The problem with
looking into the history of a place is that sometimes you end up with
a feeling of total disconnect – a feeling that the place you know
so well could not possibly have been anything like what your research
tells you.
Less than two hundred
years ago Tavistock was completely and utterly different. It was an
industrial town which depended on people to provide most of the power
needed to drive that industry.
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| One thing is certain, 200 years ago there was no Book Stop. It was here, as I am sure most of you know, that the launch party for Marcia's first novel Those Who Serve was held. That was a long time ago but the book is still in print and continues to sell in both print and ebook editions. |
In the early 1800’s
copper in considerable quantities were found in and near Tavistock.
This simple fact had a huge impact on the townspeople in general but
what I want to talk about is what happened to numbers of young girls
and women: they were employed in the copper mines carrying out
filthy, back-breaking work all of which started when they were no
more than thirteen years old.
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| No Bedford Hotel . . . |
They weren’t employed
underground (or, if they were, there is no record of this happening)
but it was their job to carry out all the work needed to convert the
ore bearing rocks and detritus that was dug out below and brought to
the surface. The whole process was called ‘dressing’ and the
areas where most of the work was carried out were called ‘dressing
floors’. Some were covered, others were in the open air.
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| No Crebers . . . |
First all the material
that had been mined had to be taken from the mine head to the
dressing floors. This was done by teams of two women using shovels
and hand barrows: usually in their twenties because this work
demanded great strength.
Next was work for the
younger girls: to wash out the rubbish and put to one side the lumps
of rock in which there would be copper ore. It was important that
these girls neither discarded valuable ore nor allowed useless
material to be passed on to the next process. In short it demanded
knowledge and considerable concentration. New girls would work
alongside those with experience in order to learn the job and all day
their hands – and often their clothing – would be wet as they carried out this physically demanding work: they would be lumping around pieces of
rock that could weight up the thirty pounds or so all day long.
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| No Duke Street . . . |
All this work built up
their strength and they would be moved onto breaking up the rock and
turning it into a powder. This was done in two stages. The first used
short and heavy club hammers to break the rocks down to the size of
pebbles – the second used flat headed hammers to break up the
pebbles and grind them to powder.
Then would be the final
stage: the separation of the particle of copper ore from the ‘guange’
(pronounced ‘gang’) which comprised all the bits of stone and so
on which were of no value. This part of the job is almost exactly the
same as panning for gold – using water to separate out the lighter
guange from the heavier metal or ore.
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| No Pannier Market. |
We are talking about
quite big concerns: we know that one mine employed over a thousand
workers at one time and the other was a somewhat larger operation.
That would mean that a third of the town’s population was involved.
Can you imagine what
those working conditions were like? Can you imagine any of our
youngsters today being prepared to carry out such work?
One thing is for sure:
none of Marcia’s characters would recognise the Tavistock of 200
years ago. It was the copper that lined the pockets of the Duke of
Bedford who was to use much of this wealth to rebuild the town in the
1830’s. Few of the buildings in the centre of the town existed
then: no Guildhall, no Pannier Market, no Duke Street, no Crebers in
which to meet Felicity out shopping and no Bedford Hotel in which to
eavesdrop on Kate and Cass gossiping over coffee.
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| This is the cover of Postcards from the Past as published in the USA. The painting is by Vitali Komarov and Marcia loves his work (we have one of his original oils hanging in our sitting room) and she was thrilled to bits when St Martin's Press decided to use his work on the covers of her books. If you want to see more examples of Vitali's work, click here. |
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| Vitali Komarov |
The real loss is that
there was no Marcia Willett in those days to leave behind a word
picture to enable us to imagine what it felt like to be living there
at that time.
