Edgar King was born in 1886 in Vobster, Somerset. His father Henry was a quarryman at the Vobster quarry and the family’s neighbours worked at the quarry, extracting limestone, or they were coal miners. There were several coal mines in the area, supplying local iron works. By the age of 15, in 1901, Edgar was a boarder at Clutton near to Radstock in Somerset, where he was a coal miner (Source – Census records). At that time there were nearly 80 mines within a 20-mile radius of Radstock.
The Somerset coalfield extended for some 240 square miles, with several pits near to Clutton, that were originally part of the Earl of Warwick’s estates, subsequently owned by the Greyfield Colliery Company, from the 1830s, In the 1600s the pits in the area had characteristically been bell pits, with cavity mines being dug from the surface to access minerals or coal. The last pit to remain open in this cluster closed in 1921. Coal had been discovered in Radstock, the larger town, in 1763 and mining continued until 1973 when the last mines closed at Lower Writhlington and Kilmersdon.
The coal seams in the wider Radstock area were notoriously difficult to access. The seams underlay sandstone which had to be drilled through to access the coal. Seams in some areas were narrow – as narrow as 12 – 18 inches, with frequent geological faults that disrupted the seam continuity. An ex-miner who started work in the area as an apprentice in the 1960s confirmed that he saw a coal face that had been recently closed: ‘This coal face was still being propped with timber supports and was about 100 yards in length and only about 24 inches high’. (Source – website of the Somerset & Dorset Railway Heritage Trust).
These factors contributed to miners having to work in particularly cramped conditions, in an environment where there was pervasive sandstone dust in addition to coal dust. Sandstone is primarily silica that has dust particles too fine to be seen by the human eye.
Symptoms – Edgar King’s experience
Edgar King spent most of his working life on the same coalfield. At some point between 1910 and 1914 he spent just a few months cutting ‘headings’ in the silica – rich sandstone that underlay the Somerset coal seams, to enable access to the coal seams. King later developed breathing symptoms to the extent that he couldn’t function in his paid work, and he began to argue that he should have compensation. In 1923 he wrote to the Somerset Miner’s Association agent, Fred Swift:
‘…I should like for you to let me know if I am likely to get anything…I cannot see that I shall be doing any work for some months yet although I’m trying my best to get over it but I can’t get breath to walk very far …
… I didn’t know I was so bad before I started work so I had to finish. I’ve seen my Dr today and he said he was in Bath last night and Dr Thomson told I ought to have compensation for it as he said I was as good as done for…it’s a clear case. Seeing as I’ve seen the x rays, and they don’t tell lies anyway.’ (Source – McGuire, 2020)
This miner’s view of his debilitating condition, the cause of it from his employment and the evidence provided by X rays is clear but all of these points were being highly contended at national level by the government, medical authorities and coal mine owners. A miner’s breathlessness and fatigue were often labelled as being ‘malingering’. The causes of ‘miner’s lung’ conditions were disputed and associated with bronchitis or tuberculosis, whose causes were then associated with other factors, rather than solely those factors found in a coal mine. Furthermore, X ray findings were questioned in a way that we would not recognise today, as radiology was a relatively recently developed discipline. Very sadly, Edgar King did not realise that he would not be ‘getting over’ his condition.
By the end of 1926 King’s breathing problems forced him to cease working at the coal face and in 1928 he was permanently disabled. (Source – Melling, 2010)
Diagnosis at last
In June 1929, six years after he wrote that letter to the Miner’s Association agent, Edgar King was sent to the Bath Hospital at the Combe Park site, for a radiographic examination (X ray). The radiologist’s view was that the X ray exposures gave quite sufficient evidence that King suffered from silicosis. (Source – McGuire, 2020). Silicosis was by then accepted as a lung disease affecting workers in environments where protracted inhalation of silica particles over ten years or so led to a progressive fibrosis – thickening or scarring of the lung tissue.
Edgar King’s death, the Inquest and reaction
A year later, Edgar King died after collapsing in July 1930. He was 45 years old. The Inquest after his death was significant. His death was stated to be caused by heart failure due to silicosis and ‘anthracosis’ – anthracosis was a fibrosis caused by coal dust. The assessment of the state of his lungs was, in summary, that they were blackened, hardened and devoid of air spaces. There was no indication of tuberculosis. (Source – Melling, 2010).
Fred Swift, the local Miner’s Association agent, had carefully kept notes on miner’s cases of ill health, including Edgar King’s, dating back for many years, in order to pursue a campaign for recognition and compensation. Other Miner’s Association agents elsewhere were taking forward such campaigns with little acknowledgement or response. Swift denounced the conditions experienced by King as being ‘barbarous’. The Inquest evidence concerning King’s death led to Swift’s campaigning being noticed by John Scott Haldane.
Haldane was a British physician and physiologist who specialised in developing scientific understanding of poisonous gases and prevention of their effects. He invented a respirator to be used by soldiers in the First World War and was notorious for self – experimentation. Haldane visited the scenes of many mining disasters in order to investigate their causes and devised a respirator for mine rescue workers. By 1930 he was nationally eminent and acclaimed in relation to his work on industrial disease. Haldane himself was sceptical about the role of dust in causing silicosis and the use of X ray evidence, but his close interest in King’s Inquest findings and other miner’s cause of death led to other national attention and debate amongst prominent figures.
One of those prominent figures was Dr Sydney Fisher, the first permanent Medical Inspector of Mines. Dr Fisher questioned Haldane’s assumptions by putting forward inquest evidence on forty-nine other miners that had similarities with the finding relating to Edgar King.
At the Royal Commission on Safety in Mines in 1936, evidence was given that a 1925 study of twelve Somerset rock drillers had revealed that all these men ‘but one were found definitely to be suffering from silicosis, the one case being doubtful.’ It appeared that the Government’s Mines Department were fully aware of the lethal consequences of rock drilling in collieries, as early as 1925. (Source – Melling, 2010).
It took a large-scale Medical Research Council investigation in South Wales of dust-caused lung disease in coal miners that was carried out between 1938 and 1941 to establish more firmly that inhalation of dust particles in coal mines was a direct cause of lung disease. Silicosis was reclassified as one form of lung disease that affects people working in dust-ridden environments. But X ray evidence continued to be contended until the 1950s after the setting up of the National Health Service when standards for X ray evidence were established and applied nationally. (Source – Melling, 2010).
The Inquest evidence after Edgar King’s death was a catalyst that seemed to justify the protracted campaigning by coal miners and their representatives in many areas of the UK. The compensation schemes in the early 20th century were selective and relied on geological, rather than pathological evidence. (Source – Bufton and Melling, 2005) This was not rectified until the 1930s, though the medical evidence required was still very exacting and X ray evidence was still problematic. Campaigning emphasis appeared to focus on compensation awards more than on the prevention of risk that would require commitment and investment by employers – a concern applying to the smaller scale Somerset coalfield, as well as to the larger UK coalfields.
References
Bufton M. and Melling J, (2005). Coming Up for Air: Experts, Employers, and Workers in Campaigns to Compensate Silicosis Sufferers in Britain, 1918-1939, Social History of Medicine, Vol 18, issue 1, April 2005, pp 63-86.
McGuire C. (2020). Measuring Difference, Numbering Normal: Setting the Standards for Disability in the Interwar Period, Manchester University Press.
Melling J. (2010). Beyond a shadow of a doubt? Experts, Lay Knowledge, and the Role of Radiography in the Diagnosis of Silicosis in Britain c, 1919 – 1945. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2010, pp 424-466.
Article by Dr Linda Watts