| The Life of the Balmaiden |
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Cornish Women and their Mining History. 60,000 women and girls are estimated to have worked “above grass”, at the surface of the mines in the 200 year period 1720-1920. Lucy Frears went in search of Cornwall’s balmaidens.  Balmaidens at Dolcoath in the late 1800s. The legacy of Cornish mining has been given a boost recently. Geevor Tin Mine has been awarded a £3.8 million grant to keep the history of Cornish mining alive. The last Cornish mine, South Crofty in Redruth, closed in 1998 but during the 18th and 19th century the region was the world’s greatest producer of tin and copper. Women, of course, played an important part in Cornish mining history. There are no records at all before 1720 but they worked at the mines until the last balmaiden was laid off in the 1920s. Lynne Mayers’ research into her family’s mining tradition led her to write Balmaidens published by The Hypatia Trust. “They’re called balmaidens because the word “bal” is a very old Cornish word for a mine and it was replaced by the name “wheal” which people might be more familiar with. The name balmaiden has remained with them and just means a woman or girl who works at the mine,” said Lynne. The balmaidens were a vital part of the work force. The main mining parishes needed 300 to 1,000 ore dressers and there simply weren’t enough men and boys available to work with the copper, tin and lead. Copper ore required the most work. At the mouth of the mine in all weathers the balmaidens would stand on cobbled ‘dressing floors’ and smash large lumps of rock (spalling) with sledgehammers. Other balmaidens sat down surrounded by piles of wet ore to do the ‘cobbing’. They chipped off the valuable bits of ore using small short handled hammers. The last stage of reducing the ore was ‘bucking’, the most skilled and highest paid job. Perhaps the balmaidens aspired to work in the ‘bucking shed’ not only for the money but because it was under cover. Up to 60 women stood in a line banging at the ore on anvils, known as buck stones, with flat handled hammers. “It was quite a sight to behold, all these balmaidens singing in unison and smashing away on the anvils to reduce the ore to walnut size pieces,” imagines Dr Sharron Schwartz, Honorary University Fellow at the University of Exeter. “The bucking shed at Dolcoath was known as the ‘roarer’ because of the noise that went on inside there.” The balmaidens are still remembered by their costume now copied by schoolgirls at Cornish Festivals. Posed photographs from the period show smartly dressed women in various styles of hats known as ‘gooks’ to protect them from rain or sun as well as scrubbed white aprons. Quite a clean feminine image when one considers that they broke up to 5 tons of rock on exposed hillsides in all weathers! The reality must have been sweaty clothes stained orangey-red by the copper-coloured soil. The white apron was a ‘walking out’ apron to be worn to and from work, although that was often a long way across the fields. Once at the mine they put on ‘tousers’, rough Hessian aprons. “Balmaidens must have looked absolutely splendid,” enthuses Lynne Mayers. “They were very proud of their appearance and going to work they would wear their long skirts. They wouldn’t be as long as contemporary skirts otherwise they’d be dragging in the mud and dirt of the mine so their skirts would be above the ankle. In order not to disgrace themselves they would cover their ankles with woollen or cotton bandages depending on the season.” A visitor to a Camborne mine in the 1890s noted that some balmaidens were wearing their colourful but old ‘Sunday best’ dresses under their ‘tousers’ or aprons. This extraordinary effort to stay looking smart and feminine has been translated by some as a way to hide the shame of doing such rough, unwomanly work. Justin Brooke, who sadly died last November, interviewed the last balmaiden in the 1960s. Minnie Andrews was then in her 90s. Minnie had enjoyed the work, he told me, but one of her friends had gone to great lengths to disguise where she worked by pinning her handkerchief around her head to hide and protect her face and wrapped rags around her hands so that they wouldn’t get hurt and sunburnt. Perhaps this balmaiden was ashamed but Dr Sharron Schwartz is keen to point out that she had probably chosen to be a balmaiden. “My readings and research suggest that women were really glad to go to work on the mines, that they chose this labour above domestic service or agriculture. If you look at the types of work they did, yes, spalling ore was pretty awful but so too was carting buckets of dung and spreading it over the fields which was considerably less well paid,” she said Cornish balmaidens made shrewd economic decisions - they could earn their own money rather than rely on their parents and taste independence before marriage. Working in close proximity to men and their independence earned the balmaidens a bad reputation. Many older locals speak of being told not to go near balmaidens by their parents. As 19th century stories and documentation show balmaidens as having a good reputation for being honest, respectable and hard working Lynne Mayers is quick to spring to their defence. “Certainly towards the end of the 19th century it seems that the general conception was that these women came from the very lowest strata of society and weren’t necessarily so nice to know. There was this saying that the language the balmaidens used was as black as their aprons were white, but there is no real evidence of that,” she adds. Some of the women could certainly stand up for themselves in such a male environment. Mayers has unearthed stories such as the balmaiden that threw her surface captain, her boss, into a big tub of water. Dr Schwartz feels that their reputation came from society’s disapproval of their independence and new spending power. She said: “Men didn’t like women having too much independence. They were free to mingle at the surface of the mines with members of the opposite sex, which was a lot easier to do than at chapel where they might have been allowed to walk out afterwards. The mixing of the sexes at the surface of the mines meant that women were losing their deference to men. These women earned their own income, they paid some to the family pot, which helped keep the family above subsistence level, but some of that money was theirs to keep and that was part of the problem. Men didn’t like women being able to spend money on nice clothing, bonnets and trinkets.” Some of the young women organised clubs such as a group in the Camborne area. They all paid in an amount of money per month and would then draw lots to see who would win the silk dress or a brand new hat! These Cornish working class women went to great lengths to buy themselves the best dresses and accessories so they could dress like ladies when they went to church on Sundays. Many balmaidens were Methodists and Mayers’ research suggests that they sang hymns at work and even attended prayer meetings and bible studies at some mines. Local historian and writer Cyril Noel found these writings by an observer in the late 18th century: “Personally I know many cases of mine girls who have illegitimate children, and except that they lack husbands, they live irreproachable lives”. Of course at this time it was unacceptable to be a single parent, but why some were single parents is difficult to determine. Had their husbands died in mining accidents? Were they fast and loose as has been suggested? Mayers has read the miserable first-hand account of a balmaiden who had three illegitimate children while working at the mines during the 1820s and 30s. ‘She writes passionately about the mines being an evil place and the source of all these tragic events that led her to be suicidal, very ill and ending up in Bodmin jail because she refused to divulge the name of the father of one of these children.’ What we don’t know is whether there was any systematic exploitation or abuse of women at certain mines. Balmaidens broke ore for 8-10 hours a day, 5 and a half days a week, with perhaps only 3-4 days holiday a year. It’s no wonder that Henwood, a journalist, called them Amazons when he saw them working in the 1900s. Some weren’t as healthy as they appeared. Arthritis, rheumatism, bronchitis, colds and TB was rife. Mayers lists other common ailments. Walking around Geevor Tin Mine, ex-miner Ian Davey showed me the calciner where balmaidens removed arsenic by roasting it off. “A lot of them I suppose did die young but a lot of the deaths years ago was put down as consumption because of people’s inability to work out exactly what the proper cause of death was. I suppose a lot of people were put into the ground through arsenic poisoning, he said. It wasn’t only arsenic, their full long dresses, dictated by the need for decency, were not only impractical but also dangerous. “It was the women and girls who had the serious accidents with machinery because they were quite often drawn in by their clothes. There was a 16-year-old who was crushed to death in the Gwennap mines and there was a nine year old seriously injured in the St Just area,” adds Mayers. Women never worked as miners underground in Cornwall and we’ll never really know why. There’s a deep-rooted superstition about it, perhaps concocted to keep women away from the best-paid work, or perhaps to protect them from the worst accidents. We can only estimate how many worked ‘above grass’ as mining records from this period are scant. Weekly costs of spalling, cobbing or bucking rather than names of individuals was noted down and it’s rumoured that many records that did exist were hurled down the shafts when they closed. The estimate that 60,000 women worked at the mines is probably very conservative. Dr Sharron Schwartz has looked into why women in particular were phased out from working on the mines. “A former writer on this subject suggested that it was due to mechanisation and the decline of the Cornish mining industry which crashed after 1866, but I think this is only part of the issue, I think we also have to look at the cultural shift in British society in general. They really did want their women to be angels in the home and a male bread earner wage to look after the family,” she said. The story of the balmaiden is part of the extraordinary history of Cornwall when it was a successful mining community that exported its skills all around the world. Justin Brooke was struck by Minnie Andrews’ fond memories of her time at the mine. “She was about 13, she said, when she went onto the surface of a mine to work and stayed there as long as her 3 sisters were there and her father was unable to work. She said she enjoyed it greatly – all that fresh air! She only had one apron. She used to wash it at the weekend and said ‘ It used to come up lovely!’“ Balmaidens by Lynne Mayers, is available from bookshops or by mail order price £20 + £2.50 p&p from: Hypatia Publications, Trevelyan House, 16 Chapel Street, Penzance TR18 4AW. Lynne Mayers is building a database of balmaidens names so please get in touch if a relative was a balmaiden. Dr Sharron Schwartz is a self-employed Historical Consultant and Honorary University Fellow in the History Department, University of Exeter. Ian Davey is one of the ex-miners who work as guides at Geevor Tin Mine www.geevor.com. |