Female Coal worker Wigan Colliery.

Female Coal worker Wigan Colliery.
Female Coal worker Wigan Colliery.
Female Coal worker Wigan Colliery.
286676
SEC20221014050
Female Coal worker Wigan Colliery.
Wigan
Portrait posed at Alfred Wragg's studio in Wigan.
Before it's probation under the 1842 Mines and Collieries Act, female underground working in the coal mines was widespread. Thereafter, many women still chose to work at the mines above ground, rather than working in mills or just housewifery. They became known as the 'Pit Brow Lasses'.
"These women shocked some parts of Victorian society and were seen by some as the prime example of degraded womanhood. However, the Pit Brow Lasses grew in number until there were over 1300 in the Wigan and St. Helens area by 1880." (Wigan and Leigh Archives).
They became a curiosity, some figures such as Arthur Joseph Munby (1828-1910), a Victorian poet and eccentric, visiting collieries to talk to the pit brow lasses. Munby also sketched them (some being published in 'Working Women in Victorian Britain 1850 – 1910')
Postcard "carte de visite", like this one, were created and sold by local Wigan photographers such as Wragg, Cooper, Brown Barnes Bell and Millard

Photographic print
Monochrome
c1895
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Miriam Wadge Collection
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