Saturday 21 May 2022
Sixteen pounds of coal a day
Whenever Maitland came to me I cooked his food and my own on a little grid, or in a frying-pan, over the fire in my one room. This fire cost me on an average a whole shilling a week, or perhaps a penny or two more if the coals, which I bought in the street, went up in price. This means that I ran a fire on a hundredweight of coal each week, or sixteen pounds of coal a day. Maitland, who was an expert in coal, assured me that I was extremely extravagant, and that a fire could be kept going for much less.
On trying, I found out that when I was exceedingly hard up I could keep in a very little fire for several hours a day on only eight pounds of coal, but sometimes I had to let it go out, and run round to a studio to get warm by some artist’s stove, — provided always that the merchant in coke who supplied him had not refused my especial friend any further credit.
Morley Roberts - The Private Life of Henry Maitland (1912)
Roberts is describing his precarious existence pursuing literary ambitions in London towards the end of the nineteenth century. A shilling a week wasn’t much even for someone as hard up as Roberts. Viewed from this perspective, coal was a remarkable fuel available to all but those who were absolutely destitute.
Leads me to wonder how many of my ancestors survived winter only because they could get hold of a few pounds of coal each day. No wonder people scavenged it and risked their lives digging shallow and insecure mines where coal was reasonably near to the surface.
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8 comments:
There was a Roman writer who commented that the Britons knew how to burn stones.
There's a Roman Road near us (East Anglia) where, under a Roman road repair, there is some coal that must haver fallen off a cart. The coal had come from the Trent valley.
There are people around who would actually be offended by that passage, and your appreciation of coal. They think of actually burning something to keep warm or to generate power as a crime against humanity. That book would be on the banned list if they had their way.
Sliced bread is the greatest thing since coal.
When I was a boy, my dad used to get furnace coke for around 10/- a cwt, and used it on a smallish Raeburn. We burned wood elsewhere on two open fires!
Now power stations around here don't burn coal, that's gone, and EU, (still), 'green' regulation means that all domestic fuel has to be smokeless, (i.e. much more expensive)!
My wood supplier told me that up to Christmas last year, his business was around 20% up on the previous year, so someone's doing it right! I've already started negotiations with a local firm to take all their unwanted pallets, which make darned good fuel if cut up properly!
"which make darned good fuel if cut up properly!"
You get warm twice that way...
(Old saying, mercilessly bandied about with relentless, boring regularity every winter, Chez Scrobs... sorry...)
When I was a lad my father replaced the two fire grates with special economy grates. You could close the bottom flap (the ash pan door) and close the front flap, thus limiting the amount of oxygen and hence the rate of burning. Last thing at night we would spread 'nutty slack' over the coals to limit air flow even more - but in the morning you could stir the fire with a poker and it would burst into life.
A forgotten skill... in my lifetime. It is shocking to go to a museum and see objects on display as 'history' which were once everyday objects in my youth. Of course everything was in black and white back then.
Living in a coastal town in the North East of England, we supplemented the family coal bill by collecting sea coal. When the coal mines further up the coast, deposited the spoil (small gravel sized granules of coal) into the sea, the tide would deposit it onto the beach, collectible at low tide. My school friends and I would cycle down to the beach early in the morning, and rake it up into small piles, and left for a while to allow any water to run off. It was then collected in small hessian bags and tied to the frames of our bikes and taken home. Our mams would make cones out of newspaper and fill them with the seacoal. Placed on top of the fire at night, they formed a shell and kept the fire going, so it didn't have to be relit the following morning. A fireguard was necessary in case of bits of sand spitting out into the carpet. This practice came to and end, even before the mines were closed, with grown ups turning up in vans, shovelling up the piles of sea coal we had raked up, to sell them. Being kids there was little we could do except, on one occasion, a van was left with the engine running. When we were chased off, the key to the van was mysteriously removed and it left with us. What happened to the van when the tide came in, I have no idea, but it became too dangerous for kids to continue this pastime. Bloody adults!
dearieme - interesting coal find under the Roman road repair - valuable enough to transport somewhere for some purpose rather than make use of it wherever it was mined.
Sam - maybe they would be satisfied with a bowdlerised version where politically incorrect books are burned instead.
Tammly - I must remember that and use "the greatest thing since coal" as an alternative expression.
Scrobs - pallets do make good fuel although I only ever managed to get hold of one. Old oak wardrobes are quite good too.
DJ - I remember using nutty slack to keep the fire going overnight. Can't remember if it worked though.
Penseivat - great story. It would have been fun to watch what happened to the van but I hope the tide took it.
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