Miners Leaving Pendlebury Colliery (1901)

Despite knowing that there has been a black presence in the UK since Roman times, it's still a shock and a pleasure to see a black miner emerge from a group of workers at Pendlebury Colliery. His fleeting appearance, smiling alongside his workmates, may look staged and it has been suggested he was given a clean shirt show up his skin colour. But this film is not about him - he's just one of many men who walk past before a large billboard advertising a forthcoming passion play.

The black miner's appearance in the nation's collective family album of cinema is incidental but important. It records his presence in Edwardian Britain giving us and future generations the possibility to muse who he was and how he got there. (Karen Alexander)

This film is part of the Mitchell and Kenyon collection - an amazing visual record of everyday life in Britain at the beginning of the twentieth century. For more information about the films of Mitchell and Kenyon see http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/mk/

To buy the DVD click here - http://www.bfi.org.uk/filmstore

You can watch over 1000 other complete films and TV programmes from the BFI National Archive free of charge at the new BFI Mediatheque - http://www.bfi.org.uk/mediatheque

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• BFI
• miners
• mining
• black
• British
• African
• Pendlebury
• Manchester
• Salford
• Lancashire
• Victorian
• Edwardian

[boerborn]

hardly any obese people back then.

[youtuuberoxx]

0:45 that guy is clever...walk in front of the camera to promote his play or whatever that sign said lol

[petertownend]

@boerborn ok cheers

[boerborn]

@petertownend

No, your schoolboy silliness did not wind me up 'cause I can roll with the best of them.

We will be as gone from this planet in a few years as those miners on that celluloid that Mitchell and Kenyon filmed and all our egos will disappear at the moment of death, which is a good thing.

[petertownend]

@boerborn don't talk so chuffin silly,anyway sorry for winding you up.

[boerborn]

@petertownend

The only fat there is is between your ears it seems.

[boerborn]

@petertownend  I am neither fat or a bastard and I am only partial to an Eccles cake with tea the odd time after an arduous tour is finished by yours truly as a member of our local cycling club.

[boerborn]

@rachzen

It would not be my call if they be miners or not but if an obese person needed a job to survive and support their family and mining was the only job offered, then the choice would have been a done deal.

Early 20th century mining labour techniques in Britain would certainly make that obese miner into a svelte miner in a matter of a year or two if they survived the physical rigor .

[rachzen]

If there were obese people, do you think it would be a good idea for them to be miners?