SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



continuous streets, but interspersed with blazing rurnaces, heaps of burning coal in process 

 of coking, piles of iron-stone, calcining forges, pit-banks and engine chimneys, the country 

 being besides intersected with canals, crossing each other at various levels, and the small 

 remaining patches of surface soil are occupied with irregular fields of grass or corn inter- 

 mingled with heaps of refuse of mines, or from the slag of blast furnaces. Sometimes the 

 road passes between mounds of refuse from the pits, like a causeway raised some feet above 

 the fields on either side, which have subsided by the excavation of the minerals beneath. 

 These circumstances in the state of the surface and the substrata, united to the clouds of 

 smoke from the furnaces, coke hearths, and heaps of calcined iron-stone, which drift across 

 the country according to the direction of the wind, have effectually excluded from it all 

 classes except those whose daily bread depends upon their residence within these districts. 



This separation of rich and poor, employer and employed, was one of 

 the worst features of the district. Ijn the parish of Sedgeley, e.g., which 

 comprised a number of scattered but densely- populated villages, there were 

 reported to be not more than four of the gentry in the whole district, nor a 

 single resident independent proprietor. 160 



At Rowley Regis there was neither resident clergyman nor magistrate 

 among 12,000 inhabitants; 8,000 were employed in mining or in some 

 branch of the iron industry. 161 



At Kingswinford, again, the report says that 



before the rapid advance of the miner the ancient gentry are being driven back and 

 the sites of their mansions are only known by the names of the collieries and ironworks 

 erected on them. 162 



The scarcity of clergy and churches throughout the district at this time 

 is reflected in an expression of the day, ' as few as parish churches.' The 

 people who seemed to be most wretched were the nailers, men, women and 

 children working together in the little domestic workshops adjoining their 

 miserable homes. Suffering from the evils of the middleman and the sweater, 

 as they do in a minor degree to-day, they were also largely at the mercy of 

 the truck system, now happily stamped out among them. 



It is interesting to notice how the geological structure of the district 

 affects the occupation of the people and, indirectly, their social condition. 

 The nailers, as the report points out, are usually to be found everywhere 

 along the line of junction between the Coal Measures and the Red Sandstone, 

 and with any other formation, such as the limestone hills near Sedgeley. 



The following description of a village of nailers in 1843 is given by 

 Mr. James Boydell, managing partner of the Oak Farm Company Works 

 in Lower Gornal : 



Lower Gornal is the dirtiest and most uncivilised village in the world, yet the people 

 have the best hearts. The people are mostly nailers, and are a very rough set. Men, 

 women and children work together, there is no comfort at home, and both men and 

 women go to the public houses and drink and sing together. 



As yet the machine-made nails were not competing with the hand-wrought 

 article, but such competition was drawing near : 



I fear great injury (says Mr. Boydell) will be done to our nailing population by an 

 invention I saw yesterday in London, by which nails of excellent quality are made by 

 pressure. This seems likely to reduce the cost of hand made nails considerably. 



160 Midland Mining Com. Rep. i (1843), vol. xiii, p. cli. 



161 Ibid. clii. 162 Ibid. cli. 



301 



