Neil Gallagher first worked in a coal breaker when he was 9 years old in 1900.

Two years later, he moved inside the mines to work as a “tripper,” manning a door deep underground.

On May 2, 1904, Gallagher lost his leg when he was crushed between mine cars while reaching for a lamp he dropped. He spent nine weeks in a hospital recovering and then went right back to the coal breaker to work. Back to where his sad career in the mines began, making merely $1.10 per day, but only working half-time.

These photographs were taken in 1909 by a photographer working for the National Child Labor Committee. They documented Neil Gallagher’s life and how he had been left without a way to support himself and his father, who had also been injured in the mines.

He eventually made it out of the Coal Region, finding various jobs in New York City before passing away in 1926 at the age of 35 from tuberculosis.

(Photographs – Library of Congress)