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Home life

The Cornish family in the past was distinctive because there was a relatively equal division of labour between men and women.

This practice went well into the nineteenth century. Boys (as young as eight years old) worked underground with the older men in the family. From the late eighteenth century onwards, it was common practice to employ girls and women in the mines as surface workers which developed their sense of independence.

 

Photograph reproduced with the kind permission of Peter Trembath held by the Geevor Archive