Industry – Coal Mining 1860Charity Handbill for Victims of Colliery Explosion

Coal Mining

• Genre- advertisement• Audience- local people and families of coal

miners• Purpose- to raise awareness of the bad

conditions and fatalities in coal mines. The copy of verses appears to have been written especially for this purpose, although it uses old fashioned lexis.

Background• With a booming economy, coal mining became more

popular than ever before. Between 1850 and 1880 the number of miners rose from an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 and their output rose from 30 million tons in 1836 to 44 million tons in 1880. in 1852, employment of children under 12 was prohibited. The conditions in the mines were very hot and uncomfortable.

• Mining was not a liked job but mentended to do it to be able to afford their large families.

Religion• The main part of this text is a religious copy of

verses which suggests that many were religious and mainly Christians at the time. It is written with very old fashioned lexis including “fill’d” which was more commonly used in the 18th century, which suggests that although it was written about mining, it was written in an older style.

• Could have been sung as it has rhymes throughout which would have further raised awareness. Despair is written as “dist bear” which shows no standardisation of spelling and a different spelling to what we would use today.

Lexis

• Polysyllabic lexis: • “Benevolence” – kindness• “Philanthropy”- promote welfare of others • Field specific lexis:• “Colliery”/ “Colliers”- assumes the audience knows

that these words mean a mine or miners. • Spelling: “Great Bridge” turns to “Great Bride” which

suggests there wasn’t a standard way of spelling the town as the copy of verses spelling differs from the main text.

Grammar

• This text uses a variety of simple, compound and complex sentences along with the similar punctuation as we would use today which shows that standardisation has stuck from 18th century until today fairly unchanged.

• Although they are using punctuation, it is not always correct as they use “miners, and” “action, and” which is not necessary. These days we would use either a comma or and but not both.

Discourse/Graphology

• This text is an advertisement which is filled with writing and has no pictures. Apart from 3 bolder titles, all the text looks very similar in a small font. All the text is close together which these days we would not want to sit and read it. Not very appealing to the audience.

Pragmatics

• “and brought up all they found alive, with mangled flesh and broken bones, the air was fill’d with cries and groans” – it appears that this sort of language was used to make the audience see the real conditions that the coal miners were in and to raise awareness of the dangers of the mines

• “ the bearers are colliers, being destitute and strangers in this part of the country”- Suggests that coal miners travelled to work and that in “Staffordshire” they were not very well known and not many people knew about the conditions they were put through at work.