[Charles William Stewart ‘Fighting Charlie’ 1778-1854] is made of electro plated copper, a revolutionary design in its day and was very expensive to create. Portrayed at the age of 42 dressed as a hussar the statue was unveiled in 1861 at a ceremony attended by Benjamin Disraeli and various military detachments. With a military and political career behind him, the 42 year old ‘Ulsterman’ married the 19 year old coal heiress Lady Frances Anne Vane Tempest In 1819; she was the second largest coal exporter in the North East with an estimated annual income of £60,000 – some millions in today’s terms. Londonderry also owned a substantial amount of land and property in Ireland.

 

Until 1872 “all of the miners of Northumberland, Cumberland and Durham were employed under the hated Bond system”. They were under contract/their labour was owned by the landowner/pit owners/’masters’. “In the years 1839/40 for example 66 pitmen in the county of Durham were jailed for short periods as ‘vagrants’”; that is, for leaving their usual places of work whilst ‘bonded’.” If anyone broke the bond he was liable to arrest, trial and imprisonment”. In the same period a further 106 were committed for ‘disobedience of orders, and other matters subject to summary jurisdiction’[4].

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In the 1844 great strike[5] the miners demanded a living wage and “in the infamous ‘Seaham Letter’ Lord Londonderry warned all traders there not to give credit to the strikers, or else they would become ‘marked’ men and would henceforth be denied any business”. He evicted any tenant’s involved and imported workers from his estates in the north of Ireland and other parts of the country to act as strike-breakers. More “evictions followed to make way for them”. (Tony Whitehead: http://www.eastdurham.co.uk/seaham/a_brief_history.htm)

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Poverty was an was endemic part of life for the miners and their families. The wages were pitiful and young boys from the age of 7/8 were paid even less. Conditions were dangerous and horrible[6].

 

 

[4] “A foreign visitor to Tyneside at the end of the 18th. Century was struck by the number of notices placed in local newspapers by the ‘Masters’ offering rewards for knowledge of the whereabouts of runaway miners and threatening to prosecute whoever might employ them.” http://www.durhamrecordsonline.com/literature/miners_lives.php

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[6] To read more about the links between poverty and prison see:  Reiman, J. and Leighton, P. (2012) The Rich Get Richer and The Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice. Pearson