Life as a Coal Miner in Newcastle, 1930

Five thirty in the morning, half a mile underground. A nineteen-year-old hewer swings a pick in a seam barely four feet high, eight hours still ahead of him before he sees daylight again. This is the real working life behind coal mining in the Durham coalfield outside Newcastle in 1930 — the wages, the danger, and the industrial disease that cut miners' working lives short decades before anyone called it an occupational illness. "Billy" is a composite character — a dramatization built from period wage records, Miners' Federation archives, and mining industry history from 1930s County Durham, representing the real, ordinary experience of miners of this period. CHAPTERS 00:00 5:30am, half a mile underground 00:20 Meet Billy the hewer 00:40 What mining actually paid in 1930 03:00 A shift at the coal face 08:00 The price nobody saw on the surface 10:30 What's left of the coalfield today 12:00 Next episode: the docks of Liverpool #BritishHistory #CoalMining #1930sBritain #ForgottenHistory #Durham