A breaker boy was a coal-mining worker in the United States[1] and United Kingdom[2] whose job was to separate impurities from coal by hand in a coal breaker.
Though boys were primarily children, elderly coal miners who could no longer work in the mines because of age, disease, or accident were sometimes employed as breaker boys.[3] The use of breaker boys began in the mid-1860s.[4][5] Although public disapproval of the employment of children as breaker boys existed by the mid-1880s, the practice did not end until the early 1920s.[1][6]
- ^ a b Hindman, Hugh D. Child Labor: An American History. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2002. ISBN 0-7656-0936-3
- ^ "Children in Mines". National Museum Wales. Retrieved 2022-04-05.
- ^ This gave rise to a saying among coal miners: "Once an adult, twice a boy." See: Miller, Donald L. and Sharpless, Richard E. The Kingdom of Coal: Work, Enterprise, and Ethnic Communities in the Mine Fields. State College, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8122-7991-3; McDowell, John. "The Life of a Coal Miner." In The World's Work...: A History of Our Time. Vol. 4. Walter Hines Page and Arthur Wilson Page, eds. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1902; Richards, John Stuart. Early Coal Mining in the Anthracite Region. Mount Pleasant, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2002. ISBN 0-7385-0978-7
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