In September 1803, in preparation for the annual signing of the bonds, the miners at Lord Delaval's Hartley Colliery on Tyneside petitioned their viewer for an increase in piece-work rates. At first, the Delaval agent, Paul Forster, hoped to resist the miners' demands, but when he read to them the terms of their bond “the general cry was we must have all that is in the petition.” In order to secure the necessary complement of hewers to work the colliery, he soon proposed a very modest list of piece-rate increases that, to his dismay, was rejected by all but two miners. In the meantime, three men and a boy had left the colliery and were bound to another. Into the second week of October, only one more hewer had agreed to the rates offered by Forster. The vast majority of the men continued to hold out, according to Forster, “supposing that there would be a great scarcity of men as realy [sic] is the case.”

On 9 October, the workings of the regional labor market for hewers began to threaten the future operation of the Delaval colliery. On that day, seven men and two boys were hired away from Delaval to work elsewhere.