Counting the Cost of Coal: Women’s Lives in the Rhondda, 1881-1911

Dot Jones

Our Mother’s Land

With permission: Cardiff University of Wales Press 1991

This chapter focuses on the women who were wives and mothers of south Wales coal-miners in the period before 1914. In the traditional view of the mining community, miners occupy the foreground as men engaged in dirty and dangerous work while women figure in the background as those who wait and support.' The aim is to correct this stereotype in two key respects. Firstly, by examining working conditions in the home, the chapter emphasizes the importance of women's unwaged service contributions to the mining industry. Secondly, by examining mortality records, the cost of domestic labour in coal-mining households is measured in terms of shortened lives. The mortality rates of women who worked in the home were higher than those of their menfolk who worked in the pit, in direct contrast to national mortality trends.

A detailed analysis of census returns and mortality figures has been undertaken for the two valleys of the Rhondda Fawr and Rhondda Fach since this central region of the coalfield experienced the most vigorous growth of population during this period. In the thirty-mile length of two narrow valleys a string of colliery communities were crammed together: Treherbert, Treorchy, Pentre, Ystrad, Llwynypia, Tonypandy, Clydach Vale, Pen-y-graig, Porth, Hafod, Ynyshir, Wattstown, Pont-y-gwaith, Tylorstown, Ferndale, Blaenllechau and Maerdy. By 1901, they were all part of an urban district with a population of 113,735, comparable to that of Preston or Halifax. More than any other region in the UK, these communities were dependent upon coal and the export of coal. In a male-dominated industry this had important implications for female employment opportunities.

'The Rhondda' has become synonymous with Welsh coal-mining in popular imagination yet the opening up of these central valleys was a comparatively late and short-lived period in the development of the south Wales coalfield and should be viewed within this wider context.

An elongated basin of coal deposits lies beneath nearly 1,000 square miles of south Wales, from Pontypool in the east to Llanelli in the west, from Ammanford and Aberdare in the north to Bridgend in the south. A narrow band of anthracite coal is separated by the Bristol Channel and reappears across south Pembrokeshire near Haverfordwest. A variety of coal types have been mined; anthracite in the more open western half of the coalfield, bituminous coal in the east, and steam coal in the central valleys of the Cynon, Rhondda, and Taff. Different types of coal are also found at different levels in the same area.

The development of the south Wales coalfield in the nineteenth century can be divided into two main phases. Before 1840, the greater proportion of output went to supply the great and small ironworks situated along the rim of the coalfield where the coal seams outcropped.2 Then, as demand for south Wales iron declined, activity shifted towards the central valleys where steam coal was discovered at a higher level than previously realized. In response to a growing world market from the 1870s, millions of tons of coal from these central valleys were raised to fuel the reign of steam power at sea throughout the world. Steam power generated by Rhondda steam coal won the blue ribbon of the Atlantic for the Mauretania in 1909. It is interesting to note that, in a maledominated industry, a womanÑLucy Thomas, the 'Mother of the Welsh Steam Coal Trade'Ñtakes credit for the first shipment of Welsh steam coal to London.3 By 1894 almost half UK coal exports came from south Wales and at that time south Wales steam coal played a vital role in the context of UK foreign trade because coal was Britain's only bulk export commodity.

The second phase of development after 1840 was rapid: 366,000 men and women poured into south Wales between 1851 and I 91 L4 At first the migrants came mainly from Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire and nearby rural counties of England, as well as from the Aberdare valley where the ironworks and supplying collieries were suffering depression. Then, natural increase added to in-migration when second- and thirdgeneration coal-miners followed their fathers and brothers into an industry which was expanding as new shafts were sunk and new seams exploited. The migration involved so many

Welsh-speakers who might otherwise have followed the Irish to America that it gave the language a new industrial base.5 And the values of a shared Nonconformist background provided firm social foundations for the new colliery communities.

Communities in the Rhondda and elsewhere in the south Wales coalfield shared a pattern of life and work common to all coal-mining communities. As John Benson has observed, 'perhaps in no other industry did the way in which a man earned his living have a more profound effect on the way in which he and his family lived at home'.5 For the four out of five men who worked underground the most fundamental distinction in his day was the segregation of home/ above ground and work/below ground. Men's work below ground was hard, dirty and dangerous. Each man who worked underground depended upon his own skill and care as well as on that of others for his life as well as his livelihood. His workplace excluded all except fellow workers. The various work processes required skill and strength. Each worker had a large measure of control over his work practice. As a result miners became proud, independent men yet still strongly bonded together by mutual dependency. These values were articulated above ground as well as below. Mining communities were fiercely cohesive and neighbourly with help always at hand in times of trouble.

The mutual dependency of the workplace helped create leisure patterns segregated by gender which reinforced women's primary identification with the home. For miners' wives and mothers, there was total integration of home and work. The woman was always 'at work', and miners' wives faced difficult working conditions. Income was uncertain, families were large and the occupation of husbands, sons and lodgers created a heavy burden of domestic work.

Fear of the death or injury of a family bread-winner was ever present. The south Wales coalfield had the worst safety record in Britain. Strata here were subject to lateral 'squeeze' so that sudden roof falls continually picked offmen and boys in ones and twos. In the more gassy, 'fiery' eastern half, occasional calamitous explosion was a more publicized cause of death. Twenty-three colliery accidents claimed over one hundred lives each in England and Wales between 1850 and 1914; no less than eleven of these occurred in south Wales, four of them in the Rhondda valleys.7

Difficult geological conditions also had an economic effect. Coal seams in the south Wales coalfield were not as continuous as in other coalfields. Faults and folding made ease of working unpredictable and deeper shafts were needed to reach the better-quality steam coal. As a result of geological difficulties, output per man in the south Wales coalfield was below that in other coalfields and, indeed, declined over time. In an industry where labour costs accounted for a large part of final production costs, this in turn meant additional and increasing pressure to keep wages down and an increasing source of friction in industrial relations.5

Although wage rates were high, earnings were uncertain. Quite apart from the daily lottery of injury, piece-rate payment meant continuous uncertainty. Fluctuating coal demand resulted in periodic lay-offs or short-time working. Geological difficulties could restrict output and therefore earnings. Industrial disputes, strikes and lockouts added to uncertainty about earnings. A miner's wife did not know from one payday to the next what the household income might be.

Demographic characteristics also set mining communities apart. The typical pattern was a high proportion of males to females, early marriage and large families. Earning capacity was greatest when a man was young and strong in a male-dominated industry where any opportunity for women's employment was negligible.'¡ In all the mining regions the demand for a young male work-force and high early earning potential led to a high proportion of males in the population and early marriage. Glamorgan, Monmouth and Durham consistently appear at the top of the county tables of male/ female ratios in the census (see Table 1). The imbalance is particularly marked for the age group 1534 years.

An 1884 study gives 24 years as the average age at marriage for a miner, 22 years 6 months for his wife. Though marriage came early,

that fact is not sufficient to account for the miners' reputation as 'a notoriously prolific section of the population'." A variety of other factors were at work. Expectations of early high earnings went along with expectation of later incapacity. Children were needed to provide for old age. Boys at least were assured of early employment in mining. Girls could always be sent away into service. High fertility was also linked to high imant mortality. All these factors combined to produce a customary life-style which itself became a causal factor. As Table 2 shows, fertility amongst mining communities remained high and was slow to follow the national trend when the birth-rate fell for other occupation groups towards the end of the nineteenth century.'2 This indicates the insularity of coal-mining communities and the strength of the customary life-style.

If we turn now to look at the Rhondda valleys in more detail we see that, despite a late development and a short-lived prosperity, the Rhondda deserves its special place in coal-mining history.'3 The steamcoal seams there were among the deepest measures worked in the south Wales coalfield. Colliery communities there were the most dependent upon coal, and upon export markets, for their livelihood. Part of the uniqueness of the Rhondda can also be attributed to the topography of the two valleys themselves. Gwyn Thomas, the novelist, describes the Rhondda as:

one of Britain's darker marvels. It is made of two deep gulches in the North Glamorgan hills. Between 1870 and 1920 it poured out enough coal to have coked the globe if ignited at one stroke. Pit shafts opened like the holes in a mature cheese. Never was a small stretch of earth so majestically ransacked . . . created by a world mad for steam, warmth and money.'4

It was observed of the Fife miners in 1904 that 'the man is the keystone to the house arch, Woman's place is to support and buttress him from every side'.'5 This was true also for the Rhondda where the valleys were physically isolated, other industries were absent, and there was not even a substantial agricultural background in which women could play a part outside the home. Thus for the women of the Rhondda, even more than in coal-mining communities elsewhere, their role was defined in relation to their husband's occupation. Her sacrifice was taken for granted. Yet her domestic labour in the home was, like the miner's labour at the coal-face, also hard, dirty and dangerous. Like the man, she needed mental fortitude as well as physical strength to cope with the demands of home and family, and hers was the responsibility for the management of the household budget with a fluctuating income.'5

Her working environment, like her husband's, gave little comfort. Until the turn of the century housing conditions, water supply and waste disposal were not only inadequate but deteriorating under pressure of population growth. These conditions were a continual burden on the woman as she struggled to perform her daily tasks of household service-washing, cleaning, cooking and child care. The main problems arose from the rapid rate of development along the valleys and from the failure of the local authority to respond effectively to a worsening situation.'' In the forty years up till 1911, the Rhondda valleys absorbed a fourfold increase in population. At that time almost half the population of Wales lived in Glamorgan; the Rhondda Urban District contained a population larger than Swansea and not much smaller than Cardiff, crowded along two narrow valley floors.

The rate of house-building failed to match increasing demand. Initial construction of huts and blocks of houses by colliery companies was followed mainly by private, speculative building of the familiar rows of tiny, two-up, two-down, terraced housesÑ 'endless chains of tiny houses so small even the mice had to join in the singing'.'5 llnder these conditions the overcrowding in the Rhondda was worse than in England's largest industrial cities. The 1891 census evidence summarized in Table 3 gives 6.5 as the number of inhabitants per house in the Rhondda compared with 5.0 in Manchester or 5.6 in Liverpool. Twenty years later, in 1911, the Rhondda household size was little lower while the number of houses had more or less doubled.

The houses were small and lacked amenities. Few, if any, had bathrooms. In 1903, when Mrs Smith was nineteen years old and newly married to a Rhondda miner after being brought up in the metropolitan environment of Cardiff, she was very shocked that we had no convenience for our husbands to bath in. We had to bring a tub or tin bath, whichever we had, into the same room that we lived in, and heat the water over our living-room fire in a bucket or iron boiler, whichever we possessed. 19

As late as 1920 only 2.4 per cent of the 26,822 working-class homes in the Rhondda had baths.20

The lack of an adequate water supply was an even more fundamental difficulty. Three different companies were responsible for water supplies in the Rhondda. According to the Medical Officer of Health the water in 1889 was 'all of very bad quality'2' and many households drew their supply from taps in the street. For washing clothes the heated water was poured into large, wooden, 'dolly' tubs and pounded with poss sticks (see illustration on p. 111). Bert Coombes moved from his native Herefordshire to work underground before the First World War. In his autobiography, though he speaks from the point of view of a lodger on night shift trying to sleep during the day, he gives a realistic picture of the difficulties which women faced when washing and drying clothes under these conditions:

There were no roaring loud-speakers in those days, but there were children playing in the street and hawkers with voices that sounded to be shaking the bed I tossed about on. The wind was the right way that morning, so that the dust of the colliery screens blew away from the village. Tubs were bumped and washing-boards banged right underneath my window. All the water had to be carried from taps which were set at various spots throughout the village and a crowd of women were usually near these taps waiting for their water-vessels to be filled. These taps were great places for gossip, and every now and then I would hear a sharp voice calling 'Our Lizzie Ann! D'you know I'm waiting for that water?' or 'Gwennie! Gwennie! You've been up at that tap all the morning'.22

The Rhondda Urban District Council eventually took over the ineffectual Ystrad Gas and Water Company in 1895 after a legal case but it was not until 1910 and 1912 that two new necessary reservoirs were completed.

Neglect of refuse and sewage disposal was another problem which persisted even after it was recognized as a major cause of the Rhondda's appalling rate of infant mortality. An otherwise complacent sanitary survey of the Rhondda in 1885 reported the facilities as: 'Some WCs with or without water, Ash-closets and pails. In some places full and stinking privy pits'.23 Until 1894 there were no main sewers for an urban population of almost 100,000. Waste of every description found its way to the river at the bottom of the valley. The Medical Officer of Health reported in 1893:

The river contains a large proportion of human excrement, stable and pigsty manure, congealed blood, offal and entrails from the slaughterhouses, the rotten carcases of animals, cats and dogs in various stages of decomposition, old cast-off articles of clothing and bedding, old boots, bottles, ashes, street refuse and a host of other articles. The water is perfectly black from small coal in suspension . . . In dry weather the stench becomes unbearable.24

Rhondda women undoubtedly laboured under poor working conditions. They were also faced with extreme demands for their domestic labour for demographic and industrial reasons. The sex imbalance and high fertility meant a high proportion of men and children per household; the demands of servicing the coal-mining industry were relentless. Tradition too was a hard taskmaster.

The measurable aspect of the demand for domestic labour relates to household structure. To quantify this, census enumerators' returns

for 1881 were analysed. Details of age, sex, marital status, relation to head of household, and occupation were obtained for a 50 per cent sample (20,647 individuals in 3,822 households) from Ystradyfodwg (Rhondda) Registration Sub-district. The sub-district comprises the Rhondda valleys down to their meeting-place at Porth.

The aggregate census figures for mining counties and the Rhondda (Table I ) have already indicated the extent of a population imbalance towards youth and maleness in 1891. The chart above summarizing enumerators' returns for the Rhondda sample in 1881 duplicates these findings; 40 per cent of the population were under fifteen years of age and males in the 15-34 years age group outnumbered females by seventeen to ten.

The position is similar if we look at the size of households and the proportion of the population in large households. The Rhondda sample results tabulated in Table 4 show that most people lived in households of six or more. The sample also shows that a quarter of households shared houses because it was usual for young couples with one or even two children to share a house. In effect, therefore, three-quarters of Rhondda's inhabitants either shared with another household or else were part of a household of six or more. In the cramped conditions of the tiny terraced houses, sharing created problems for the housewife. Thirty years later conditions were much the same. Bert Coombes recalled his early married days:

The front room, our living room, was about ten feet square, and the bedroom above about the same size . . . The scrape of a chair or even the creak of a bed, could be heard by the other family. Certainly they had only one child, and we none at that time, so we were not so crowded or noisy as those other housesÑand they were manyÑ where a considerable family was living in the front and back of each house.25

The other family in Bert Coombes's house 'claimed the strip of garden, and it had only room for one line, so our washing was done in the room and the drying on lines under the ceiling'.26 The heavy tub for Bert's bath had to be carried through the kitchen to the back.

Lodgers also contributed to the crowding and added to the domestic workload. As Table 5 shows, one-third of all households in the sample took in lodgers, mostly in ones and twos. Twelve per cent of the total population were enumerated as lodgers or boarders (see Table 6). Taking in lodgers, like house-sharing, was an accepted

means of cutting down living costs.27 In the 1880s the weekly charge varied between 2s.6d. [ 12.5p] and 3s.6d. [ I 7.5p] per lodger. The service provided included washing and, at the higher price, 'potatoes or tea' (evening meal).28 Lodgers were not always complete strangers; those who were not relatives often came from the same home village. A number of households in the Rhondda sample lodged married men who came from the same Cardiganshire district as the head of household. These men probably returned home in the summer for the harvest.29 Where conditions were very cramped, men on different shifts shared beds. How else could life have been managed at 111 Ystrad Road in 1881 where the census enumerator's returns show 42year-old Elizabeth Morgan was providing board and lodging for four miners as well as looking after her five children and a husband? The eldest boys, aged thirteen and fifteen, like their father, worked underground. The youngest child was under one year old. With such a work-load, one wonders how Elizabeth Morgan would fare with another pregnancy.

Whether coal-miners in the household were husband, sons or lodgers, they necessarily created a great deal of work for the women. Daughters, as well as wives and mothers, became domestic labourers. When interviewed, one Rhondda woman recalled her working day at home in the inter-war period when her father and seven brothers worked underground on different shifts. Baths and hot meals had to be prepared for seven in the morning after the 11 p.m.-7 a.m. night shift; at three in the afternoon after the 7 a.m.-3 p.m. shift; and at eleven at night after the 3-11 p.m. afternoon shift.30 In 1881 Hannah Rutley of Pentre might have given a similar response if interviewed. She was the eldest of nine children, the youngest under one year old. The occupation of her father and three oldest brothers was listed as 'coalminer'; hers as 'assisting in household duties'. In the aggregate occupation tables she was counted with her mother among the 'unoccupied' .

The needs of the men of the household claimed priority over all other demands and dictated the daily household routine. Childcare came second. Yet children were everywhere and comprised 40 per cent of the population. Table 7 shows that 30 per cent of households in the Rhondda sample contained four or more children; there were very few houses indeed that did not contain at least one child under fifteen years of age. The overcrowding of large families into tiny houses, poor sanitary conditions and poverty contributed to one of the highest infant mortality rates in England and Wales and a high incidence of infectious diseases amongst young children. As Table 8 shows, each year through the 1890s, pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, scarlet fever, convulsions, and other causes were killing one out of every twelve children under five years of age. Fiftyfive per cent of all deaths were of children under five years old. It is not surprising that playing funerals was a popular childhood game. Yet there were many children who suffered illness and were nursed to survival. For example, in the Rhondda in 1899, which was a bad year for diphtheria, of 1,804 cases notified, 1,618 survived. Or again in 1900 and 1901, which were bad years for scarlet fever, of 3,221 cases notified, 2,443 survived. To their other functions as washerwomen, charladies, and cooks, the women of

In 1915, the Co-operative Women's Guild published a collection of letters in which members had written about their experience of motherhood. Letter 87 is entitled 'Struggles of a Miner's Wife'. The writer's eight pregnancies had produced seven live births of which only four children now survived. She wrote:

I dare say I could write a book on my early struggles with my seven children, and a miner's home to contend with; and many a week my husband has not had a penny of wage to bring home, besides the experience of three big strikes and many small ones.

I may say we were married nineteen years before we lost one, and then I lost my baby first, a grand little girl of two. Then, a year and a half after, I lost a fine lad of fourteen in the fever hospital, of scarlet fever and diphtheria. Two years after that we lost a girl of twelve from tubercular disease of the kidneys from cow's milk. The doctor was treating her for eight years for Bright's disease of the kidneys. I brought them up breast-fed, so she must have contracted it after she was weaned. Such a clever child she was. So you will see we have had our troubles.

I may say I had very good times at confinements, except the first and the last. The youngest was born feet first, which was an awful experience, and her heart was nearly stopped beating; so I think that left her heart weak, and she cut her teeth with bronchitis. I used to get up always by the ninth day until the last. I was between forty-one and forty-two when she was born, so had to rest a bit longer, but had to see to household duties as soon as possible.3'

The writer speaks with typical lack of self-pity, passing lightly over her experiences of childbirth. Probably the only help available at childbirth would have been a midwife to attend the birth and a neighbour's daughter to do the washing and care for the younger children for a week or two after confinement. Neighbours rallied

round at times of birth, death, illness and misfortune but independence was a matter of pride and many aimed to take up control of household duties as soon as possible.

Bearing and raising large families, like servicing the male labour force, required much domestic labour. The effort was increased because tradition demanded that these jobs should be performed to a high standard. The Rhondda miner took great pride in his work and the place of Rhondda coal in world trade. His wife took a corresponding pride in the results of her domestic labour. Looking at the domestic work-load of Rhondda women between the wars, Rosemary Crook concluded that 'the women spent time and energy on cleaning far beyond that needed to keep the house habitable'. It was one aspect of demonstrating the 'ability to service one's man, and to find satisfaction in doing so [which] was the criterion by which women judged each other'.32 It can also be interpreted as a way of demonstrating control over the home as workplace in the same way as men at the coal-face felt in control of their workplace.

Exacting standards for domestic labour go back a long way. In 1846 H. Seymour Tremenheere, reporting on 'The State of the Population in Mining Districts', contrasted the habit of south Wales miners with those of miners in other regions of Britain who did not take the daily bath that was customary in Wales.33 Sons of these men joined others from rural Wales in the first wave of immigrants to the Rhondda valleys. They were Welsh-speaking and strongly Nonconformist in culture and religion. Eisteddfodau and preaching festivals were an important part of social life. Many of the early miners' leaders were also chapel deacons. Religious revivals periodically swept through the Rhondda valleys, most notably in 1859, 1879 and 1904 5, with reports of services held underground in some pits.34 The Nonconformist code of life and work was strict and its implications for household labour were straightforward. 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness' was a Nonconformist maxim which Rhondda women made their own.

Women paid a high price for their committed response to the demands of domestic labour; their own welfare was undoubtedly sacrificed for the welfare of others. The unremitting toil of childbirth and domestic labour killed and debilitated Rhondda women as much as accident and conditions in the mining industry killed and maimed

Rhondda men. What is startling is the extent of women's sacrifice and the way it was accepted without being noticed or questioned.

Tables 9(a) and 9(b) show official mortality rates for the decennial periods 1901-1910 and 1891-1900 for Pontypridd Registration District. The district includes the town of Pontypridd as well as the Rhondda Valleys but overall the vast majority of households are still mining households. For the earlier decennial period the RegistrarGeneral's annual reports do not include a male/female breakdown by age but it is possible to calculate on the same basis up to 1880. Table 9(c) shows average mortality during the three years 1878-1880, per 1,000 population in 1881. With such a fast-growing population during this period, the figures for Pontypridd District are likely to underestimate, so care must be taken in making comparisons with both the figures for England and Wales and those for Pontypridd in the later periods.

Nevertheless, the message is quite clear. For age group 20-44 years, in the Pontypridd Registration District, the death rates for women are significantly higher than for men for the whole period. This is in marked contrast with the experience of England and Wales as a whole where mortality rates for women are lower than for men in every age group over fifteen years of age for every sub-period (except for 187880 when the mortality rate for women 15-25 years of age is marginally higher than for men). Such a 'traditional' mortality pattern is characteristic of pre-industrial communities.35 Like living in an undeveloped economy, early marriage to miners was not good for women's health.

Later investigation of mortality figures more directly linked to occupation groups confirms the earlier findings. Miners' wives fared badly in relation to wives of men in other occupation groups. The wives of face-workers were particularly at risk; the Registrar-General commented that 'young wives of hewers and getters were in the highest risk category of any women with occupied husbands . . . their mortality being considerably above those for all married women for almost every cause'.36

One cause of the high mortality rates for women in mining households was their exposure to the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth. As Table 10 shows, maternal deaths per I ,0001ive births in the Pontypridd District were well above the England and Wales average, indeed they were amongst the highest in England and Wales.

The connection with domestic labour was not recognized in contemporary discussion of these facts before 1914. The problem of maternal mortality, like infant mortality, was seen largely as a medical and educational problem to be solved by the medical profession and local authorities. Women themselves were blamed for high rates of infant and maternal mortality: as mothers and midwives, they were ignorant and/or careless.37 This was the position adopted by Dr E. J. Maclean, Senior Gynaecologist at the Cardiff Infirmary, when he gave evidence before the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress in 1909. Maclean observed: 'It is in the densely populated mining districts of Glamorgan and Monmouth that the high [infant and maternal] mortality rates . . . are chiefly evident, and in my opinion such mortality rates are referable to the large number of confinements which are attended by midwives only.' He claimed that 80 to 90 per cent of confinements in Glamorgan were attended only by 'untrained and uneducated' midwives. In response to persistent questioning by Charles Booth he was reluctant to agree that poor housing and insanitary conditions might also play a part.38 The subject of women's domestic work-load was not raised by Maclean or by Booth.

Some local campaigners did, however, recognize the wider 'feminist' issues. Elizabeth Andrews, a Rhondda miner's wife, helped to form the Co-operative Women's Guild there in 1910. She worked tirelessly to improve conditions for women through campaigns for pit-head baths and maternity and child welfare. She also played an active role in the suffragette movement (see Chapter 7) and was a woman organizer for the Labour Party in Wales from 1919 to 1948.39

In one initiative to improve welfare provision Elizabeth Andrews followed up a recommendation of the 1918 Maternity Act and wrote to the (all-male) county and borough councils in Wales suggesting that they co-opt two representatives of women's organizations onto

the Maternity and Child Welfare Committees which the councils were then obliged to establish. The hostile and negative response of many county medical officers surprised her:

Our letters were quite courteous and businesslike, but one County M.O.H. referred to them as 'wild hysterical effusion' and falling back on a scriptural phraseology, said the Council must be charitable to such people 'as they know not what they are talking about'. In another county we were called a 'lot of interfering busybodies'.40

The implications were clear; the matter was a medical and educational one in which women's proper role was to be the passive patient and pupil.

It was the issue of pit-head baths which at last highlighted the damage done to women in their own homes in a way that convinced a wider public. In their 1920 introduction to Pithead and Factory Baths, Robert Smillie and Frank Hodges saw 'no reason why his [the miner's] wife or mother should be the life-long slaves of the pit'.4' Elizabeth Andrews was in the forefront of the campaign. As one of three miners' wives giving evidence before the Commission on the Coal Industry in 1919, she argued:

Pithead baths would reduce the physical strain on the mother caused through lifting heavy tubs and boilers. A midwife of twenty-three years' experience in the same district in Rhondda stated to me that the majority of cases she has had of premature births and extreme female ailments are due to the physical strain of lifting tubs and boilers in their homes.42

She, too, described the drudgery of women's work in the Rhondda as 'nothing but slavery'.43 The debilitating effects that 'the double burden of work cast upon the women folk'44 were at last being recognized. Responsibility for that double burden lay firmly with the unrewarded service demands of the coal-mining industry.

But these battles were fought at a later period. Although the mortality tables of the Registrar-General provided clear evidence for the Rhondda and in other areas of the south Wales coalfield before the First World War, the spotlight played upon the man's labour and the dangers of the miner's occupation. It was accepted or unnoticed that his wife's working day was longer and her life at greater risk.