In 1911, photographer Lewis Hine descended into the Pennsylvania Coal Company’s No. 6 Shaft in Pittston, Pennsylvania, where he met a 13-year-old boy named Willie Brieden.
Deep beneath the surface of the anthracite coal fields, Willie worked as a nipper – a boy responsible for opening and closing the heavy wooden doors that controlled the flow of air and allowed mine cars to pass through the tunnels within the mine.
It was a crucial job in the dangerous, claustrophobic world of anthracite coal mining, but it also left him isolated for hours in near-total darkness, surrounded by the echoing rattle of coal cars and dripping water. When Hine returned days later, he found Willie at home – sick, coughing, and weak from the damp and cold conditions underground.
His labors had already taken a toll on his young body.
Hine described his encounter with Brieden (Hine spells the name as Bryden):
Holding the door open while a trip goes through.
Willie Bryden, a nipper, 164 Center St.
A lonely job.
Waiting all alone in the dark for a trip to come through. It was so damp that Willie said he had to be doctoring all the time for his cough.
A short distance from here, the gas was pouring into the mine so rapidly that it made a great torch when the foreman lit it.
Willie had been working here for four months, 500 feet down the shaft, and a quarter of a mile underground from there. (Shaft #6 Pennsylvania Coal Co.) Walls have been whitewashed to make it lighter.
January 16th, I found Willie at home sick, His mother admitted that he is only 13 yrs old; will be 14 next July. Said that 4 mos. ago the mine boss told the father to take Willie to work, and that they obtained the certificate from Squire Barrett. (The only thing the Squire could do was to make Willie out to be 16 yrs old.)
Willie’s father and brother are miners and the home is that of a frugal German family.
Location: Pittston, Pennsylvania.
It’s unclear how long William Brieden worked in the mines at Pittston, but later records show that he never achieved higher than an 8th grade education, so he never returned to school.
His father, a German immigrant named Frank Brieden, died in Pittston in 1918 and it’s likely the family then moved from the Coal Region to New Jersey. The 1920 census finds Brieden working as a switchman for the Pennsylvania Railroad in Jersey City, New Jersey.
He remained there, later working as an electrician, until his death in Jersey City in 1950 at the age of 52.
Read more about the boy workers of the Coal Region
The Breaker Boys of Pennsylvania – Child Labor in the Coal Region
Joseph Puma | A child mineworker photographed by Lewis Hine in 1911
A breaker boy’s memory of a childhood at work | Llewelyn Evans in 1943
“Children of the Coal Shadow” – A haunting report about the children of the Coal Region from 1903
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