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Updated: May 17, 2025
From the ridge of the workshops to the pithead, a distance of several hundred yards, the cables consist of ordinary copper wire, three-eighths of an inch in diameter; inside the workshop and below ground, to allow of their safe handling, they are composed of insulated wires, while on the way down the shaft they are inclosed in a galvanized tube.
In the meantime he was entering a belt of ugly industrial country. Now and then the reflected glare of a furnace quivered in the sky; tall chimney-stacks and mounds of refuse showed faintly in the dark, and he passed clusters of fiercely burning lights and dull red fires. He supposed they marked pithead banks and coke-ovens; but pushed on steadily towards the west.
He used to feel our pulses after dinner with ridiculous gravity, and after examining our tongues tell us we should take great care and not eat salt junk too quickly, for it seldom digested well on young stomachs, and, added he with great consequence, “I have a specific for sair heeds if ye ha’ any.” As he was much pitted with the small-pox, we called him “Doctor Pithead.”
Nae guid ever comes o' lasses gaun there. They lose a' sense o' modesty an' decency, after a while, an' are no' like women at a' when they grow aulder. Besides, it mak's them awfu' coorse." "I wad hardly say that aboot them a'," he ventured cautiously. "Mysie's no' coorse, an' she worked on the pithead."
The average pithead price of South African coal in 1915 was five shillings twopence a ton and at the time of my visit to South Africa in 1919 was still under seven shillings a ton. Capetown and Durban, the two principal harbours of the Union, are coaling stations of Empire importance. There you can see the flags of a dozen nations flying from ships that have put in for fuel.
But Hilda's urgency impelled them upwards from the head porter to the ticket clerk, and from the ticket clerk to the stationmaster; and at length they discovered, in a stuffy stove-heated room with a fine view of a shawd-ruck and a pithead, that on Thursday evenings there was a train from Victoria to Brighton at eleven-thirty. Hilda seemed to sigh relief, and her demeanour changed.
A group of dark figures stood on the pithead, waiting their turn to go below. The cage rattled up from the depths of the shaft, the men stepped in, and almost immediately disappeared down into the blackness. Arrived at the bottom, they walked along towards the different passages, chaffing and jesting with Tam Donaldson, the newly-married one.
George Stephenson worked his way from the pithead to the highest position as an engineer. George began his life with industry, and when he had saved a little money, he spent it in getting a little learning. What a happy man he was, when his wages were increased to twelve shillings a week. He declared upon that occasion that he was "made a man for life!"
Wi' his twa bits o' laddies workin', an' Mysie in service, an' Mary gaun to the pit-head, it should mak' his burden a wee easier." "I dinna like the idea o' lasses gaun to work on the pithead," he said simply. "I aye mind of the time that Mysie an' me wrocht on it. It's no' a very nice place for lasses or women." "No," his mother said. "I dinna like it either.
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