In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mining, inshore fishing and agricultural labouring communities often figured in the national consciousness, people drawn by the drama and danger faced by miners and fishermen and by the picturesque qualities of all three groups. The representations of these groups were highly ambivalent. some were positive. in the case of mining and fishing communities, we frequently read expressions of admiration for the bravery of miners and fishermen and sympathy for their losses in times of tragedy. Agricultural labourers, often called hinds, profited from the romanticisation of the countryside that had begun in the eighteenth century in, for example, the paintings of John constable or in their role as ‘quaint carriers of english folklore’.

The images of the women of these communities, frequently found in literature and art, were mostly sympathetic and often dramatic. in Germinal by Émile Zola, we read of women huddled at the pit head waiting for news of the men and boys trapped below ground in the flooded pit. This reminds us of the horrendous Hartley pit disaster of 1862 in northumberland in which 262 men and boys from one village were entombed. When found, the bodies of the boys were clinging to their dead fathers, who had left hurried notes pinned to the bodies of their sons. this event garnered much sympathy, as did the tragedies which befell the fishing communities.