The regularity of pit fatalities like those of James and William at this time is quite shocking. The next time we encounter James is in the parish registers of St Mary’s Church in Greasley, Nottinghamshire for his wedding to Alice Sisson (bp. This record also confirms that James was employed as a collier (coal miner) at the time, and aside from the 1841 census on which he is listed as an iron ore miner, James appears to have worked in the coal industry his entire life.
You may already have this information to hand if you’ve located your ancestor in the census.

There on 20 March 1797 the marriage of Samuel England (b. c. 1772 – bur. 4 April 1846, Sleet Moor, Derbyshire – d. Mary (b. You can find out more about a collection of abandonment plans covering open-cast and deep-mining operations, and the British Coal photographic collection. “A wealth of well-presented, accessible information is provided via a comprehensive menu arranged under three main headings: ‘Museum’, ‘Mining’ and ‘Disasters’. Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. Between 1837 and 1850, he and Alice had had at least seven children, whose names were: Just less than two years after James’s death, Alice remarried on 17 May 1853 to another coal miner, William Grice (b. c. 1823, Min, Leicestershire), with whom she had at least three more children: We of course cannot say whether Alice remarried for love, the need to support her children economically or a combination of the two, but in the years between the death of James and her second marriage she must have struggled to provide for her children, especially as her mother Ann was no longer around to help having died nine years earlier (Alice was the eldest of two two ‘illegitimate’ sisters, no father is named on her baptism record but on the record of her marriage to William Grice thirty three years later she gives her father’s name as Thomas Dewes).
Before 1850 there was no systematic recording of mining deaths, so all of the pre-1850 names were collated by the site’s creator – former miner and teacher Ian Winstanley – during 10 years of research, often drawn from articles in newspapers and other periodicals. Coalmining History Resource Centre This busy society has produced a wide variety of publications and projects over the years and recently updated its Collieries of the British Isles database. Alice and James’s youngest son Thomas, Frederick England’s grandfather, also met with an accident aged just fourteen. During Victorian times there was great public interest in mining disasters and the Illustrated London News and the Graphic among other popular magazines of the time dispatched an artist to capture the scene at the stricken mine. Online content from an exhibition about South Wales’ mining heritage. This particular URL details the scope of the original project, who undertook the work and the various sources that were used. Many of the websites featured this month can help you find out more about the wider state of the industry – from the coalfields of Cumbria, Northumberland and Durham, North and South Wales, Lancashire, Yorkshire or the Scottish Central Belt – to individual pits, and from the generation of Bevin Boys who were conscripted to increase production during the Second World War, through to the industry’s rapid decline from the 1970s. Her eldest son George suffered bruising and a broken collar bone in a pit accident at the age of forty three (The Derby Daily Telegraph, 24 June 1885, p. 2, col. Healey Hero (previously The Coal Mining History Resource Centre). While the popular fascination with Britain’s industrial heritage, and the lives of miners in particular, means there’s a great deal of social history and technical information on tap, actual records of a miner’s employment may be harder to come by. Sign in to manage your newsletter preferences. Learn more details about the museum library’s collection, and download a free research guide. Already have an account with us? Although not the easiest site to use, it does mark on the map the collieries owned by Jodie Whittaker’s relatives, the Auckland brothers. It was common for miners to start work before day break, spend all day underground and not emerge until after sunset. home of THE NATIONAL DATABASE OF MINING DEATHS and INJURIES. During her episode, Jodie Whittaker visited the National Coal Mining Museum in Wakefield and met former miner and tour guide Pete Wordsworth. 21 May 1837, Pye Bridge, Derbyshire – bur. National Coal Mining Museum For England. The UK's largest and most comprehensive website concerning the history of coalmining - including a searchable database of over 164,000 recorded accidents and deaths, access to Royal commission reports, maps of coalmine locations, history of mining disasters, mining poems and oral history. His story however will be explored in the next post. 1 April 1855, Alfreton, Derbyshire – d. c. August 1925, Derbyshire), William (b. c. November 1856, Sleet Moor, Derbyshire), Elizabeth (b. c. 1860, Sleet Moor, Derbyshire – d. c. May 1910, Derbyshire). 7 April 1845). on There’ll always be an England (part 1), Museum of Brands Packaging and Advertising, Showmen's Guild of Great Britain and Ireland. 6 May 1848 Sleet Moor, Derbyshire – d. c. August 1945, Derbyshire), Thomas (b.

A day in the life of Tommy Shotton, a coal miner in 1939, working onthe night shift from midnight to 8.00am. “The ‘Disasters’ section is a wonderfully detailed source as individual names of known fatalities can be searched via an ‘In Memoriam’ A-to-Z facility. You can explore the National Coal Mining Museum’s holdings on its website, where you can read about the kinds of machinery that your ancestor might have used, and the section ‘Lives and Voices’, which describes the museum’s social history collections. Try Who Do You Think You Are? The images come from a wide range of collieries and cover every aspect of coal mining. Chosen by Brian Elliott, author of Tracing Your Coalmining Ancestors: “The volunteer-run Durham Mining Museum website remains one of the best online regional sources if you have northern ancestors who were coal miners. The association commemorates the role of about 48,000 Bevin Boys who were conscripted to help boost coal production at a time of national crisis. For many years Ian Winstanley’s Coal Mining History Resource Centre was the go-to website for coal mining research. The disaster memorials and indexed gallantry awards section is a thoughtful inclusion. Coal Mining in Britain The story of British coal mining, told through BBC radio and TV broadcasts from the last 70 years and a gallery of images from the 1930s. These have all been scanned, and are searchable and available to view at the Mining Heritage Centre in Mansfield. This was a mapping project that began in 2003, partly in response to a suggestion by Alison Henesey, then librarian at the National Coal Mining Museum for England. The following year, James and Alice had moved back to James’s home parish, and according to the birthplace of their first daughter Hannah (perhaps named for his late mother?) Magazine today and receive your family history dictionary! Search a database of names produced by a volunteer project to index records in the Durham Miners’ Association trade union archive. 14. Tragically, only ten years into their marriage Alice’s second husband William died, like her first, in an accident at Swanwick Colliery on 15 November 1863. The theme-related links are relevant for other coalfield regions and subjects, making it a superb one-stop (and free) source, and there is easy access to former miner Bill Riley’s excellent website Pitwork.

According to a report in The Derbyshire Times, two other men were seriously injured, and the accident had occurred in the same pit where two men had drowned the previous October. The Coal Mining History Resource Centre is brought to you by Raleys Solicitors. Later, despite his humble origins he would go on to hold an important managerial position in a local chemical works at a time when such social mobility was unusual, and became a councillor for the Somercotes and Riddings Urban District Ward, perhaps providing the origin of the England family’s later involvement in local politics. The Scottish Mining Website reveals not only working conditions, but also community life in the mining towns and villages, including housing, health and leisure. It also has a dedicated mining research guide. 28 January 1829) to Hannah Stendall (b. c. 1779 – bur. home of THE NATIONAL DATABASE OF MINING DEATHS and INJURIES LOCATION MAPS, 1950 are available. 3 September 1844, Somercotes, Derbyshire – bur. It is perhaps not surprising therefore that the area was an early hotbed of working class radicalism, with the Swanwick Miners’ Association organising an ill-fated strike as early as 1844, in which James England could well have participated. 3 April 1820, Strelley, Nottinghamshire – bur. COAL MINING HISTORY RESOURCE CENTRE.

He was buried on the 23rd of that month, leaving behind his wife and five surviving children. And if you are struggling to find records of employees, try records of associations and trade unions, or social and sports clubs. These websites are a good place to start researching British coal miners. They include material relating to trade unions, pit management, health and safety, disasters and an oral history collection. Between them Samuel and Hannah had four children, the last of whom, Frederick’s great-grandfather James England was baptised on 15 June 1809, the same day Hannah was buried suggesting she may have died in childbirth. To get context, you can access from the archive colliery names, official reports and coroner’s inquest reports alongside newspaper and journal information.