TESTIMONY OF PATIENCE KERSHAW, THE

Created on 10/12/2009
Latest update on 21/11/2023

Artist: Ian Campbell Folk Group
Author: Frank Higgins
Label: Transatlantic
Year: 1972

On Something To Sing About. Based upon the real testimony of a 17 year old girl, witnessing about working conditions in the Husker Pit in Silkstone near Barnsley, where she'd spent about all her life toiling. ("great big muscles on my legs, baldy patch upon my head"). It's more or less the verbatim transcription of her testimony before the Children's Employment Commission and probably the one that really triggered 1842's decission to ban the use of young children in mines. Same Mines & Collieries Act banned the employment of women and girls underground, where the male miners worked totally naked. Frank wrote this song in 1969 for a competition lined out by the English Folksong & Dance Society. Ian Campbell was a member of the jury.

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