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1860s - Ben Tillett's recollections of Easton Pit

Ben Tillett, (1860-1943) was born in John Street which was on the corner of Coalpit Lane. He was a founder of the Labour Party and helped to establish the National Transport Workers' Federation. He became the Union's leader and in 1911 won a national strike. He retired as an MP for North Salford in 1931.

He wrote in his memoirs of his Easton childhood:

I was born in Easton, Bristol on 11 September 1860 in a tiny house in John Street, not many yards from Easton Coal Pit.

It was a drab and mean street and most of its inhabitants worked in the pit. The outlook was black, gaunt and smoky against the sky line. The buzz and musical clamour of the circular saw, swiftly cutting timber and pit props to length, driven by an engine with a deep-voiced exhaust added to the industrial orchestra.

I remember a mountain of coal forever being enlarged by tipping drums and tanks on wheels that fell over the heap with a swishing sound of shingle.

I remember the pit's mouth, the clicking of the small truck - a sound that came back to me years afterwards when I heard the click of the cell door when the jailers peered through.

One of my relatives, a collier Pruett by name, who could fight and pray and curse with the same vehemence that he could preach, cured me of my plan to go down the pit. He took me down into the seemingly bottomless pit and terrified me. I saw awesome blackness: spluttering candles on greasy caps, dirt and mud, pools of filthy water, stifling heat, the rush and tempest of everyone pushing, bawling, shouting and cursing.

I played at the pit mouth, receiving a share of food, drinks of tea, many rough clouts, and many more kind and tender expressions of sympathy.