Wigan Album

The third and fourth girls on the left,-, front row,- could be mother and daughter.
It is touching to see that they are holding hands on the front row. Can anyone suggest a date or a place?

It's like something out of Oliver Twist...Poor buggers. What kind of life did these poor young women have in those horrid days. Surely some of the miners could have taken this work on. Women were treated like serfs. National disgrace. Holding hands...out of sheer unhappiness and desperation. Look at those faces: not one smile. Sad.

Agreed, they do all look pretty miserable. Interestingly though, pit brow lasses from Wigan actually protested in London when Parliament tried to introduce a law to say that women shouldn't work in the mines!

These days it would be called equal opportunities.

This photo was taken on site at the pit and not posed in a studio like other photos taken by Mr Wragg. I wonder if it was in a local newspaper?

My Auntie Peggy Carney as she was known then was a pit brow lass at the wood pit in Garswood bottom of camp lane,and although she was a Tom boy she had a heart of gold,that said she has in the past thrown out drunk aggressive blokes from the club she used to bar tend and none of them came back for another go.

My paternal grandmother was a pit brow lass. Born 1893, married and pregnant at 17, six children, died during childbirth in 1924. I believe the rate of pay was a shilling a day for a six day week. Life was good in those days!

This is a group of Wigan Pit Brow Lasses c.1900 I would suggest looking at their costumes ( patterned shawls, and slightly shorter breeches)