Wigan Album

My fatherin law james lowe (deceased) lost is right arm at chisnall pit in the fifties working the coal cutter.

What a job. What a life. What men.

You can certainly repeat your line, JamesB, A hard, hazardous, and an extremely unhealthy occupation. The esprit de corps between miners' was outstanding.

Most of my male relatives worked down pit I wouldn't have done that job for a gold pig.Before I left Spring View School my Dad told me I was not going down Pit, he didn't need to tell me twice.

When I was working at Stones I did some face training on an AB15 cutter. The cutterman was Arthur Wadsworth and he was one of the best cuttermen that I have known He knew every inch of that machine and could keep it to the floor of the seam by scraping loose coal up with a wooden wedge and putting it under the base plate, watching for a fleck of dirt to appear in the scuftings. His mate was Bob Boffey

Jinksi, my dad told me the same thing . He worked at Astley Green, and said I could do anything except go down the pit. He hated the pit but had no alternative. Yet he stepped up to the plate every shift. We lost a lot when we lost the pitmen.

Fred, Bob Boffy must have moved up as Bob and Andy Sprat both from Downall Green was on the cutter in 1959 when I was doing my training

When I was at Stones, Andy Spratt was a collier on the yard mine and he would come in on a Sunday to cut the face ready for Monday morning.He must have gone on to Arthur's job later on. I recall that he had a dragon tattoo on his back and the tail coming over his shoulder had been cut off by a sniper's bullet

I started work at Nook pit,in the Arley seam,it was red hot,and the cutters there were AB 16s.

There was a compressed air AB 15 or 16 at Parkside in the early 60s,the only one I've ever seen.