A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



to follow his employment. Unfortunately, few of the box clubs survived 

 long in the nineteenth century. Bailey instances a case in 1808 where the 

 Cockfield Box Club was dissolved after fifty years' existence by the action of 

 a few of the more turbulent younger members who wished to divide the 

 capital. The members got ^3 each, and yet some of the older ones had been 

 paying to it all their lives. In the nineteenth century the box clubs found 

 more worthy successors in the great friendly societies, which are strong in 

 Durham. 



Trade-unionism is seen at its best in Durham, whether among the 

 colliers, railway workers, or shipbuilders, and about the middle of last century 

 there sprang up in the towns and villages an enthusiasm for the teaching of 

 the Rochdale Pioneers which carried out the principle of co-operation into 

 every form of retail trading, and taught habits of thrift and sobriety to a 

 population hitherto not remarkable for them. The story of trade-unionism 

 in Durham is worthy of more detailed treatment than can be given here.* 

 Something must be said, however, about the various unions, and especially 

 about the miners' union. The Durham pitmen fared no better than their 

 fellows elsewhere at the hands of the speculators who controlled the mines. 

 All the horrors of woman and child labour underground familiarized by Lord 

 Shaftesbury were to be found in Durham, while the truck system and the 

 countless fines deprived the miner of what little freedom was left to him 

 under the system of the yearly bond. He was legally bound to serve a 

 mining owner at a certain fixed rate of pay when required, although the 

 master was not bound to guarantee him work ; when he had filled his tub 

 with coal underground he had no certainty that the weigher on the bank 

 would not only deprive him of payment on the ground of short weight, but 

 would not also under colour of a fine cause him to pay the mine owner for 

 the privilege of working for nothing. When the miner at the fortnight's 

 end did receive his scanty pay it was in the shape of a note on the local 

 ' tommy-shop,' kept generally by the relative of a mine official. 



By the beginning of the nineteenth century mining was one of the few 

 pursuits open to the Durham villager. Can we blame him if in the agony 

 of despair he threw down his tools time after time despite the terror of the 

 Combination Laws ? The 'sticks' or strikes of the Durham miner, however, 

 were as savage and brutal as they were useless. As far back as 1662 a petition 

 to the king was mooted in a vain effort to induce the owners to secure better 

 ventilation in the pits. Explosions from fire-damp were painfully common 

 until science was called in, and we must remember that the miner was com- 

 pelled by law to descend the mine when ordered under the terms of his 

 yearly bond. 



It is true that the Durham miners were never in the awful position of 

 the Scottish serfs to whom Parliament finally gave freedom of contract in 

 1799, but in 18 10 the northern coal-masters decided to alter the duration of 

 the bond without consulting the men. It was a small matter, but it opened 

 the eyes of the miners to their semi-servile condition. The resulting strike 

 was carried on by an oath-bound confederacy recruited by the practice of 



' For more detailed information see Webb (S. and B.), Hist, of Trade Unionism (London, 1894), and 

 Industrial Democracy, 2 vols. (London, 1897) by the same authors; Fynes, R. The Miners of 'Nor thumb, and 

 Bur. (Blyth, 1873) ; Sykes, Local Records ; Wilson, J. A Hist, of the Dur. Miners Association (Durham, 1907). 



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