Book Review: Mine to Die, by Rob Donovan

Reading time: 5 minutes

Mine to Die, by Rob Donovan

Troubadour Publishing, 2024

218 pages, 27 images

£9.99

Rob Donovan has given us a compelling and moving whistle-stop tour of Cornwall’s industrial history. It is not, I hasten to add, a comprehensive history; readers are here directed to A. K. Hamilton Jenkin, John Rowe, and J. A. Buckley. Rather, Donovan’s work is a history of exploitation and neglect, which seeks to demonstrate that,

…in a capitalist industrialising society where profit is more valued than people, the unregulated pursuit of greater personal wealth will come at the expense of the health and even life of those at the bottom of this hierarchy…

Mine to Die, p185

Throughout the history of mining in Cornwall (and Donovan’s focus is very much here on the industrial heartlands of Camborne, Redruth and St Just), the health and wellbeing of the miners themselves is a secondary consideration to the bank balances of the mines’ owners.

Donovan, an experienced historian and writer living in St Ives, argues his case forcefully through elaborating on contemporary newspaper articles and snippets. Through this technique he creates a Victorian Cornwall groaning with disparities of wealth and living standards.

As you might expect, all the big names (the Bassets, the Thomases) and the major disasters (Wheal Owles, Dolcoath, Levant) are examined, but it’s in the smaller, less-familiar stories where Donovan excels. You are left in absolutely no doubt that a career as a miner in 1800s Cornwall was little more than a prolonged death sentence, and that what safety regulations as existed then were woefully disregarded.

Cornwall was a dangerous place, especially in the mining districts. A mine manager travels with a personal bodyguard. Death or serious injury was an everyday occurrence. Children can easily acquire gunpowder for their games. An underground drill is nicknamed the ‘widowmaker’. Your lungs can rupture after twenty years down the shafts. A local source of drinkable water isn’t a given. Policemen are assaulted en masse, as happened in Camborne in 1873.

And some men made vast fortunes. Donovan tells us this is wrong, and it’s hard to disagree with such a well-written, forcefully argued book.

Highly recommended.

Many thanks for reading; follow this link for more top blogs on all things Cornwall: https://blog.feedspot.com/cornwall_blogs/