Bargain books and journals

BARGAIN BOOKS

The Bargain Books as their name suggests, are a record of the bargains set with the various bands of men and the monies earned. Pages list the bargains made with each leading man, and each book usually has a rough index. Each bargain was signed for by the leader and the overseer, and there was a third signatory, no doubt the accountant.

JOURNALS

The Journals were the day books for the work in the mines, and it was the duty of one of the overseers to write them up. Most of the overseers wrote a fine copperplate hand, and even the entries made 200 years ago are still amazingly legible. \The purpose of the Journals was to provide a record of the days activities. The entries record the time the overseers met at the rendezvous or office, the mines or work places visited that day, and bargains set or finished, and the returns of ore raised and smelted. A review was made of the state of the works each year or thereabouts, and in addition, some of the Journals give such details as comments on the weather, the fact that an overseer was away or ill, the gathering of hay and other interesting and often amusing trivia.

The style used in the daily entries and in the wording of different kinds of bargains, changed little. For perhaps a hundred years, successive overseers recorded each day how they "attended the Rendezvous between 5 and 6 o'clock in the morning and afterwards visited the men employed at such and such a part of the mining ground". Such repetition was in keeping with the ways of the industry that itself saw little change from the Middle Ages until well into the 19th century.

THE BARGAIN SYSTEM

The paying of workers by making bargains with them for an amount of work to be done was neither confined to Leadhills, nor peculiar to the period considered. The Oxford English Dictionary ascribes the expression to the coalmines of Northumberland and Durham, and the system was widely used in one form or another in Britain from about the 17th Century.

Bargains or Contracts, offered, or seemed to offer, a peculiar advantage to mine workers in that it made them partners in the whole speculation of seeking riches in the earth, and promised that skill, strength, and good fortune would be rewarded with high earnings. For the mining companies this participation was an incentive to hard work, and little supervision of the men was then required. It had the effect of making the bands of men into small contractors, and since they usually had to provide candles, tools, gunpowder etc. out of their earnings, these materials were used as economically as possible, a matter of no small importance in remote areas.

The disadvantages were common to any form of piecework in that careless work was encouraged, and there was a temptation to try to defraud the mining company. "The whole art of mining" a Cornish miner is alleged to have remarked," is fooling the captains".

The bargain system seems to have been first used in Scotland by English miners who had been brought in to work the lead mines. The less experienced Scotsmen fought shy of it at first, preferring to be paid daily wages. However, by the early years of the 18th century they must have felt sufficiently experienced to take advantage of bargain working for the 1739 books, the earliest that remain in the Leadhills Library, show that both English and Scots miners, the Whitfields, Masons, and Roans and the Muirs, Camerons and MacLachans were all working bargains at Leadhills.

The driving of levels, or tunnels to reach ore offers a straightforward application of piecework. In the Cornish tin mines this was called 'tutwork' and the similarity between 'tut' and the German word 'todt' meaning dead or fruitless, suggests that such contract working may have been introduced into Britain by the German miners brought in by Elizabeth I.

Contracts for working the ore show the most variety in the way they were arranged in different mining grounds, and perhaps much depends on whether the miners were 'free men' as in England, or, at least in law, bound to their employers as in 18th century Scotland. In the Pennine mines, the lead ore seems to have been generally worked for a price per ton of smelted lead, but in the Cornish tin mines it was based on the price of the ore at the mine head. The Cornish system was a celebrated one and was known as 'tribute work'. In it the pitches of ore were valued by the mine captains, and were then inspected by all 'the labouring miners in the county'. Each pitch was then let by public auction for a period of two months, the miners getting a tribute, or percentage of the value of the ore sold. It was this percentage that was agreed at the auction, and if things went badly, the tributer could abandon the contract on payment of a fine of £1.

In Derbyshire lead mines were an example of different types of organisation. Some mines were worked by the owners themselves, who sold the ore. Some were let to miners who worked for a particular form of royalty called 'cope', and only the men in the larger mines worked contracts, copying the Cornish system of 'tutwork' and 'tributework'.

Wales too had a big lead mining industry, and the bargain system was in use there as early as 1659, while at least some of the mining companies fixed the price at public auctions. One company, The Company of Mine Adventurers, seems to have attempted an early form of work measurement to arrive at an estimated price for working ore. Early in the 18th century, they employed a 'lusty willing fellow' to make a trial of the ore under supervision, thus providing a rational measure of the probable cost of working it.

What little information is available of actual contracts and bargain prices show a wide variation even in the same mining fields.

Cornish contracts were made at public auction, but bargains for underground work at Leadhills were set in the mines."....went underground at....and set the following bargains..."the overseers recorded in the journals. The contract was then in fact a bargain: a price agreed between two parties. This arrangement was probably dictated by the small labour force, and, in times of high lead prices such bargains may have been to the men's advantage. Otherwise, lack of competition would have allowed the overseer to dictate the price. The agreed price would have been regarded as legally binding, and the Leadhills books record no extras. If the deadworkers found rich ore in the vein they may have received a cash bonus, but the records show that if no ore was raised, no payment was recorded. Under such circumstances the men might not only work for nothing, but would still have to meet their own expenses.

Examination of the actual earnings suggests that the overseers must have tried to arrange matters to aim at an overall average wage. A bad, or hard bargain, which might pay only the equivalent of a couple of shillings (10p) per week per man, was usually followed by one at a higher price, thus restoring the balance to an average gross wage per week of 8/- (40p) to 9/- (45p). How the money earned was paid is not clear. The Scots Mining Company had its own store, and wages were perhaps credited to the miners account. A report of 1861 recommends that the miners should be paid in cash, which suggests that this was not the norm. The company store would have sold candles, gunpowder etc., but timber seems to have been issued free, as pit props were given out by the overseer as required. Because of deforestation timber was a scarce commodity, and on occasion had to be salvaged from old workings. In some English mines, a credit was made against the bargain for any timbering found to be required, but there is no mention of this happening at Leadhills.

There is a good deal of evidence pointing to attempts to defraud the mining companies. While bargains for deadwork are not mentioned in this connection, the working of ore offered a good deal of scope for 'fooling' the overseer. A writer on the Cornish mines noted that the Tributemen would hide ore with rubbish so as to have a pitch rated above its value, and that the men would mix different qualities of ore in the 'dark chambers of the mine' so that a low graded ore would be sold for the price given to a more valuable pitch.

Much the same ploys occurred in the Leadhills mines. In one of the bargains illustrated later it will be noted that an overseer urges the men"...to oblige themselves to work this bargain fair before them and not to hide any ore in sight of the end of this bargain." And it is recorded how a miner was tried before a visiting JP for attempting to defraud one of the companies by mixing different ores at the mine head. No records have been found in the Leadhills books of bargains being abandoned or altered because they were difficult or unprofitable, and only alterations recorded were because of changes in the number of partners concerned. In the Cornish mines, a bargain could be abandoned on payment of a fine whilst in the North Pennines miners who found their bargain unprofitable sometime got a cash allowance.

Examples of various bargains taken from the Scots Mining Company's books are given on the pages that follow. Even the 18th century books offer an enormous amount of material. It is apparent that much in the books is repetitive.

BARGAINS FOR DEADWORK

By the 18th century all the outcrops and the shallow parts of the veins around Leadhills had been worked out and an increasing amount of deadwork was required as operations went deeper. The miners engaged on this were called 'pickmen' and their objective was to find large ore bodies in the veins, and then to drive galleries, or drifts, through them, one below the other, so that the ore could be worked out.

The pickmen could drive three fathoms a week in good ground but when the rock was hard, a weeks progress might be no more than three feet.

Leadhills 27th April 1741. Bargain made with Thomas Bryden, Andrew Dalzell, -- Miller, Robert Dalzell, Christopher Cunningham, James Roan, John Robertson, Allan Cameron, to drive ten fathoms farther to the north in the Low Level Forehead from the Crofts Cut at Tennants Shaft at Five pounds Five shillings per fathom and five shillings per bing of ore.

Leadhills 7th June 1742. Bargain made with John Thompson townfoot, William Thomson ditto, John Thomson Junior ditto, Robert Dare, William Hamilton, and widow Edmonson, to drive their forehead till the 27th Current in the East Branch of the Susanna Vein at Thirty-Five shillings per fathom not exceeding five fathoms.

Bargains were usually limited as to distance driven, and the reference to time in the second bargain is unusual for the period. The reference to Widow Edmonson is interesting, and suggests a 'benefit bargain'. On the other hand, only five men are mentioned and as two worked at the forehead, bargains were always in even numbers. However it seems unlikely that Widow Edmonson actually wielded a pick.

15th September 1766. To James Thomson and three more to begin at the surface near Stouts Shaft and drive ten fathoms of an inset towards Corbiehall Vein at ten shillings per fathom.

This is one of the few bargains for an entirely new operation and work by this band of pickmen continued until 11 December when their final bargain was for a further ten fathoms at fourteen shillings per fathom. After this the men were moved to Rispencleugh, about a mile away, and on the 2nd January 1767, a fresh bargain was made with:- John Alexander and three more to drive five fathoms west in the New Level to Corbiehall Vein at twenty-five shillings per fathom.

Work on this level continued until August 1768.

4th January 1768. To Thomas Hislop and three more to drive three fathoms to the north in the forehead of the Low Level in Rispencleugh Vein at Four pounds per fathom and five shillings per bing of ore.

To William Garth and seven more to begin at Pearsons Shaft and drive twelve fathoms to the north in the 3rd Roosting above Airds Drift in Susanna Vein, Glendorch Ground at Twenty shillings per fathom and five shillings per bing of ore.

When driving in ore bearing ground, there was an additional payment for ore found. This was usually five shillings per bing (8cwt) but since the ore was 'as mined' this price was much less than that paid to the men who came after to work the vein, and had to dress the ore.

17th February 1768. To Alex. Cowie and three more to room out one fathom of a Sump Head and sink three fathoms of a sump in Carfs Vein at Twenty-five shillings per fathom.

7th March 1768. To William Ramage and three more to begin at McMorrons Sump and drive ten fathoms at Fifteen shillings per fathom and five shillings per bing of ore.

When access was easy, as in starting a level, the price seems to have been low. Presumably because it was easier to move out the spoil or rubbish.

18th February 1786. To Thomas Whitfield and seven more to drive six fathoms to the south in the forehead of Gripps Level at seven pounds ten shillings per fathom.

The rock in this forehead was reported as being very hard and these six fathoms took almost 18 weeks to drive. Gripps Level was the great drainage level through the Leadhills workings and was still being driven 50 years later.

3rd January 1838. To Robert Whitfield and seven partners to drive five fathoms of Gripps Level at Browns Vein at the rate of five pounds and ten shillings per fathom.

One might suppose that Robert was the grandson of Thomas who was working on this level in 1768.

8th May 1798 To Evan Hair and seven more to drive three fathoms farther to the north from MacDonalds Sump in the third roosting of the String on the East side of Susanna Vein Leadhills ground at fifty shillings per fathom and five shillings per bing of ore.

16th May 1798. To John Wilson and seven more to rise and drive three fathoms in the twelfth roosting above Clarks Drift in Susanna Vein, Leadhills ground at three pounds per fathom and five shillings per bing of ore.

On the whole, these bargains seem little different from those made fifty years earlier.

RAISING AND DRESSING ORE

If bargains for 'deadwork' were fairly straightforward those for getting out the ore and making it fit for smelting were not. Essentially the ore exposed by the pickmen had to be broken out of the surrounding rock, and it, and any ore mined by the pickmen, raised to the surface. It then had to be dressed and washed to remove foreign material and made 'sufficient' for smelting

Leadhills 20th November 1739. Bargain made with James Mure Coalknow and Walter Hamilton to raise ore in the old ground above levels in Browns Vein between Ladys Shaft and Railstones Shaft, by drawing the wastes underground or taking out any middling they shall meet with within the said bounds, at three pounds and ten shillings per tun of smelted lead for the space of three months from the date hereof. Also to oblige themselves to do no harm to the levels, shafts or sumps.

Leadhills 21st March 1740. Bargain made with Robert Brown, Alexander Caldwell, Robert Harper and Wm. Thomson Nithsdale, to raise ore for one month from the date hereof in the ground that formally belonged to John Ingram and partners at Pearsons Shaft on the north side of the 2nd sump at the said shaft at ten shillings per bing. The above partners oblige themselves to work this bargain fair before them and not to hide any ore in site at ye end of this bargain.

Leadhills 7th June 1742. Bargain made with Robert Pearson, James Pearson, James Ramage and Widow Pearson to raise ore till the 27th current out of the north end of the sump at Richies Shaft in Portobello Vein at twelve shillings per bing.

These bargains show that payment could be for either per bing of ore or per ton of smelted lead

11th January 1768. To Robert Pearson and five more to raise and dress ore in the old works of Laverlockhall Vein till the 1st April, between Lockes and Laverlockhall shafts from the level to the surface at five pounds ten shillings per ton of smelted lead. They to pay the smelters wages and the company to furnish fuel. They are to damnify no principle drifts or waygates.

The men were usually cautioned against damaging the main access levels in the mine, or choking them with discarded stones and clay. This reflects the sort of carelessness that the bargain system encouraged.

18th January 1768. To James Hastie and twenty seven more to run and dress ore of Whitfields and MacDonalds bargains from Taylors Sumpfoot, and of Weirs bargain from Ramages Sumpfoot under level in Susanna Vein to the banks at two shillings and eleven pence per bing. And part of the rubbish of this bargain to the roost of Stitts Sump at nine shillings per fathom.

To run did not mean the men were to hurry, for in the 18th century mining terms the expression meant moving material along the levels. This bargain refers to ore mined by pickmen and left piled in sumps. The men were to clean the ore out of the rubbish, get the ore out to the 'bank' at the mine adit, and then take the rubbish that was left to a worked out part of the mine. The number of men involved 28, is unusually large for a bargain.

12th March 1774. To John Robinson and three more to drive three fathoms in the 8th Middling of Susanna Vein above level in Glendorch ground at five pounds and ten shillings per tun of smelted lead. They to pay for the dressing and the company to pay for the smelting.

13th March 1786. To Robert Hastie and seven more to raise ore by driving three fathoms to the south from Mills Sump under level in Susanna Vein Glendorch ground at three pounds per ton of smelted lead from the ore therein.

The bargain with John Robinson shows another variation of the method of paying for working out ore. Although the price is again in terms of the smelted lead, the Company are now paying for the smelting, so would then have the final product. This illustrates a complexity in the setting of these bargains that seems peculiar to the period.

Although the veins of lead ore could be very wide, and it is said that the Susanna Vein was 12 feet thick in places, they might be so thin that the rock along the vein would have to be mined as well to provide access to the ore being worked. This was probably one reason for the price variation in the bargains

The above bargains refer to getting ore in the mines but as already mentioned; ore was also dressed from wastes lying above ground.

4th March 1740. Bargain made with John Thomson Junior, John Medcalf and James Cudberson, to dress the first slaggs at the Mill till the 1st July next, so as to make the same sufficient for smelting, at fifteen shillings per tun of smelted lead, also to dress the wastes in Glengonner Burn from the road below the Company's Mill, to the north end of the Peat Slack at the south side of the said mill, at four pounds and five shillings per tun of smelted lead.

18th July 1768. To Benjamin Mason to dress the old wastes of Ottos bargain laying at Loweries Shaft, and of the Adventurers bargains also lying at the said shaft heat, to the satisfaction of the overseer at five pounds and ten shillings per tun of smelted lead. He to pay the smelters wages, and the company to furnish the fuel.

The reference to dressing the wastes from the Adventurers bargains, would suggest that the Adventurers only concerned themselves with getting a quick return from good ore requiring little preparation

1st June 1774. To Benjamin Mason to dress the wastes in Glengonnars Burn from Mr Tissingtons Mill to the Company's at five pounds per tun of smelted lead to the satisfaction of the overseer.

19th May1779. Agreed with William Williamson and David Hamilton to dress part of the dead heap wastes at Laverlockhall Vein and Browns Vein by the direction of the overseers at four pounds and ten shillings per tun.

The production of smelted lead was to the advantage of the company as the bargain price could be easily related to the actual price of lead at the time. (It was £15 per ton in1785). However it is claimed that the arrangement was to the disadvantage of the men as there could be a long delay before the lead was smelted. A contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine for 1853 was particularly concerned about this and claimed that two years could elapse, thus resulting in the men living on credit and getting deeply in debt. The payments made against the above bargains tend to bear this out.

They are recorded as follows: -

30th July 1780 £10.19.7d

24th April 1783 £5.13.00d

16th November 1787 £2.8.1d

However these payments are so small that the man may have had other work on hand at the same time.

Most bargains that continued for some time show payments being made at three monthly intervals.

SMELTING

The cleaned and concentrated ore had to be smelted to produce the lead bars that were then sold. It was not until the 19th century that a large Smelting Mill was built about a mile below the village and whose ruins can still be seen, and the Scots Mining Company had their mill on the other side of the burn from the Susanna Vein. They used a small blast furnace fired with peat and the work was regarded as being highly skilled. It will be seen from the previous bargains that smelters dealt with both the Company's ore and ore belonging to the men. Once made bargains with the smelters continued for many years

13th February 1768. To Thomas Hamilon and one more to smelt the companys blue ore at five shillings and six pence per tun, and the first wastes at six shillings per tun, and slime pit wastes at seven shillings per tun of smelted lead. They are to carefully attend to the smelting themselves and are to make good lead and scum the bars so as to leave no slag or dross therein. The bars not to contain under eight stone nor over eight stone and six pounds weight, and both parties are at liberty to end this bargain when they please.

30th January 1769. Agreed with John Millar and Benjamin Mason to dress and smelt the slags of Glendorch or viz. They are to carefully separate such of the ore as is fit to be smelted in the Ore Hearth to be dressed and smelted in it. And the coarser part to be dressed and smelted in the slag hearth and the black slags there from the said hearth to be smelted in the ore hearth. All to the satisfaction of the overseer at thirty-five shillings per tun of smelted lead. They to find all the fuel at their expense and are to make good lead, and not to work more than two shifts daily, and are to skim the bars so as to leave no slag or dross therein. The bars not to be under eight stone nor over eight stone six pounds. Both parties to be allowed to end this bargain as they please.

There is evidence that there was also a washing floor and furnace in what the overseers refer to as Glendorch, and it seems likely that the above bargains refer to work being done there.

7th July 1791. Agreed with William Moffat and John Hamilton to smelt part of the company's ore and wastes at five shillings per tun of smelted lead.

This brief bargain was still being worked in1798, but payments were made every three months.