England, Scotland, and Wales, Day Six, October 16, 2013 There was a lovely dawn today although the forecast is for another soggy one...no one is complaining as all have layers and rain gear for any occasion. 10 C. about 45 F. Last night, thanks to Mike Tanners helpful suggestion, we all gathered in the pub for a chance to introduce ourselves, albeit a bit late. Steve suggested the single clap after each person that moved things along. It was a portable affair. As the pub got increasingly noisy, we continued in our private dining room, and then had an eating break and finished off our sharing time over dessert! This is a wonderful group! Today we are going to Beamish to visit an Open Air Victorian Museum. Tonight will be Scotland and Jim is already wearing his tam, in the Clark tartan, which is a sept of the MacIntosh, McPherson, and Camerons of Locheil. They were called Clarks because they could read and write, clerk with a Scottish brogue. Life in the 1820s: A compilation of information from many from our group as we all wandered the 320 acres of Beamish Village independently. There were many forms of transportation, a tram, streetcars, trolleys, a steam train, and more. No extra charge for taking a ride! The dentist: Dentures were highly sought after because they showed affluence and status. The perfect gift for a daughters 21st birthday would be to have all of her teeth pulled (good and bad) and have a lovely set of dentures, which would indicate the wealth of the family and set her up for a marriage proposal. By this age she was getting a bit long in the tooth as most girls were married off before then. The teeth pulling would have cost about a months salary, the dentures a couple of months more, and if she got anesthetic, that would have been another months outlay....so a total of possibly four months salary! One visitor said his grandmother had this done as a girl! The practice continued to be fashionable well into the 1950s! The more affluent the family, the worst the teeth as they would have had more sugar in their diet. Teeth could have been pretty much rotted by the late teens. The laughing gas couldnt be well regulated, so the occasional patient died from the anesthetic. More working class patients would have had their hands and feet tied down to the dental chair and a cloth tied over their head as the dentist would go to work on their teeth. In fact, people would pay to be able to watch!!! The more pain, the better the show! It took a long time to drill out a cavity with the foot-pumped drill, so most people opted to have their tooth pulled instead. Dentures were so prized that people would buy them at pawnshops and one family would pass them around so other family members could show them off when going out. People would scavenge teeth from the bodies of soldiers, bringing them in by the barrel-full. One set of dentures was from the Napoleonic Wars. There were about 100 female dentists at this time. A gentleman explains the development of miners lamps. The real breakthrough in this area was made by Sir Humphrey Davy who developed a kind of mesh gauze to encircle the flame of the miners lamp that prevented an explosion. An improved version of this same type of lamp is used today by one in eight miners who still carry a lamp....if theres gas present it will turn blue and miners can tell what type of gas it is, how much, and whether it is at the top of the mine or the floor. 83,000 miners lost their lives between 1875 and 1955, the era when records were kept. The oldest to die was 84 and the youngest was 7. Just 100 years ago, over 400 miners died in the horrible disaster in Wales so the flags are at halfmast in memory. (Mary’s look up: The Senghenydd Colliery Disaster occurred on 14 October 1913, killing 439 miners and one rescuer. It is the worst mining accident in the United Kingdom, and one of the most serious globally in terms of loss of life. The demand for Welsh steam coal before World War I was enormous, driven by the Royal Navy and its huge fleet of steam battleships, dreadnoughts and cruisers, and by foreign navies allied to Britain and the British Empire. Coal output from British mines peaked in 1914, and there were a correspondingly large number of accidents around this time. The Mines Inspectorate gave Thomas Lewis an extended deadline of September 1913 to complete the safety plan implementation, but this deadline was missed. Six weeks after the final mines inspectorate deadline, which had been missed, on the morning of 14 October 1913 there were approximately 950 men working in Universal Collierys three pits. Just after 8am an explosion ripped through the west side underground workings. The cause was probably a build up of firedamp (methane) being ignited by electric sparking from equipment such as electric bell signalling gear. The initial explosion disturbed coal dust present on the floor, raising a cloud that then also ignited. The shock wave ahead of the explosion raised yet more coal dust, so that the explosion was effectively self-fuelling. Those miners not killed immediately by the fire and explosion would have died quickly from afterdamp, the noxious gases formed by combustion. These include lethal quantities of carbon monoxide, which kills very quickly by combining preferentially with haemoglobin in the blood, resulting in suffocation by lack of oxygen or anoxia. Survivors were extracted from the colliery with the last 18 miners rescued more than a fortnight after the explosion. The resulting funerals took over a month to complete. The mines manager was fined £24 for breaches of the mines safety code, whilst the owner William Thomas Lewis was fined £10.) Those who went into this drift mine (cut into a hillside following the drift of the coal seam) had to wear hard hats and spent most of the time inside bent over as the roof was only 46. When all of the lights were off, with only a single miners lamp glowing, it was QUITE dark. The mineshafts were reinforced with poles made only of pine because the pine would creak and groan prior to snapping. Pit ponies lived in the mines to pull the carts full of coal. These poor animals never saw daylight and lived about four years. One guide said he had worked in the mine for twelve years and his father had died of Black Lung disease. One house dated from 1440 and possibly 300+ years before that. This would have been rented out by the wealthy landowner of the Georgian farmhouse next door. The average size of the family living in that old house would have been 12 children, mom and dad, and the surviving grandparents. These people would have been uneducated but skilled. This house is in the original condition. The bed is from 1712 and the crib dates from 1678. The oldest piece of furniture is a medieval table that is 1000 years old, very plain and not particularly valuable. Recipe books were passed down by the women in the family and they were full of recipes to cure ailments. If a daughter found something better, she would add it. They only later became cookery books. Reivers (who lived near the border: the Scots said they were English and the English said they were all Scots) would come down and raid, killing your animals and stealing your women if they could. This old stone house was desired to defend against these scoundrels. This happened between the 13th and 15th century, only disappearing when discipline and law began to develop. There was a working Merry-Go-Round that they called the Gallopers or the Galloping Horses. There are only two of these in England. The docent tells us that Galloping Horses have only horses and go round clockwise. He says carousel is an American word and these may contain other animals and all go counter-clockwise. Some said they topped the fish and chips from Whitby in the Beamish Museum fish and chips shop where all was timed perfectly (chips and fish in the same bubbling vat of grease) and served in cones of newspaper wrapping. Girls in the Farmhouse were preparing bread, soup, and fresh-baked carrot biscuits. They also made hava cakes which were then dried and put into a cloth sack....a Havasack! Diane Conley reported on the piano teacher who was a spinster who lived in an inherited house with a maid. Why a maid? The maid served as a companion because no self-respecting spinster could ever be visited by a man....not the minister, not the doctor, and certainly not a male piano student. In order to qualify to live in the Catholic cottage, there had to be a husband, wife, ten children, a set of grandparents, and a roomer. The children slept head to fin (?). Grandma slept in the kitchen with her arthritic feet toward the fire. The roomer slept on the kitchen bench. The parents had the best spot. I dont think anyone saw EVERYTHING but we all saw A LOT and learned so much as some of the period docents were fantastic! There are few signs so that people can spend their time looking and enjoying and listening to real people describe the stories associated with the time. The Greens even learned a new way to bake bread from the local baker....who gave them her recipe for gingerbread cakes!
Posted on: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 00:20:09 +0000
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