Backdrop to my Nineteenth Century Trotter Ancestry, part 1

INTRODUCING MY FAMILY TREE

The Trotter family history I have researched mainly concentrates on the nineteenth century and involves four generations of pitmen. It is a common ancestry I can share with countless other descendents I will never meet. It can be expanded to all sorts of branches taken from the main Trotter trunk. The twentieth century history is still to be written and it is for each branch to do so according to its own unique story.

I believe any family history must be researched in the context of the times our ancestors lived in and I have written a backdrop of the political, social and working conditions they experienced. Our nineteenth century ancestors were not famous. They belonged to the working class but they were the stuff that put the Great in Britain. They suffered atrocious working and living conditions but lived with a passion. They were bonded as slaves to their employers but fought for freedom through the unions. They witnessed the industrial revolution; they were the machinery; they were the energy that turned the wheels of power. They were subservient and oppressed but demonstrated a positive pride. Their blood curses through our veins. Their genes live on in our children. They are an ancestry to be proud of.

TROTTER ANCESTORS IN THE C19 COAL MINES

The demand for coal rose steeply with the onset of the Industrial Revolution and human life was a cheap commodity. At the same time as calls for the abolition of slavery moved the country’s conscience to cause the government to pass an Act in 1833 to that effect. British men, women and children were entering into bond agreements with coal owners that legally bound them to their masters for a year at a time with no guarantee of continuous work, making them virtual slaves to their coal owner masters.

Conditions down the mines were dangerous, savage and filthy. With no sanitation or clean water above or below ground it was little wonder that the tunnel-ridden mines would be no better than sewers. Women did not work in the Northumberland & Durham coalfields post 1800 but little boys, sometimes as young as 4 were bonded to coal owners as cheap labour. Many did not survive their childhood and were often moulded in stature not by good nourishment and fresh air but by deplorable, cramped working conditions. Physical deformities were common.

These children were lucky to reach middle age and life was cheap. So cheap in fact that in the early 1800s, deaths or accidents were not accounted for. A Darlington coroner reported that there had been no deaths from mining accidents in the Darlington Ward between 1810 and1831. The truth was that they were never recorded; yet a miner was held financially responsible for accidents to pit ponies and breakages of his working tools. There were no pithead baths until the mid twentieth century and miners from early times could journey to and from work almost stripped of clothes, sluicing down in their yards or in the traditional steel bath in front of their home fire. They earned a tough reputation.

Shifts often started about 4am, the miners being woken by the early morning call of the ‘window knocker’ and little boys were carried still asleep on their father’s shoulders to the Pit from where they descended by basket or by clinging to a rope into the bowels of the earth. While grown men who had risen to the ranks of hewers went of into the dark tunnels to win coals, sometimes in seams no more than thirty inches deep, small boys were employed in perhaps the most responsible occupation down the mines.

It was their task as ‘trappers’ to open and close the ventilation doors for other workers so that mine traffic could flow uninterrupted. These boys worked the longest hours with only a candle for comfort against the fear of ‘Old Nick’ who lurked in the bowels of Hell below. Their shifts lasted fourteen hours or more with no breaks and a threat of a whipping if they dared to fall asleep or wander off to play. A trap door left open would upset the ventilation system down a mine and the gas that built up as a direct result could explode with enormous loss of life but more importantly, wealth generating manpower.

In 1812, a terrible explosion occurred at Felling causing many deaths and a halt in production, which in turn highlighted the need for safety measures down the pits. The famous Davy Lamp, invented in 1815 was hoped to effectively reduce the risk of explosion but in practice it didn’t.

At ten years old a trapper boy was promoted to pony driver, responsible for steering ponies, pulling tubs of coals, from collection points to the pit shaft and his wage would rise from ten pence a day to one shilling and three-pence. From then on he could look forward to a position as putter at the age of thirteen from which he would progress through various stages of work to the rank of hewer for two shillings and sixpence a day at the age of eighteen. Although the work was backbreaking, the young miner could develop hewing skills that at least he could be proud of.

Improvement in miners’ working conditions in the first half of the nineteenth century were not due to concern about the miners’ lot. The coal owners’ desire for increased profit introduced ponies to the mines and iron rails for the easy rolling of coal tubs. These measures helped the putters but that help was only a side effect of economic measures to increase production and not a conscious desire to ease the putters’ workload.

Male children were insurance policies for their parents. Men with sons were more employable because children were the cheapest form of labour and every child employed was a man’s wage saved. Sons not only provided job security for their fathers but also housing security for widows. As long as a widow had sons from at least four and a half years of age and employable, then she and her family could stay in their colliery cottage and not have to face the poor house.

Help, however, was on the horizon and in the second half of the nineteenth century, the miners led by Methodists were able to form a miners’ union that had real bargaining power and although progress in the miners’ cause was slow at times, the miners were able to develop a sense of pride and worth that they had not know before.

My Trotter Ancestry and the Border Reivers Link

“For over 350 years up to the end of the 16th century what are now Northumberland, Cumbria, The Scottish Borders, Dumfries, and Galloway rang to the clash of steel and thunder of hooves.  As George MacDonald Fraser explains in his book, The Steel Bonnets, "The great border tribes of both Scotland and England feuded continuously among themselves.  Robbery and blackmail were everyday professions; raiding, arson, kidnapping, murder, and extortion were an accepted part of the social system.

While the monarchs of England and Scotland ruled the comparatively secure hearts of their kingdoms, the lance and the sword dominated the narrow hill land between.  The tribal leaders from their towers, the broken men, and outlaws of the mosses, the ordinary peasants of the valleys, in their own phrase, 'shook loose the Border'.  They continued to shake it as long as it was political reality, practising systematic robbery and destruction on each other.  History has christened them the Border Reivers.” http://www.reivers.com/aboutt.htm (link not now available)
My Trotter ancestors most probably were Border Reivers belonging to the border clan or tribe known as Trotters. This clan are thought to have held power over an area near Berwick and derived their name from their mode of transport. They rode little Scots ponies, which had the ability to cover long distances while carrying heavy loads and trotting at a steady continuous pace.

In Elizabethan times, wardens were established to keep peace across the Border Marches and Trotters are named as wardens in the Stanhope area. As the social system changed, many Reivers became pitmen, as did my Trotter ancestors.

Childhood Memories - Trotter tree

The Cemetery Lodge was a very pleasant house. Set just inside the cemetery gates it comprised, kitchen, scullery, front room and council meeting room. There were three bedrooms upstairs and a bathroom. The central staircase was carpeted with a clippy runner, handmade by Nanna Ethel. The front room was full of fine furniture where no children were allowed. The scullery had a washing machine, primitive by today’s standards but Nanna insisted on using her tub and pos-stick, complete with dolly-blue. The kitchen was where family congregated. A coal fired range provided hot water and cooking facilities, even though a cooker was installed in the scullery. Batch baking of scones, bread etc were mixed in huge enamel basins on the kitchen table. The same kitchen table would be cleared and set for meal times and cleared again for other work. At Christmas time the whole family would gather around the table to make wreaths. Granddad took orders for Christmas wreaths and the kitchen became a hive of industry. Such occasions have become treasured visual and sensory memories of industrious family faces flushed with warmth from the fire, sitting around the kitchen table, jovial conversation, banter, the Christmassy aroma of wreath foliage and currant scones baking in the range oven, blackout blinds shutting out the night and the horsehair chaise-langue underneath the window on which, we children loved to sit.
As children we would sit in awe at the amazing wonders, happenings and grown up talk we shouldn’t have been privy to in this magical kitchen, this tree of knowledge. Cigarette stumps would be saved, unravelled and recycled to make new cigarettes from old, in a little roll up machine. How clever it was! Just by strategically placing tobacco and a paper in the machine, then closing the lid, a new cigarette would be manufactured! Too much or too little tobacco was not good enough and many a fat or pathetically thin cigarette made by little fingers was condemned and taken to pieces and reused again until the resulting ‘fag’ was acceptable. The chiming clock set on the sideboard was Granddad’s domain. He alone would open its glass face cover, then with invasive, mechanical surgery, set it and wind it up with a big key before closing its face again. Its thudding tick, tick, tick continued as if nothing had happened. The cuckoo clock, high on the wall was a temptation drawing little upturned faces to catch the ‘cuckoo call’ at the stroke of the hour. Hardly daring to breath or blink in case we missed it. Again, it was Granddad’s task to pull the chains that kept the little cuckoo’s heart beating. Children were not allowed to touch for fear the cuckoo would not come out to tell the time again.

The cemetery grounds were well maintained. Granddad planted and tended the lavender borders, rhododendron and laurel shrubs. He cut the long grass at the far end of the cemetery with a scythe, sometimes disturbing a rabbit or two and occasionally Nanna would be presented with a rabbit for dinner.  The cemetery was divided up into sections for Church of England, Catholic and other non-conformist burials and also a raised area separated from the rest of the cemetery by a double line of privet hedging. This was the un-consecrated section, for stillborn babies and suicides. Sometimes I would see a little white coffin waiting for burial…just left by the back door with no one in attendance…no mourners. It made me feel sad. I hope such practices are now changed. There was a mortuary in the cemetery grounds and Granddad would assist when there was a post mortem arranged. He would have to clean up afterwards and he didn’t seem to mind a willing pair of little hands to help him. Some might say that a cemetery is an odd playground for a child but Granddad and Nanna were there and it was a happy place.

The last time I saw Granddad was in his coffin in the front room of 25 Orchard St, Pelton in 1961. Nanna asked me to say goodbye but I didn’t want to. Nanna, despite being small and aged, placed her surprisingly very strong and sure hands on my shoulders and steered me through a room full of black draped mourners to where Granddad lay. There was nothing to fear…he was just asleep and a kiss on his cheek was my last farewell. Someone had placed a bowl of Christmas roses next to the coffin. Granddad, when working in the cemetery, grew Christmas roses and taught me my first words, ‘pretty flowers’. Christmas roses are so pretty and for me are forever, sweet memories of Granddad.