Book Review: B.L. Coombes, These Poor Hands: The Autobiography of a Miner Working in South Wales. With an Introduction by Bill Jones and Chris Williams. Pp. xxxix + 207. First published by Victor Gollancz in 1939, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2002 edition, 2011 reprint. ISBN 978 0-7083-1563-7, e-ISBN 978-0-7083-2317-5

Laybourn, Keith (2011) Book Review: B.L. Coombes, These Poor Hands: The Autobiography of a Miner Working in South Wales. With an Introduction by Bill Jones and Chris Williams. Pp. xxxix + 207. First published by Victor Gollancz in 1939, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2002 edition, 2011 reprint. ISBN 978 0-7083-1563-7, e-ISBN 978-0-7083-2317-5. North American Journal of Welsh Studies, 6 (1). pp. 65-67. ISSN 1554-8112

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Abstract

My father was a Yorkshire miner who started work at Monk Bretton pit near
Barnsley in 1938 at the age of 14 and retired in 1983 at the age of 57, after two
protracted bouts of rheumatic fever. For much of his early life he was a shot firer,
drilling holes and filling them with powder before firing them to open up the coal
seams.

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