In April 1871, a journalist descended into the anthracite coal mines near Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, emerging with one of the most vivid firsthand accounts of underground life and work in the Coal Region. Published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, the story told of the mineworkers and their nonchalant efforts to blast rock and coal hundreds of feet below ground.

Inside the mine, men worked by the light of open-flame lamps on their caps in cramped, wet passages, preparing explosive charges with a familiarity that bordered on routine.

The scene described – miners calmly lighting fuses, stepping back, and “waiting for the blast” – reveals both the constant risk of death in 19th century coal mining and the hardened culture that mineworkers developed in response.

The account that follows offers a window into that world.

From the April 22, 1871 edition of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper:

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WAITING FOR THE BLAST.

One soon becomes intensely bewildered in a coal mine. We have passed through various leads; now being sprinkled with dirty water that trickles through the roof, glittering at countless angles above the head, then frightened to a tremor by the sudden rush of a refractory mule, who advertises his race at every breath, and anon crowded to an embrace of the rough, wet and slippery walls of our promenade.

Chatting a while with the brave little watchboy, who enjoys the finest facilities of obtaining a thorough acquaintance with ‘spooks,’ and shuddering as we see the blasting party preparing for an explosion, examining and placing the powder by the unscreened light of their lamps with as little concern as if it were flour, we peer into the breast, where a deep hole is filled to an overflow, and then jumping from the upper timber of hemlock, which, with others, prevents the settling of the roof, stand close to the frame-work, stop the ears and await the explosion.

The slow match is lighted – sometimes by the pipes of these fearless fellows – the blasters step a little aside, puff lively the smoke from their pipes, and then they, too, like a more timid Micawber, ‘wait for something to turn up.’

Suddenly the powder flashes, a deep, heavy sound sweeps throughout the leads, the chamber, always sombre, now seems filled with phosphorescent clouds as the smoke curls and rolls about the roof, seeking the shafts for escape.

The blasters continue to smoke their pipes and chat until the breast is sufficiently clear for work, when they divide the labor, one gathering the detached blocks of coal from the breast, in a heap, another picking loose pieces from the heading, while a third fills the tubs, and signals the ‘putters,’ or mules.

From morning to night there is great confusion, the men sing, and shout one to another, the mules rattle their freight along the rails, occasionally taking an extra load on the bare back, as a compliment from the driver, then pausing to brighten their shoes on the car front, and invariably starting off with a howl, far from ordinary earthly sounds in more respects than one.

To some extent the miner resembles the sailor. Let an accident occur in a colliery, and from the crowd of excited spectators he will step promptly to the shaft, and pass down, down into unknown danger – that he may save the life of a companion.

He becomes hardened to fear, careless in his domestic habits, and coarse in his general demeanor.

Our artist’s sketches were made at Bowman’s Beaver Run Colliery, near Mahanoy City, Pa.

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Read more about the life and work in the Coal Region’s mines in the 19th century

Poem immortalized a child mineworker lost in a disaster in 1871 | Coal Region

A breaker boy’s memory of a childhood at work | Llewelyn Evans in 1943

A Scranton miner’s recollection of mining techniques and dangers in the 1860s

“Miners at work” – Harper’s Weekly illustrations of the Coal Region from 1869

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