BALMAIDENS
It is estimated that between 1720 and 1920 about 60,000 women and girls worked in the mines, quarries and clay works of Cornwall and Devon. They carried out hard, highly skilful and specialised labour, and were an essential part of the operation.
Lynne Mayers has researched their working lives and their homelife, their characteristics and the occupational hazards they endured. How were they essential to the industry? What were their working conditions? Where did they live? What did they earn? What did they cat? What did they wear? And what did they do with the very little spare time and money they had?
As the mines closed, where did they go and what happened to them? This is the record of a group of remarkable women and the individual stories of the few who are traceable.
The Cornwall and West Devon metal mines and smelters of the 18" and 19th century formed a unique and quite separate part of the mining heritage of these islands. It was here that much of our nation's mineral wealth was created, based in no small part on the labour of these girls (from the age of eight or nine years old) and young or widowed women.
No other metal mining district was so extensive, nor used women and girls in such abundance.
THE AUTHOR
Lynne Mayers' writing background is as a tropical agriculturalist and Methodist minister. She first became interested in Cornish mining while researching the involvement of her forebears (including the women and girls) in the tin, copper and lead mines of the parish of Perranzabuloe. Since having taken early retirement Lynne has broadened this interest to study the lives of the women and girls who worked at the mines, clay works and quarries. This is her first venture into writing in this field.