In mining areas many miners and colliers worked at the pit head or as time keepers.
There was apparently little to separate these colliers and their labouring colleagues in terms of the nature, location and meaning of some of the most popular pastimes.
Weavers had been involved in major disturbances in 1729-30 and 1735, and colliers on a number of occasions following the introduction of turnpikes in 1727.
The similarities in terms of economic and cultural outlook and behaviour between the colliers and their labouring counterparts demonstrated in the preceding sections inevitably draw attention to issues of class.
Discharging colliers took up wharfage.
Furthermore, colliers evidence the greatest mortality differential, a feature which may tend to confirm the hypothesis that, as a group, they suffered the long-term latent penalties of heavy labour.
The colliers' skill, seniority and, even, knowledge of technical terms are often not transferable from pit to pit, let alone village to village, district to district, or coalfield to coalfield.
Although the number of vessels engaged in the trade shrank somewhat, the sailing colliers which had been around 100 tons in the seventeenth century were averaging 312 by 1730.
