An Account of a First Day
Below is an extract from Joseph
Keating - My Struggle for Life (1916)
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...All the boys in school
looked forward with longing to the day
when they would be allowed to be-in work.
Release from the boredom of school might
have influenced them but my happiness
was not  so
much in leaving school as in the idea
of actually going to work underground.
We saw the pit boys coming home in their
black clothes, with black hands and faces,
carrying their food-boxes, drinking tins,
and gauze lamps. They adopted an air of
superiority to mere schoolboys. We humbly
bowed to this. They did experienced danger
amidst thundering falls of roof, and had
mysterious adventures ' in deeps, levels
and headings with blue balloons of gas
threatening to explode around their lamps.
They associated with big men and wonderful
horses. They earned six shillings and
nine pence every week. Never would one
of them dream of giving up the pits. Life
began to be worth living when once they
had gone down...
My eagerness to go down
the pit was so great that as soon as I
came home, I interviewed Dai Morgan the
overman of Navigation Colliery, on my
own initiative, and showed him my qualifications:
I should be twelve years of age on the
following day and had entirely satisfied
Parliament that my education was complete.
He said:-
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| Next morning, I was up at
half past five. It was a grey, sunless morning,
but I was thrilling with happiness, and
I could scarcely sit peacefully at the table
to take my breakfast of bread and butter
and tea without milk. |
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| My mother put my food in
a small tin box and filled a tin 'jack'
with cold tea, and said 'May the Lord bring
you safe home!' as I left the house. |
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| I went to the pit-head in
an ecstasy - the colliery was just behind
our house - with a thousand men and boys,
amidst iron trams, iron tracks, grease and
machinery. I was given a long gau4,e-lamp,
called a 'sprag', entered the pit-cage and,
crushed in between about a dozen boys and
men, was lowered into the darkness. The
swift descent took my breath away and I
gasped with fright and clung to my friends'
dusty clothes. |
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| That first descent into
Navigation coal pit, at half past six o'clock,
on the morning of my twelfth birthday, April
16th., 1883, interested me wonderfully.
As we dropped below the brink of the shaft,
the pale daylight seemed to spring upwards
and vanish like a flying ghost. For a moment
after that I could see nothing at all. Then
faint yellow rays appeared from our lamps,
and I could see as well as feel the forms
of men and boys with me. |
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| They had ranged themselves
in two lines against the iron sides of the
'carriage', as they called it. Each man
and boy had his hand raised, clinging to
a bar. One of the men lifted my hand to
a bar and said good-humouredly: |
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| 'Ketch by here, wassy; or
you'll tumble out, p'raps.' |
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| All were kind to a beginner.
They could tell by my schoolboy clothes
that this was my first day in the mine. |
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| We were going down so rapidly
- the pit was a quarter of a mile deep -
that our lamplight seemed to me to be always
running up. |
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| I the time a terrific wind
kept shrieking and blowing bits of coal
into our faces. The tiny, flying things
struck my forehead and cheeks sharply and
painfully. I felt as if I were falling through
the earth. |
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| The quarter of a minute
which was all the time taken for the quarter
of a mile drop, had been a magical period
in which I had passed from happiness to
terror, and back again from terror to happiness.
I was delighted to be in the pit. |
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| There seemed to be a kind
of distinction about it which made me think
I was doing something very fine. I was especially
proud of being with men and horses. The
good humoured voices of men and boys, as
they tramped slowly inwards, their laughter,
snatches of song, and lively chatter, the
neighing of animals, jingle of harness,
and thud of hoofs in the dust, gave me a
feeling of real happiness. |
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| ‘Kaet’n,’ Jim said, 'you
shall go with Darling. Take care of yourself
now, mind you. She is nasty sometimes. Tom
Pugh!’ he shouted, to the darkness beyond.
Joe Kaet’n will door with you.’ |
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| ‘Darling’ was a little brown
mare with one flashing eye and a red hole
where the other eye ought to have been.
She had run wild once too often in the pit,
and had knocked the eye out by colliding
with a tram of coal which was in her way.
Tom Pugh was her driver, and I was now her
door-boy. |
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| All that day I followed
Darling and her vagaries. I rode behind
oil the coal trams which she pulled. When
she stopped at a door I ran ahead, opened
it, and stood by it, like my lady's page,
while she and her load passed through. Then
I closed the door and had another ride behind. |
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| Dinner-time came, and I
sat with the other boys on the ground, in
soft, black dust which was very comfortable.
Under a timbered roof, we opened our food
boxes. my bread and cheese, and the tea
from my 'jack', had a sweeter taste that
day than any food or drink I hid ever taken.
Rats were running impatiently down the dark
roadside. anxious to get the crumbs.. We
could see the rat’s eyes sometimes. They
were like sparks of fire in the blackness. |
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| We did not recommence work
for a quarter of an hour after dinner. We
took a ‘spell’. I stretched myself at full
length in the dust as the others did, and
we talked on some interesting subjects.
A rat ran over my face, and the touch of
its smooth, cold, little feet on my cheeks
made me shiver with fright, and I sat up.
The other boys laughed. I soon got used
to the rats. |
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| I wanted to be seen ,going
home with the men from the pit, black, vividly
black, so black as to be nearly invisible. |
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| My wish was granted. I was
seen by most of my friends in my black clothes,
with my face black, my hands black, and
pit-lamp and 'box-and 'back' black, as I
came home. My another smiled at my comical
appearance as I went into the house. But
there was a sigh in her smile |
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