It is estimated that between 1720 and 1920 about 60,000 women and girls worked at the mines, quarries and clay works of Cornwall and Devon. They carried out hard, highly skilful and specialised labour, and were an essential part of the operation.

Lynne Mayers has researched their working lives and their homelife, their characteristics and the occupational hazards they endured. How were they essential to the industry? What were their working conditions? Where did they live? What did they earn? What did they eat? What did they wear? And what did they do with the very little spare time and money they had? As the mines closed, where did they go and what happened to them?

This is the record of a group of remarkable women and the individual stories of the few who are traceable.

The Cornwall and West Devon metal mines and smelters of the 18th and 19th century formed a unique and quite separate part of the mining heritage of these islands. It was here that much of our nation’s mineral wealth was created, based in no small part on the labour of these girls (from the age of eight or nine years old) and young or widowed women. No other metal mining district was so extensive, nor used women and girls in such abundance.

The Hypatia Trust has been awarded the Holyer An Gof Trophy by Gorseth Kernow, for Balmaidens.

They judged it to be the best Cornish publication of 2004.

The trophy, a silver cup in memory of the late Len Truran, was presented at Ottakar's bookstore, Truro, on 7th July 2005.

With this book Lynne Mayers has brought out of the shadows the enormous number of women and girls who worked in the mines, quarries and clay pits of Cornwall and West Devon. Between 1720 and 1921 it is estimated that about 60,000 females were engaged in hard, dirty and specialised labour in the mines or 'bals'. Most of them were involved in dressing the ores, i.e. separating the ore from the waste rock as it came from underground.

This book covers their working and their home lives in very well researched detail. The chapter on 'Balmaidens at the coper mines' covers: the dressing floor, the dressing process, spalling, riddling, washing, picking, cobbing, bucking, jigging, buddling, barrowing and sampling. The very old photographs, many from the Royal Institution of Cornwall, are of the women at work, in their distinctive headgear and aprons. A cobbing hammer weighed between 2 and 4 lbs, and was used in breaking down the mixed ore to small pieces. This was further broken down to small granules and powder by bucking. This was a very demanding task, amply demonstrated by a photo of a bucking iron, showing considerable wear.

This book is a very useful contribution to our knowledge of mining.

Diane Hodnett (Ireland)

Lynne leads the reader into the book gradually, dealing with mining from as early as the Bronze Age, the period from 1200 to 1690, and then to the heyday of the 19th century. Female labour was used increasingly from 1720 and in 1754 was widespread…

The last chapter of the book deals with specific named balmaidens or female mine workers like Lydia Taylor, Martha Buckingham, or Phyllis Thomas, who was a picker at Geevor in World War II, and was still picking the belt at Geevor, albeit for publicity purposes, in 2003. This book is a work of art, well sprinked with good and unusual photographs and diagrams.

Carn Brea Mining Society Newsletter No 53 December 2004

This book can be summed up in one word - Excellent! Very little material is available on the life and times of women, girls (and boys) that worked the mine setts. Normally only recorded as a total number on the 'cost book', and not individually, it must have made research extremely difficult. The whole topic of a woman's (Balmaiden) life has been detailed and intensively researched and full credit must be given to the author for what must have been a difficult task.

The book covers a whole range of social life from clothes worn, to the conditions worked in, with sections on education, illness, abuse and social life, to name but a few. Highly recommended if you have an interest in Cornwall's past or mining history in general.

H G Thomas
From Cornish References, New Zealand December 2004