat down and cried, and was still there when I saw lights bobbing towards me and some miners had come to see what had happened. One took me farther away and the others cleared the rubble and got Tim out. They told me his "cobble stick" - that's the wooden cross piece that the chain pulling the drams is attached to - had up-ended and taken the weight of the runaway train as it hit the pony and then the roof, and, apart from limping badly, and the shock, Tim seemed alright. It didn't take them long to dear the road and I recovered quickly, not just how lucky I had been. However, there was no work to be done by Tim and me that day and we made our way with we of the men back through the air-doors, Tim still limping. But, once through the doors he must have known he was heading hack to the stables, and his limp disappeared, and all the way back he walked all right till he got to the stables, when he put on the limp again and I'm sure that it was to impress the man in charge of the stables, I believe Tim had a few days off' to get over it, and I did the same……