Bal Maidens

Bal MaidensDescription: Between 1720 and 1920 at least 60,000 women and girls worked in the mines, quarries and clay works of Cornwall and Devon. They carried out hard, skilled and specialised work, which was a crucial part of the dressing operations. The author has carefully researched their working lives and home life, their characteristics and the occupational hazards they encountered. How essential were they to the industry? What were their working

Description: Between 1720 and 1920 at least 60,000 women and girls worked in the mines, quarries and clay works of Cornwall and Devon. They carried out hard, skilled and specialised work, which was a crucial part of the dressing operations. The author has carefully researched their working lives and home-life, their characteristics and the occupational hazards they encountered. How essential were they to the industry? What were their working conditions? How much did they earn? 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 remarkable group of women, plus some individual accounts of the few whose stories have survived. In this second edition the material has been both revised and expanded. The geographical scope is now extended to Dartmoor, and the Teign and Exe Valleys. There is also a more detailed coverage of the tin streams of the late 19th century.