Campaign for an eight hour day

Working hours in the Hucknall collieries were reduced from ten to nine hours a day in 1872, and in the following year to eight and a half hours, but a further demand from the union for an eight hour day was resisted by Ellis. He feared this would have dire consequences for the profitability of his collieries.

Neighbouring collieries were still working a nine hour day and went on strike. Initially their demands were reported to have been met, but if promises were made, they did not materialise and the dispute continued.

In Hucknall, Ellis held meetings with his employees in local schools where he explained his position and told them it was not negotiable. Ellis's intervention seems to have been effective and any talk of a strike ended. He considered this to be a sign they appreciated his case was reasonable.

(To be continued)

Boom town

The Hucknall collieries had become by the last quarter of the century amongst the most profitable in the industry and working conditions were good by the standards of the day. These were modern pits with much improved safety and ventilation in comparison with those sunk during the first half of the 19th century.

Wages were also higher than could be earned in agriculture and manufacturing industries. A Hucknall miner in the 1880's could earn in excess of 5s per day compared to £1 per week for a farm labourer who worked longer hours. By 1900 a faceworker could earn 7s 10d per day and saturday working ended around 1892.

The number of miners employed in the Nottinghamshire coalfields grew between the years of 1874 and 1884 from 12,228 to 15,333, whereas in Leicestershire over the same period numbers fell from 4,878 to 4,678.

These were attractive prospects and drew not only local men into the industry, but also experienced miners from established coalfields in Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire. Another, and at first sight unlikely, source of recruits came from rural Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. There where no coal mines here, but since the 1860's another very unusual type of mining had been underway. In large open cast pits men dug out fossilised dinosaur dung known as coprolites, which were rich in phosphates and ground up for use as fertilizer. However, in the 1870's the coprolite industry collapsed releasing this highly skilled pool of men, and a substantial number found alternative employment in the expanding Hucknall collieries.

In the 1896 report of H.M. Inspector of Mines for the Midland District, Hucknall No. 1 is stated to employ 526 workers underground and 130 on the surface. No. 2 employed 583 underground and 109 on the surface. Both collieries were managed by a Mr A.S. Douglas.

Sources:
Alan R. Griffin; Mining in the East Midlands 1550-1947. (1971)
Eric Horriben; Hucknall 'of lowly birth and iron fortune'. (1999)
Hucknall Pits and People, author:unknown