Belgian mine workers around 1900

37 comments
  1. If it is a mine in charleroi, my great-grandfather and his brothers could very probably be in this pic. I remember my grandfather describing such things and how it pushed him to leave that city.

  2. I see this picture every 2 weeks.

    Nothing wrong with that, there’s a constant influx of new people to this site. But it’s funny.

  3. Ah yes when we were enjoying the spoils of Congo.
    (I despise L2 with a passion, but one should not forget that normal people were not privileged)

  4. Alot to be grateful for regarding our current living standards, we are a blessed generation thanks to the contributions and sacrifices of the previous generations. I wonder if there is a national monument erected somewhere in Belgium for these miners?

  5. Not surprising at all, Belgians had a tendency to exploit people horrificly around those times (Belgian Congo)

  6. Those women’s job was to poke the miners with some pole or rake, so nothing sticks out of the cage?
    (Yeah I know they were also likely waiting there for filled up carts to emerge. But it must’ve been fuckin’ cold there most of the year, so not much of a win.)

  7. And this is why eventually locals stopped working the mines and even chose poverty and homelessness over mine work. Which caused the Belgian and Italian government to set up a migration scheme for mine work.

  8. We’re actually doing a play about the belgian mines, more specifically about the italian immigration but still I enjoy to see this here ^^

  9. I’d say there’s about 1700 in this picture, but 1900 is not a bad guess. Let’s just agree there’s a lot of people stuffed in a small space.

  10. I work in security systems. We have a large nursing house in Quaregnon as client, in the middle of the slag heaps.

    During a visit on site, I was surprised to enter a large technical room with the same temperature as outside, a huge grid on the wall and another 3m diameter grid on the ground. Quite unusual.

    The grid on the ground is called « le bouchon » (the cork) and its a 3x3m steel meshed tube anchored on the top of the former main mine shaft which is… around 800m deep.

    The external grid/vent is an air intake in case of a collapse deep inside the mine so that the external is sucked inside instead of the building…

    Quite amazing the amount of people living above a giant Swiss cheese that just ask to collapse!

    « They dug too far »

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