Pithead Baths at Llanhilleth

Women’s Labour League

The Women’s Labour League fought to improve the lives of everyday families.   These  women were not women of wealth and upper class, they were involved in the community and general living conditions.   They became widowed through pit accidents, they saw children hungry in the streets and babies die.   The League put pressure mostly on the Labour Party not only for pithead baths, but for baby clinics, school medical inspections, free school meals.   (Collette 1989)   The Local Branch of the Women’s Labour League was formed in 1910 in Abertillery and the Secretary was Mrs Davies. 

Pithead Baths not looking their best in 2010

Pithead Baths

Every day women had the back-breaking work of carrying bucket after bucket of cold water from the outside pump, or later the kitchen tap, to boil on an open coal fire, kept alight by carrying bucket after bucket of coal from the cwch on the backyard.   This coal had been carried bucket after bucket from the back lane or the road in front of the terraced house into the coal cwch.   All this heavy work resulted in premature births, miscarriages as well as scalds and burns to women and children.   The average life expectancy at 40, was less than the collier.     The men would walk from the Pit at Llanhilleth,  Navigation in Crumlin, or even across the mountain from Abersychan, and arrive home dirty, dusty, sometimes wet or in winter, possibly icicles on their clothes.   Washing and drying such clothes without a washing machine was not an easy task.   Meals were cooked on the coal fire or in the fireside oven, and all this while children played underfoot. 

   

Through the Conference of the Women’s Labour League in 1914,Women’s Co-operative Soc. and Women’s Welfare Groups there was demand for pithead baths.   These groups argued women’s work in the home was as essential to the coal industry as the miners work in the pit.   Coping with large families and over-crowding, they also needed to heat quantities of water on coal fires for the men to bathe with no bathroom, wash their clothes by hand, and clear up the coal dust.   Women were determined.   Pithead Baths  would make a big different to their lives.

Many of the Miners themselves, reluctant to change, questioned who would pay for the baths.   (As with most things, they would, by compulsory contributions from their pay.)   Would they accommodate all the employees?   They could be a bad moral influence.   Once clean and smart, would men head for the pub instead of going straight home?

After WW1, Elizabeth Andrews and the Women’s Section of the Labour Party in Wales recommenced the fight for the baths.   She had left school aged 12 and became a suffragette.   In 1919 she was asked to give a speech before Parliament.    Although pithead baths became compulsory during 1924 it took more than thirty years for every miner to have access to this facility.

When, the first baths were opened, some miners were reluctant to use them.   There was mis-information that they would have to stand naked and be hosed down.   They believed that bathing and then going outside to walk home would ensure they caught a cold.   It would cause problems with their spinal chord and weaken them generally.   A miners health was always his priority as illness meant no wages.
  

The Mining Industry Act of 1920 imposed a levy of 1d. per ton of coal raised, on coal owners.   Administered by the Miners Welfare Commission.   It provided amenities such as Pit Head Baths, Welfare Halls, and scholarships.   It also provided grants and maintenance costs for Institutes.   In 1952 the cash and investments of the Welfare Commission were transferred to the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation.

By this time, seven out of ten men had access to pithead baths, leaving three out of ten still having to wash at home!    Once their trepidations and shyness had been overcome, true to their chapel roots, the men would often sing hymns and take turns to wash each others’ backs, as well as play pranks and sort out disputes.   Vaseline was commonly used to clean the delicate area around the eyes, and they possibly received a ‘soap and towel’ allowance in their wages for use at the pithead baths.

Llanhilleth pit baths, of red brick and now derelict, are located on the horseshoe bend.   They were opened around 1944.    Towy Berrow was the superintendent of the new building and remained until all the miners had gone and the building was to be handed over to the Contractors in 1969.   Scrupulously clean, he spent hours scrubbing and washing the white tiles, even when it was to close.   “It was brand new and clean when I took it over and it will be as new as I can make it when I hand it over.”

Borrowed from "Old Pontypool" Facebook page
Many people still remember this image from their childhood.

These unassuming buildings, built mostly between 1920s and 1950s, improved the health of mining families at a stroke.    Clean men in clean clothes returning from work, no longer contaminated their home with coal dust, dirty wet clothing and, some say, the black bats (cockroaches), which were so common in coal miners’ cottages.   Then came the fear that clean men need not go straight home from work.   They were ‘tidy,’ so could go straight to the pub.   That was another problem.

Towy Berrow, as related by his son Tony, was superintendent of the Pit Head Baths and an officer of the St Johns Ambulance, from when the baths opened in 1940s until the pit closed in 1969, when he retired.   Sadly the baths quickly fell into ruin.     In February 2008 it was announced that “the eyesore was to be demolished.”   Plans had been approved to build housing on the site.    Six years on and this has yet to be carried out.

Marches

Various marches within the valleys and to London were held and proposed between 1922 and 1932.

These actions were to raise public awareness to the miners’ plight and poor conditions.   

The Government proposed unemployment benefit should not be paid to marchers.   A bill prohibited any procession if it was likely to result in disorder or public inconvenience.   A fine, not exceeding £50 and/or imprisonment for up to three months was the penalty for anyone found guilty.   Many marches were quietly abandoned, workers in fear of the consequences of prosecution.   However, the largest hunger march involving marchers from all over the UK met in London on 27 October 1932.   The National Unemployment Workers Movement (NUWM) drew up a pamphlet to help organise committees in every locality “to present a united front of marchers,” and to fund raise for them.    They presented a petition to parliament against the Means Test and cuts in benefits.

Link to information on the hunger marches.
http://www.agor.org.uk/cwm/themes/events/hunger.asp

The geology in South Wales greatly limited the use of mechanised production compared to coalfields around the rest of the UK and Europe in the early part of the century.   Machines were large at that time and did not suit the conditions.   This made coal production more expensive than in areas more suitable to the larger machines.