General Chat

Hiya,
I was watching the latest 'who do you think you are?' and Kate humble thought one occupation entry read 'coal hewer' and was corrected.it said viewer.
I have exactly the same thing in my tree. An occupation that looks like hewer. Am I Reading it right or does it actually say viewer. The handwrighting looked very similar
*confused*

Eccles:-)

Annie is right Erica,hewer in later years became miner although hewer is still the man that actually cuts the coal,miners can be anyone working underground in a mine. Fred

When the correction was made to Kate Humble about Hewer and Viewer, both are correct, the hewer mined the coal, the Viewer was the supervisor or Mine Manager.

So it always a good idea to check the writing, you might have the manager , and not the miner

George

The term "Hewer" was introduced specifically for the 1901 Census. It was supposed to be used for coal miners working underground who were responsible for cutting the coal out of the seams.

I have come across many instances on the 1901 census where the term was not used by the enumerator but there was a correction made by the enumerators overseer.

All of this was came about because the government were trying to compile statistics from the census, and to do this had to introduce some form of standardisation..