Mosborough Feb 2024

History
What is a Collier? from Colliers and I
This month we featre an exact om the book Colliers and I, 30 Years Working
Among Derbyshire Colliers by F.J. Metcalfe, Rector of Killamarsh, published
in 1903. Metcalfe Avenue in Killamarsh is named aſter him.
“ Having lived and worked unceasingly day and night
among colliers for thirty years, I feel I need offer no
apology for making posive statements about their
characters, their manners and their customs as a
whole, and as divided into classes, and as individuals.
The general idea of colliers as expressed by those
who know nothing about them is absolutely wrong. I
have oen been asked how I can live among such a
rough, unculvated, half savage lot as colliers?
There could not be a more false judgement.
The rough, unculvated, half savage element is to be
found among all classes of society. The aristocracy
are not free from scandals, and there have been
many revelaons of such scandals in the public press
that thousands of colliers would be ashamed of.
There is no class of men more interesng, no class
among whom are to be found more of Nature’s
gentlemen, than among the colliers, and it is among
them that I am proud to reckon my best and truest
friends. They have their faults and in these pages I
shall not hide them. They have their virtues, and it is
one intenon of this work to proclaim them.
opponents of his ‘favourite
team’.
All colliers have a very great opinion of their own
importance, neither will they admit that anyone
knows anything about what ‘a day’s work’ is but
themselves. As to anyone knowing what work is, if
they don’t go to the pit, why it’s absurd. It is quite
one of the faceous remarks if they see anyone, not a
collier, gardening a bit to say, “I see yer do a bit o’
wark somemes”. No one is so easily offended as a
collier, and he takes precious good care to let you
know it, although it will very likely be months before
you will find what he imagines you have done to him,
and then, as likely as not, it has been caused by the
idle tale of some gossiping woman.
One of the worst features of a collier is that he finds
its very hard to forgive, and he never forgets even an
imaginary injury, and if at any future me a quarrel is
renewed, he brings up all the past with as much
vigour as the new offence. On the other hand they
do not easily forget a kindness done to them or their
families.
As a whole colliers are, as they pride themselves in
being, ‘rough and ready’. They are not parcularly
choice in their manner of speech, and when talking
together use much language that would shock the
ears of the most fasdious, but is thought nothing by
them, and they would deeply resent it if you gently
suggested to them that they were swearing.” The
collier almost always has a hobby, a dog, a pigeon,
some kind of flower, a bike; a collier’s hobby must be
something that will bring about compeon. You
never find a collier with a ‘dead’ hobby, he must be
able to say to his companion “I bet thee I can win
thee” to his companion.
If colliers are free of speech they are also free with
their money. A collier hates to be thought mean by
the companions among whom he moves, he will
spend his last penny treang his mate, if he has to
pawn his shirt next morning to buy a loaf of bread.
He shews up best in me of trouble and danger, and
worst at a football match where his feelings are so
excited and uncontrollable that he can shew no
pleasure or even toleraon for the good play of the
Another great fault of our colliers is that they are so
very suspicious, and always ready to impart unworthy
moves to the acons of other, and then shape their
course accordingly. They cannot divest themselves of
the idea that in everything you do you have some
ulterior design of ‘geng something out of it. They
have a standard of jusce of their own, by which they
judge everything and everybody, and it is the
standard of ‘eye for eye, tooth for tooth.”
Wrien 120 years ago – diconary definion of
collier is a coal miner. The grammar and spelling
used in the book have been kept to in this arcle.
PB
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