Bal maiden
The Cornish mining system went into terminal decline, leading to a collapse of the local economy and mass emigration both overseas and to other parts of the United Kingdom.
[9][10] Cornwall, the northern part of Iberia and the Ore Mountains (the modern border between the Czech Republic and Germany) are the only places in Europe in which major tin deposits are found near the surface.
[23] Although the mining itself was carried out by men, female workers were employed to sort ore for crushing, to prepare the bone ash used as a flux during the smelting process, and for general manual labour.
[31] Women and girls were almost certainly employed at the lead and silver mine at Bere Alston, and a few records have also been found of female workers at tin works on Bodmin Moor and around Redruth and Marazion in the 14th century.
[32] However, it does not appear that significant numbers of female labourers worked in Cornwall's mining industry until the early 18th century, as no records have yet been discovered for this period.
[33][21][34][j] In 1678, Clement Clerke introduced the coal-powered reverberatory furnace, greatly increasing the quantity of metal extractable from ore.[35] The Royal Mines Act 1688 (1 Will.
[51] When poor weather conditions made surface-level work impossible, water shortages meant water-powered machinery could not operate, or accidents in the mines caused a temporary closure, the bal maidens would be suspended.
[44][45] An experienced bal maiden working as a spaller would produce approximately one ton (2240 lb; 1016 kg) of broken ore per day, depending on the type of stone.
[61] The resulting rough and slimes were separated out on large wooden frames ('buddling' and 'framing' respectively), to extract the tin ore from the surrounding dust and grit.
The actual figures are likely to have been considerably higher; not all mines recorded male and female workers separately, and after 1872 there may have been deliberate under-reporting of the number of children working, owing to legal restrictions on their employment.
These estimates do not include female workers performing non-manual administrative work at the mines, nor those in related industries such as slate and china clay quarrying.
[75][l] Lunch typically consisted of pasties, hoggans (hard pasties made with unleavened barley flour and filled with pork, potato or dried fruit)[78] or fish eaten cold or warmed in ovens attached to the mine's furnaces,[79][80] along with mugwort or pennyroyal tea,[81] and it was not usual even for workers who lived near their workplace to go home for meals.
When Charles Foster Barham's reported to the 1842 Royal Commission into the Employment of Children at the Mines he found that less than half of bal maidens he interviewed were able to read to any extent.
[95] While the mine owners initially met their demands, once the food price stabilised the pay rate was then reduced to previous levels causing around 200 bal maidens and boys to walk out.
[96][98] From the 1840s onwards, more mines provided crude shelters to protect surface workers from the worst of the weather,[99] but at many others work at surface-level took place in the open air.
[101] Bal maidens wore gooks, a specialised bonnet which covered the shoulders and extended over the face to protect from rain, bright sunlight, flying debris and loud noise.
[44] Working in close proximity to heavy industrial machinery, they wore shorter dresses or skirts than the ankle-length clothing typical of the period, and their exposed lower legs were wrapped in protective coverings.
[110] The noise generated by industrial machinery, particularly after the introduction of the steam engine, could cause hearing difficulties, with some groups of bal maidens developing private sign languages.
[109] Noxious fumes, notably arsenic, lead and antimony could cause digestive problems, bowel disorders and amenorrhoea and other disruptions of the reproductive system.
[111] The hard work is not the greatest calamity of which we complain, that is a mere physical evil; what we most deplore is, that when called to take upon themselves the duties of wife and mother they are totally unfit for them.
[115] [116] (Barham's 1841 investigations found no evidence to the claim that bal maidens grew up to be poor housewives, concluding that "they are for the most part tender mothers and industrious wives [and] the laborious occupations to which they have been inured make household duties appear comparatively light".
[63] The tin industry, which was still economically successful, began to invest in new machinery to replace manual ore dressing, drastically reducing the number of female workers.
[133] In the 1880s William Ewart Gladstone's Liberal government tried to ban female labour from mines altogether; although the Bill was defeated, the number of bal maidens continued to fall.
[46] Electrification and the introduction of Frue Vanners at the surviving mines replaced most of the jobs still done by women, and by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 very few bal maidens remained in employment.
[4] With wartime shortages of raw materials and many younger men in the armed forces, some bal maidens were employed to dress orthoclase feldspar at the re-opened 'Polpuff Glass Mine', now better known as Tresayes Quarry Nature Reserve, near Roche in the St Austell district,[136] [137]and others were employed to re-dress the existing spoil heaps of defunct mines for wolfram and arsenic.
[4][q] While a few former bal maidens found alternative employment at local factories,[144] and large numbers emigrated, the unemployment situation in Cornwall remained bad.
[145] As early as the 1860s, charitable schemes had begun for training former bal maidens as domestic servants,[146] and as the textile industry of the North of England boomed a concerted effort was made to recruit Cornish women to work in the mills.
[148] In addition, the towns growing around the newly discovered mines of South Australia suffered a serious gender imbalance and made concerted efforts to recruit Cornish women.
[136] As many male workers were away on military service,[155] some women were briefly employed in tin-picking at Geevor,[156] and in ore-dressing at the Great Rock iron mine on Dartmoor, during and after the war until around 1952.
[158] Minnie Andrews (born in Camborne in 1874[159]), who had begun work as a racker at the age of nine, was believed to have been the last surviving former bal maiden (other than the Geevor pickers), when she died in March 1968.
