Pit Brow Lass - Wigan, UK
Posted by: 
dtrebilc
N 53° 32.510 W 002° 38.510
30U E 523734 N 5932607
This statue depicts a Pit Brow Lass from the 1880's.
Waymark Code: WMKKWQ
Location: North West England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 04/28/2014
Views: 10
Wigan Pier
The statue stands on the tow path of the Leeds Liverpool Canal next to a reconstruction of a coal tippler at a place known as Wigan Pier.
In the 1880s Wigan was a heavily industrialised town with many coal mines and heavy industry around. Around this site the Leeds Liverpool Canal was used to transport coal from the mines.
Coal was brought in manually operated trucks that ran on rails to load the waiting barges on the canal. The tippler at the side of the canal was a curved set of rails that stopped the truck, and tipped it on end, emptying the coal into the barge.
The name Wigan Pier was reputedly a joke when a stranger asked what the tippler was, he was told it was Wigan Pier. It became famous when the author George Orwell wrote about industrial decline in the area in the 1930s and called his book 'On The Road To Wigan Pier'.
Pit Brow Lasses
A Pit Brow Lass was a woman who worked at coal mines above ground and sorted the coal coming up from the mine. It was hard manual labour and a nearby information board (in local Lancashire dialect) tells us about the work and Wigan Pier.
THE WIGAN PIER
OR 'TIPPLER'
AS TOLD BY A PIT BROW LASS CIRCA 1880
" It's used to unload tubs intae
barges watin' ont' cut. Tubs full
o' coal, that we will uv sorted,
and reet ard work it is!
Us Pit Brow Lasses are responsible for 'shakin' the
coal (getting rid of the stones) on a Shaking Screen,
and sorting it - mostly by hand into different sizes.
The coal comes down a conveyor belt. There are
six of us Lasses to a belt. We work hard - six in the
morning 'til six in the evening weekdays, finishing at
two on Saturdays.
Our muscles are bigger than most of
the men's. At night we soak our hands
in cold tea to soothe the cracks.
We wear clogs, shawls and aprons
made from sacking. But it's our
trousers we're known for. You see
women in trousers are frowned on
- people think we're immoral.
'Machinery's startin' t'replace
us Lasses. But they aren't
a patch on t'us' ".
The statue and notice board were erected as part of a major renovation program in the area in 1986.
This Wigan Council web page gives a fuller account of the life of a Pit Brow Lass.
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