Joe Chaplin
Father's work as electrician and rope guide for a hauler. Houses they lived in, overcrowding. Work scraping bricks. Was bellman at Dean and Chapter pit, and electrician at Eldon Drift. Compares method and mechanisation at Eldon and Middridge. Joining the pumping team. Pit system of two entrances, methods of ventilation. Being "set on" to work at the pit, the work of hewers. Describes penalties for getting too much stone, and the token system. Tubs, wagons, the making and repairing of the main drift. Water in the mines. Describes a normal day's work. Installing water pumps; improvements in elec...

Kathy and Walter Nunn
Kathy's family. She moved to Shildon when married. Her aunt was a baker, her uncle the lamplighter. Cleaning and feeding a house full of miners. Brief -work in a canteen, brothers' work, poor area, mother threatened her with going into domestic service. Wash day, cottages with a slate by the door. Brief - accidents of brother. Brother Sid Chaplin, a writer. Sounds of buzzers. Playing in pump floodwater. Relationship between miners and railwaymen. Family finances. Brief - The General Strike. Persistence of bad feeling towards blacklegs of 1912 and also those of 1984. TB especially in overcrowd...

Mr Hall
Miner who was a champion sausage eater, his troubles with his wife. Accidental giving of very high pay. Coal mining, putting and hewing. Became log secretary, accident triggered nightmares. Durham Miner's Association. Depression and strikes of 1921 and 1926; railwaymen breaking the strike, Ramsey MacDonald. War minister predicting holidays in the Mediterranean. Colliery managers playing with other men's wives, community responses to adultery. Blackshirts. Wanting to not have a colliery house. Diseases from mining. Closing colliery "to keep Reds out". Colliery doctors. Lamps. Dislike of the str...

J. Agar
Introduction of margarine in 1909. Tobacco, different kinds, could save coupons for a watch. Brother a colliery post boy. Local tramps. Getting a gramophone. Strike of 1921, diet, pig killing. Father came from ironstone mines in Yorkshire. Village previously "Esh New Winning". Starting in the pit, darkness there. Village women helping with nursing. Brother came back in a cart after broke his leg in the mine. Funerals - blinds pulled down along the street, verse on a memorial card. The annual show, trying to get in, different things there. Aeroplanes came to show and on British tour, pre world ...

Mr Roberts
Worked in lead mine in Wales and then Dean and chapter colliery, Shildon - compares conditions in the two. Machinery, lamps, attitudes of miners, accidents, ventilation, payment systems. Accident where lift smashed, breaks man killed himself soon after. Finding bodies from very old workings. Government investigations.

Walter and Joseph Lown
Family. Mother died, looked after by grandmother. Hard work of washing etc, grandmother died after 10 months. Neighbours and chapel helped look after the twins until the housekeeper employed. Comics bought. Step-mother. Father chapel organist - played at funerals. Chapel life. Boring services. Harvest festival and Christmas. Working in the mine at 14. Shifts. Working on the belts. Cockroaches. Transition from childhood world to pit world. Working with horses. The pit office. The miners lamp.

anonymous woman
School - paid a penny a week. Clothes. Brothers became mechanics like father. Sunday school and missions for the poor. House - buying paraffin for lamps. Strictness and punctuality in school. Knitting socks for soldiers, world war one. Washing. Worked in a fruiterers shop when at school and after. Working in a pub on Scotswood Road. Fish sold from door to door and method of cooking. Working at the pub. Gateshead bottle bank. Sister worked for a vets. Sorting through bottles on the quayside. A theft on Scotswood road. Poor people on quayside. Travel across the High Level bridge. Beggar Tommy o...

Mr Ainsley
Childhood in mining family in Low Fell - sledging, sharing a bed top to toe. Helped with a milk round while at school. Work at Ravensworth farm, farm work, milking, cooled milk in water trough. Brothers all went down the pits - refused, wouldn’t even go to get a little sample bit from the pit as a child. Saw man injured from mining, while playing football with man's son - put off. Calling cows in. Pigs, one born with two heads. Stacking hay. Men came to pick potatoes, carried food down to them. Pretended dole man had come to check on them. Other servant ran into a post. Told of a ghost, so pre...