Some people like to think that back in the old days the system only exploited Blacks or a particular group of people. Well it did exploit a particular group, i.e. if you were unlucky enough to get be poor yet living somewhere directly affected by the Industrial Revolution. And don’t forget that places like Britain were in fact at the center of this economic transformation.
You can view the lyrics, alternate interprations and sheet music for The Unthanks's The Testimony of Patience Kershaw at Lyrics.org.
And that brings us to Patience Kershaw, who by all indications was a White Briton. She was employed as what was called a hurrier, i.e. individuals who transported coal out of mines.
Now the passages by which the coal was sent up were extremely narrow. As such, only two types of people, women and children, were engaged in that particular side of the business. Anyone familiar with the earlier days of the Industrial Revolution in places like the United Kingdom knows that wealthy business owners ruthlessly oppressed their own people until laws were enacted – and in some cases enforced with blood – to prevent them from doing so.
And being a hurrier was one of those types of professions, i.e. one that required legislation to rectify.
This song is literally based on the testimony of Patience Kershaw, who was 17 years old at the time and had been engaged in said employment. And who she testified before, in 1842, was the Ashley Mines Committee. This committee was the wing of the British government that ultimately made employing women and children (or at least boys under 10 years of age) underground (i.e. in mines) illegal.
And in the first verse, she describes her job as ‘hurrying coves’. Apparently “coves” is another name for the carts full of coal that said employees were tasked with bringing to the surface. Or put more plainly, their job was pulling or pushing a load of coal through a narrow tunnel, up to the surface.
And yes, Patience does note that this type of work “is not ladylike”, as she has to use her “hands and head” in order to complete said task. But at the end of the day it’s like she has to do what she has to do in order to eat.
Indeed in the second verse, she goes on to delineate some of the visibly negative affects her body has suffered as a result of being a hurrier. For instance, her hair is ‘wearing away’, and she has even developed a bald spot.
Also her hands aren’t “lily white” like other ladies but instead shows the signs of labor-related brutality. Undoubtedly if you have ever been around coal or handled it, you know how dirty and hard-to-manage it can be. Furthermore, on a similar note, she’s developed “great big muscles on (her) legs”.
And yes, this is in fact a teenage girl we’re talking about here. And like most women, especially at that age, she wants to be beautiful and conform to the beauty standards of the day. Sadly whereas, as later revealed, that is definitely one of her major concerns, we can say that even more importantly is her parts of her body literally being destroyed via her work.
Also here’s an interesting fact about Industrial Revolution-era coal mining. Due to the heat and the tunnels being so small, men inside the mines worked naked. And this is also something Patience, a young woman, had to deal with (on top of perhaps being partially nude herself).
Not only that, but these dudes also tend to be exceptionally mean. As a matter of fact they even beat her sometimes when she’s working too slow, which occasionally she has to due to being sick, as implied most likely as a result of this selfsame work.
And she’s not even mad at them for treating her so, for they too are relying on her expedience, i.e. being able to make multiple trips up and down the tunnel, in order to prevent their own families from ‘starving’. So it’s like the whole setting has the narrator going crazy, and she prays to God accordingly. But by and large she considers doing so an act of futility, as she is convinced that “tomorrow will be just the same”.
Indeed in closing, the narrator goes on to express her belief that not even the government will actually go about rectifying the situation for another “100 years or more”.
So she is not only battered, downtrodden and depressed but also extremely pessimistic. Yet the good news is that her testimony did help the aforementioned law get passed in the very year in which she gave it.
And no, the passing of this law did not instantaneously transform an industry that relied on child and slave-like labor. But it was a reform which benefited many people, such as Patience Kershaw, nonetheless.
During an investigation by Lord Ashley’s Mines Commission of 1842 into the hard labor conditions in mines, some men, women, and young girls were interviewed to tell their side of the story. Amongst these interviewees was 17-year-old Patience Kershaw.
Patience told the committee about her background and why she had to work in the mines. From a poor home with a single mother and nine siblings, Patience worked as a hurrier in the mines. She stated that she did not attend school but church “Sunday-school”.
Patience worked 12 hours in the pit, from 5a.m to 5p.m. She took her breakfast before work and eat dinner while on her way. Within the 12 hours of work, she had no rest until she got home.
To work, she wore trousers and a ragged jacket and had to carry 11 sets of 300 cwt of coals through a long walking distance underground and back to the surface.
She also revealed that she was the only girl working at her station with about 20 boys and 15 men all working naked. Though she had to stay covered, she was not excused from the physical and emotional abuse that came with the job. She revealed that she would rather work at the mill than at the coal pit.
