WOMEN AND GIRLS IN ENGLISH MINES.

Kumara Times, Issue 1051, 12 February 1880, Page 3

WOMEN AND GIRLS IN ENGLISH MINES.

- It is a somewhat startling fact that fjiere are still nearly 5000 women and girls employed about the coal mines, of Great Britain. In the official summary of persons in and about the mines, Under the ’ Coal Mines Act, it is stated that 21 females under the age of 13 years are employed. Of girls between the:ages'of 13 and 16 there are 433 • employed; of young women above :the age of 16 there are no less than 4502 employed. In the mines registered Under the Metalliferous Mines Act there is a larger proportionate em- • ptoyinenf of femares. At the tender age of between 8 and 13 years there areo6 girls employed, chiefly in the Cornwall District ; between the ages and 18, there are 984 girls em-▼-ployed above these mines, Cornwall • and-the Noath "Wales District eraployiagf the bulk; and there are also 1,741 females above the age of eighteen employed, Cornwall, North Wales, and Ireland employing all these except 20 ; ahd of this score, somewhat singularly, the chief part are employed in the North of England, which has been re-

markably free from women’s work in the unfit employment of mining. The proportion of women employed is said to be decreasing; but the fact that girls of such tender ages are put to mining operations, or to work “ above ground ” at the mines, is a sign that the unsatisfactory symptom is not likely to entirely die out.