This week Sepia Saturday inspires bloggers with a fondness for days gone by to post photos of groups of children. Join the fun.
Desoronto Archives, 1912
Look at the regal lady posted on top.
Library of Congress, 1910
Above we see a group of Breaker Boys. According to Wikipedia:
“A breaker boy was a coal-mining worker in the United States and United Kingdom whose job was to separate impurities from coal by hand in a coal breaker. Although breaker boys were primarily children, elderly coal miners who could no longer work in the mines because of age, disease, or accident were also sometimes employed as breaker boys. The use of breaker boys began in the mid-1860s. Although public disapproval of the employment of children as breaker boys existed by the mid-1880s, the practice did not end until the 1920s.”
National Library of Australia, circa 1910
Arbor Day in Australia (above).
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Breaker boys! Oh my. Love the school picture – that is one big blackboard.
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Yes, that school photo has charm. Those students’ lives were much better than the poor kids who had to work with coal.
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I’d never heard of ‘breaker boys’. Glad the practice finally stopped!
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It had to have been a harsh way of life.
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Excellent photo selections! The breaker boys photo is heartbreaking — to see them working in the dangerous mines instead of going to school, like the young women above, or able to engage in leisure activities, like the Arbor Day tree planters below. Thank goodness labor laws have changed to allow the young to have their childhoods!
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I had to look up where Desoronto was (Ontario, Canada on the shore of Lake Ontario). Interesting that the still had a picture of Victoria up and it was already time for her grandson to feature her son having ruled and died in the meantime.
A lovely selection of photographs.
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Classic images with wonderful faces full of character.
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