大象传媒

Introduction

This article is about Mary Ann Savage, one of the younger sisters of my maternal Grandmother, Cecilia McCrickett. Mary Ann came was one of a large family who came from Whitehaven, Cumberland (now Cumbria). Mary Ann鈥檚 parents were Francis Savage and Sarah Jane Savage (n茅e Kinsella). Although she was very good with children, and looked after many of her older relatives, nephews and nieces, Mary Ann never married.

Mary Ann spent all her working life working at a coalmine as a 鈥楽creen Lass鈥�, including the war years. Mary Ann left school his was at 14 years of age and, apart from short spells when the mines were on strike or close down, she retired from Haig Pit, Kells, Whitehaven when she reached the state retirement age of 60 in the mid-1960s. The author has read and understood the terms of the 大象传媒 鈥淧eople鈥檚 War鈥� website.

Working as a 鈥楽creen Lass鈥�

Between the two World Wars Mary Ann moved with her widowed mother Sarah Jane from their house on Bardy Lane, near Whitehaven harbour, to 58 Fell View Avenue on what was then a newly built housing estate in the Woodhouse district of the town. Apart from the last 3 years of her life, Mary Ann spent most of her adult life at this address.

Being employed as a 鈥楽creen Lass鈥� involved working on the pit top and sorting out stone from the coal that had just been brought up the pit shaft. So far as the records indicate, this procedure of sorting stone from coal first began in the Cumberland mines in 1839. Before that time, women and children used to be employed to pick out the stone as it was brought to the surface in tubs.

The 'Screen Lasses' who Mary Ann worked with at Haig Pit, Kells could be aged anywhere from the age of 14 upwards, and in the war years when labour was short, I have heard it said some of the old hands were in their 70s or 80s! Often, if a miner was killed working while at the pit, the man's widow was offered a job to support herself and any children. As women were forbidden by Act of Parliament from working underground in Britain, this often meant a miner's widow was offered a job as a 'Screen Lass'. Some of Mary Ann's fellow 'Screen Lasses' continued to do this very hard physical work because they were the only breadwinner in the family, their husband having been killed in a pit accident.

To a large extent, the actual procedures of working on the screens at Haig Pit altered very little during the time Mary Ann worked there, war or no war. In Mary Ann's case she was doing the same work during the war as beforehand, and continued doing the same work for about 20 years after the war.

Sorting the coal from the stone

Mary Ann and the other Screen Lasses used to stand at a table with a conveyor belt in the middle of it along which the mined coal that had just been brought up the pit shaft was placed. Any slate or stone was then picked out by hand and discarded. This ensured that the quality of saleable coal remained as high as possible. You can burn coal but you can't burn the slate or the stone. At Haig Pit screens, where Mary Ann worked, all this waste stone was piled on to the floor round their feet. Eventually, one or two of the Screen Lasses would come off the conveyor belt, get hold of a huge shovel and shovel all the waste slate and stone down a chute, where it was then crushed, placed into wagons and then taken away to be 'tipped' a couple of miles away. Recently, I visited the Haig Mining Museum where Mary Ann used to work and they have one of these shovels on display and it is larger than most modern shovels.

It was also at the screens that the coal was graded into different sizes. Again, this was mostly done by hand during an 8-hour shift. However, the Screen Lasses also wielded a huge hammer to break up the larger pieces of coal into the correct saleable size. Some of the Screen Lasses were of very slight build, but needed to be very strong to wield this large hammer. An example of the hammer used by the Screen Lasses at Haig Pit can still be seen in the Haig Mining Museum.

Working on the screens was very dirty work, especially from the coal and stone dust. Unfortunately I do not have a copy of an original photograph of Mary Ann dressed in her working clothes. However, as a young lad I used to live next door to Mary Ann. Thus, before Mary Ann retired, which I think was in 1965, I can just about remember her going to and from work wearing a beret, heavy coat and especially wearing clogs on her feet. Every day, Mary Ann would take a clean 'pinny' which she would wear at work.

In fact, there are a few photographs of Mary Ann and some of the other Screen Lasses in the Haig Mining Museum. At work, most of them also used to wear a scarf around or underneath their beret to keep the coal dust out of their hair. Even in the 1960s, Mary Ann used to come back home from work with a face and hands black from the coal dust, so the first thing to do was get in the bath. There were separate showers for women at the pit by the mid 1960s, but in the war years all of them would have come back home as black, or blacker, from the coal dust as most of the men who worked underground.

There were some men who worked on the screens as well as the women, often young lads who had only just started at the mine, before they transferred to other work on the surface or underground. I understand that during the war years, with labour shortages in the coalmines becoming increasingly problematic, the screening work at Haig Pit at least, was done almost exclusively by women. As mentioned above, women were forbidden by statute from working underground, so the men and boys would do the underground work.

Although the work was physically very hard, I remember Mary Ann saying she enjoyed working on the screens and it was a very friendly place. In her younger days, Mary Ann and a lot of her friends who worked on the screens used to walk together to and from dances. There were still dances in the war years, even in spite of the blackout. In fact, with the Double Summer Time it was quite light until late on at night. Mary Ann also used to like singing and different kinds of music. There was also a lot of the housework to do, helping her mother and other relatives, including the cooking and cleaning.

Conclusion

I would like to thank the staff at Haig Mining Museum, Kells, Whitehaven, for their assistance in providing some background information about 'Screen Lasses' for this article. The Museum does, in fact, have a comprehensive oral and written record of memories of some Screen Lasses who worked with Mary Ann during and after the war years.

In 2004, as the culmination of this research, a book was published containing some of the memories of other women who worked on the screens in the West Cumbrian coalmines before, during and after the war (see below). The cover photograph of this particular book has a photograph of a group of 'Screen Lasses' dressed in their working clothes, taken in 1962. Mary Ann is one of those in this photograph. It was not until the 1970s, when sorting the coal eventually became less manual and more mechanised, that the last Screen Lasses were employed in the Cumbrian coalmines.

To a large extent, the work on the screens was much the same when Mary Ann retired in the 1960s as it had been during the war years, and indeed the inter-war period. Although I have done comparatively little research into screening work during the war years for the 大象传媒 "People's War" project, I have posted an account on behalf of Annie Ferguson, who was, like Mary Ann, a 'Screen Lass' at Haig Pit, Kells, Whitehaven during the war years (Article Reference ID A3633725).

By one of those coincidences of life when Mary Ann's health began to fail in her old age, she moved in with one of her nephews, Thomas Rogan and Thomas's wife Phyllis. At that time, Thomas and Phyllis lived next door to Annie Ferguson and Annie's husband Steve. So Mary Ann was able to spend some of her final days talking with Annie and Annie's family. Mary Ann passed away peacefully at her home on 1 March 1985. She is still fondly remembered by those who knew her.

For further information about Screen Lasses in the Cumbrian coalmines, the following published book is useful reading:
Maureen Fisher and Sue Donnelly [compilers] (2004): "Ah'd Gaa Back Tomorra!", Whitehaven Miners and Living History Project (ISBN 0-9544112-1-8).
(NB - in standard English, the title means: 鈥淚 would go back tomorrow鈥�).

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