The Industrial Revolution produced injury, illness and disablement on a large scale and nowhere was this more visible than in coalmining. Disability in the Industrial Revolution sheds new light on the human cost of industrialisation by examining the lives and experiences of those disabled in an industry that was vital to Britain's economic growth. Although it is commonly assumed that industrialisation led to increasing marginalisation of people with impairments from the workforce, disabled mineworkers were expected to return to work wherever possible, and new medical services developed to assist in this endeavour. This book explores the working lives of disabled miners and analyses the medical, welfare and community responses to disablement in the coalfields. It shows how disability affected industrial relations and shaped the class identity of mineworkers. The book will appeal to students and academics interested in disability, occupational health and social history.

Reviews

'This is an interesting and ambitious book that should appeal to a wide range of readers . The authors pose important questions about disability history and arrive at several surprisingly controversial conclusions.'
Pamela L. Dale, University of Exeter, H-Net October 2018

'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, Liverpool University, Disability and Society Review, January 2019

'[...] It has one of the few sustained discussions of miners as patients, not agents (pace the authors, labour historians have discussed miners as agents for well over a century). It is to be congratulated on noticing the part that religion paid in the experience of suffering. It has an illuminating discussion of the impact of disablement on miners' masculinity. It has accumulated an impressive collection of quantitative and qualitative sources and has made novel uses of the latter. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it will encourage labour historians to re-engage with the history of the body.'
Labour History Review

'the book's great strength lies in the fact that it not only adds significantly to existing understandings of the period but also points to further avenues for scholarly exploration. [...]This volume thus forms an important resource for scholars in the field of nineteenth-century British history in developing new practices that do not simply include but explicitly focus on the disabled as important historical actors in this period.'
Victorian Studies

Introduction
1. Disability and work in the coal economy
2. Medicine and the miner's body
3. Disability and welfare
4. Disability, family and community
5. The industrial politics of disablement
Conclusion
Select bibliography
Index

Authors

David M. Turner is Professor of History at Swansea University

Daniel Blackie is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the History of Science and Ideas at the University of Oulu, Finland