Disability in the Industrial Revolution: physical impairment in British coalmining, 1780–1880

The field of Disability History has matured into a visible and important discipline within historical research. This progression is evidenced by the establishment of Disability History Month and the publication of the Oxford Handbook of Disability History in 2018 (Rembis, Kudlick, and Nielsen 2018). Disability in the Industrial Revolution provides a compelling and significant addition to the field constituting the ninth entry from Manchester University Press’ ‘Disability History’ series. The book is organised into five thematic chapters and, utilising numerous primary materials from a range of English, Scottish and Welsh archives, offers a cross-national analysis of physical impairment in British coalmining between the years 1780 and 1880.

Disability in the Industrial Revolution offers numerous compelling arguments. One of the book’s immediate contributions, for example, is to our understanding of how industrialisation and the emergence of capitalist economies have impacted upon disabled communities. The study counters arguments that have attributed these two factors to increasing the marginalisation of disabled communities. In British coalmining between 1780 and 1880, Turner and Blackie demonstrate that disabled miners were, in fact, clearly able to still work and contribute within the industry when the opportunity was provided. This research is captivating in a historiography that can often caricature disabled populations as passive, incapacitated and reliant on welfare and charity. The book also points out that the spectre and occurrence of disability allowed miners to become active agents in fostering trade unionism and improving welfare and employment legislation and regulation across industrial Britain. The study consequently successfully challenges any prior generalised preconception that the industrial revolution could only have caused comprehensive misery and discrimination against disabled communities. The book’s fifth chapter even ‘presents evidence that industrial disputes may have presented disabled mineworkers with opportunities that some chose to exploit’ (166). That is not to say, however, that the authors are suggesting that disability did not cause widespread financial and personal difficulties for miners and their families nor that mine owners did not exploit their employees, as the book provides plenty of empirical evidence for such instances. Instead, the book’s embracement of the multifaceted and complex range of issues regarding disability and disabled communities in historical settings illustrates how it remains problematic for historians to produce a universal and generalised account.

In addition to informing historians interested in disability, the book’s broad remit will also be of immense benefit to a range of academics involved in cognate fields including public health, disability studies, political history, social history, labour history, occupational health and welfare. Published as a Disability History, the study provides an obvious foundational base on which to build further enquiry upon. On finishing the book, it is impossible not to imagine potential follow-up studies. My personal research interests, for example, made me think of the potential for a closer study of psychological trauma and mental illness as a result of industrial labour. Indeed, potential avenues to explore in the future are recognised by the authors (205).

With regards to style and readership, monographs with numerous authors can sometimes feel jarring and disconnected but, thankfully, this immensely readable co-authored piece suffers no such fate. The inclusion of maps, periodicals and paintings was also a welcome addition complementing the textual analysis with informative visual aids. Quality academic works are often sadly priced out of the hands of non-academic circles. Here, the Wellcome Trust and Manchester University Press deserve immense credit for making the book Open Access and freely available online (http://oapen.org/search?keyword=disability+in+the+industrial+revolution). With Britain’s strong coalmining heritage, this book is especially well placed to be of interest to broader non-specialist and public audiences alike.

Ultimately, Disability in the Industrial Revolution provides further evidence to expose the fallacy regarding the perceived lack of surviving sources to enable a study of disability as a historical topic. Indeed, despite the mammoth historiography dedicated to the histories of labour and the industrial revolution in Britain, disability had been hitherto overlooked. With its study of disability and British coalmining from 1780 to 1880, and its argument that ‘disability was essential to the Industrial Revolution’ (200), Turner and Blackie’s work succeeds in demonstrating both the potential and necessity to now centre disability during other critical events and periods in history. This legacy remains the book’s greatest achievement.

Michael Robinson
History Department, Liverpool University, Liverpool, UK
[email protected]