Bal maiden
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A bal maiden, from the Cornish language bal, a mine, and the English "maiden", a young or unmarried woman, was a female manual labourer working in the mining industries of Cornwall and western Devon,
Bal maidens in traditional protective clothing, 1890
Earthworks near Minions left by tin-streaming (gathering clusters of ore from stream and river beds), the earliest form of mining in Cornwall
Bal maidens with traditional tools and protective clothing spalling ore, 1858
Miners and bal maidens with typical equipment and protective clothing at Dolcoath, 1890
Pit brow women
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Pit brow women or pit brow lasses were female surface labourers at British collieries. They worked at the coal screens on the pit bank at the shaft top until the 1960s. Their job was to pick stones fr
Bal maiden
…pickers), when she died in March 1968. In 1998 South Crofty, Europe's last operational tin mine, closed, bringing metal mining in Cornwall to an end. Pit brow women – women working coalfields in England Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape…
Pit brow lass from Wigan on the Lancashire Coalfield.
A photo of pit girls in South Wales, from the late Victorian period