Folklore: Miner's water bottle

Subject: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 20 May 15 - 06:27 AM

This is definitely a non-music thread. When I was a lad in South Yorkshire there were many mining villages and communities. Many of my family worked in the pits. I recall miners carrying a metal 'snap tin' to take their sandwiches down to the coal face. This was in the shape of a slice of bread, flat at one end and rounded at the other. Just the right shape for your sarnie. They also carried a water bottle, holding about four pints I believe, to quench their thirst in the hot conditions underground. This was circular with a small spout and a screw cap and was known as a 'Dudley'. I've looked on the internet but can find no explanation for this name, so I thought I'd refer to the fountain of all wisdom and knowledge, Mudcat!!!
Does anyone out there in Mudcat land have an answer for me as to the probable origin of the name? I'd be most grateful.
Regards and thanks in advance.

Andy

Subject: RE: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,#
Date: 20 May 15 - 07:34 AM

http://www.healeyhero.co.uk/rescue/pits/Teversal/Teversal-A8.html

There's some info about the Dudley at the bottom of the page that opens. There's a picture of it, too. Doesn't say where the name is from.

Subject: RE: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,#
Date: 20 May 15 - 07:55 AM

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/bw0MsbpbSI-YkG1xFkESCA

Picture of the snap tin there with a bit of info.


Just a flat guess, but maybe the dudley, the name used by miners to refer to the water container, was made in Dudley or by a company named Dudley. I'll go 'dig' around that area and will post any info if and when.

Subject: RE: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 20 May 15 - 08:52 AM

Thanks for the info Guest#. Its a start, and I'll continue searching myself. Your theory about these things being made in Dudley, or by a company called Dudley looks logical. Might pursue that one first.

Andy

Subject: RE: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,#
Date: 20 May 15 - 09:55 AM

Andy, I just wrote to someone at a UK miners' museum who may be able to point us in the right direction. My grandfather was a coal miner in the late 1800s early 1900s and so the subject is of great interest to me. Thank you for getting this thread started.

Subject: RE: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,#
Date: 20 May 15 - 10:00 AM

PS While this isn't a music thread, it surely qualifies as a folklore thread, so imo it deserves to be above the line.

Subject: RE: Miner's water bottle
From: Long Firm Freddie
Date: 20 May 15 - 12:26 PM

Andy, you might like to contact Dr Natalie Braber, who has been conducting research into miner's language; the article linked to gives her email address and mentions, amongst other things, a Dudley as being a water bottle: Pit Talk

LFF

Subject: RE: Miner's water bottle
From: r.padgett
Date: 20 May 15 - 01:22 PM

Found this :

One of the miners is taking a drink from his Dudley, a water bottle with a capacity of three pints, enough to last a shift. Daykin (1886-1939), a miner himself, was killed in a mining accident.

Ray

Subject: RE: Miner's water bottle
From: r.padgett
Date: 20 May 15 - 01:27 PM

and this:

As there were no canteen facilities underground miners ate their "snap" near to where they were working.

Miners carried food in a metal snap tin attached to their belt. This tin was shaped like a slice of bread so it was just the right size for sandwiches; it had rounded corners and was strong enough to take bumps and knocks, although its main purpose was to protect the miner's food from vermin.

A miner's diet usually consisted of bread and dripping (mucky fat) or bread and jam. Other types of food were either too expensive or went off quickly in the hot conditions underground.


Snap is Bait in the North East of England, no idea why called Dudley [the water bottle]

Subject: RE: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,#
Date: 20 May 15 - 04:02 PM

"you might like to contact Dr Natalie Braber"

That's who I wrote to, LFF.

Subject: RE: Miner's water bottle
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 May 15 - 04:35 PM

Reminds me of "Sully's Pail," written by Dick Gibbons.

I met Dick Gibbons when I was going to the University of Washington back in the 1950s (when dinosaurs roamed the earth). Dick and a friend took off to bum around the country and wound up doing some coal mining in Idaho where one of his co-workers underground told him a story—and Dick, an aspiring poet, wrote the story into a poem. Dick was not much of a singer, but he cobbled together a functional tune, and a song, "Sully's Pail," was born.

Dick is an avid listener to folk songs and he and his wife, Gela (Angela), often host "hoots" in their home. It was at one of these many years ago that he trotted out "Sully's Pail." A couple of local singers learned it, (e.g. Bob [Deckman] Nelson, among others) and a few people added to their repertoires.

I have no idea how or where Tom Paxton heard it. After he'd been doing it awhile, he had a gig in Seattle, where he and Dick met (and learned that the name was "Gibbons," not "Giddons"). Paxton made it a point to see that Dick got proper credit (and royalties) for the song.

More pertinent poop HERE, and HERE.

Dick has written a whole bunch of stuff, including a couple of novels, as yet unpublished (one spy novel about a plot to blow up the World Trade Center—and then he got pre-empted by Reality [9/11])!! He's a very good writer, both prose and poetry, and he's still cranking it out.

We're both getting kinda creaky around the edges, but we still get together from time to time.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 22 May 15 - 04:45 AM

Thanks to all who have made any contribution so far. I'm sure we'll get the answer in due course. For my own part, I have located a company by the name of Dudley, actually IN Dudley, near the Black Country Museum. I shall be contacting them to see if they can throw any light on the matter. Will let all know any results.
Thanks again

Andy

Subject: RE: Miner's water bottle
From: r.padgett
Date: 22 May 15 - 01:55 PM

Thanks Andy hope the Dudley connection can be found, my father was a

miner in Barnsley Sth Yorks btw and had snap tin and Dudley and knee

pads made of pit belting ~ have you tried kneeling for any amount of time??

Pit belting came in for lots of uses and chewing tabacco was like

spinach (or not!), but certainly was used at the pit face ~ chewing only quite obviously as smoking was a total NO NO!! methane gas!!

and clogs and old clothes for working ~ vests etc


Ray

Subject: RE: Miner's water bottle
From: Gurney
Date: 22 May 15 - 06:04 PM

There was a reason that the drink bottle had a narrow neck, as mentioned right at the beginning.
If a miner subbed a mate to a drink of water, the drinker poured the stream of water into his mouth without touching his lips to the bottle, and swallowed without closing his mouth, which takes some learning.
When I was a miner as a lad, I was a Jig Runner, controlling a haulage, and the Motorman carried an extra-large bottle as an act of charity. The Rippers or coalface workers coming off shift were sometimes dehydrated and would beg or even steal water wherever they could.

The undermanager at my pit was Welsh, and he called snap 'snapping.'

I never heard the bottle called a Dudley, or anything but a bottle. Dudley Town is about 20 miles from that pit.
Miners at that time carried a pocket-watch in a tobacco tin, packed with pads of cotton. The dust ruined a wrist-watch in a very short time.

Subject: RE: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,David Nuttall , Wakefield
Date: 23 May 15 - 09:03 AM

My father, Sam, was a coal miner at South Kirkby Colliery in South Yorkshire in the forties, fifties and sixties . He ,too, carried his sandwiches in his 'snap tin' and his water in his circular metal Dudley . Both were kept attached to his belt.I do not know the origin of the word 'dudley'. He wore shorts , a vest and the knee pads made from belting which Ray mentioned earlier.He chewed his tobacco and it was foul- smelling and pungent. He had several accidents in the pit when cutting coal to include broken legs, damaged cartilages due to kneeling and wounds caused by falling stone. The wounds inevitably turned a blue colour on his arms ,legs and back due to the coal dust infecting them. All this culminated in having his knee cap removed and walking with a stick. He always made a fuss of the pit ponies each of which he befriended and fed....together with the many mice which were fed from the remains of the 'snap tin '. He was paid a little extra money each shift for working in a seam whilst kneeling in water....called WATTER MONEY ! My brother and I were taken as children by him to the coal face one Sunday afternoon !! He wanted to deter us from even contemplating working in the pit....AND IT WORKED !! The vocabulary associated with the pit ponies is also rich, specialised and varied....worth investigation. I have written many poems /songs about my father and his work in the mines ...a very hard existence.

DAVID

Subject: RE: Miner's water bottle
From: Gurney
Date: 24 May 15 - 12:53 AM

I gave bad information above. Coalface workers there were called Strippers (yes, I know) or Getters. The men who reworked the tunnels were Rippers.

What many people don't realise is that the tunnels in deep underground coal mines don't stay open, but close in in all directions. What starts out as a 8'x 8' tunnel supported by formed arch RSJs/I-Beams becomes a tiny hole full of twisted girders. The Rippers re-cut the tunnel, removing the steelwork and sending it to the pit bank, where blacksmiths straighten it out for re-use.
The Rippers are supplied with the so-called 'rings' in some areas by teams of lads who sledge the girders up the Jig (haulage) or tunnel to them. Hence Jig-runners and Ring-draggers. Been there, done that.

No-one would try to reopen a closed deep coalmine. There isn't a mine down there any longer. You'd have to start from scratch.

If the bottles David descibes above are Dudleys, then our bottles weren't. Ours were enamelled, rectangular with a kidney-shaped cross-section. And a narrow neck with a cork.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: r.padgett
Date: 24 May 15 - 04:26 AM

The plot thickens

Ray

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: Thompson
Date: 24 May 15 - 04:28 PM

Ha, thought you'd foxed me, Mudcat gremlin; well, I'd copied my post in case it failed, and here it is pasted in again:

On this "RW Richardson mining legend" page if you click on the "memorabilia" link, one of the photos includes a Dudley water flask.
Has anyone thought of asking the miners' union for a contact with an archivist who might throw some light on this question?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 25 May 15 - 12:29 PM

Once again, thanks to all contributors. As Ray Padgett says 'the plot thickens'. I've been otherwise engaged over the last few days and unable to follow this subject up but have a day or two off work and hope to make further investigations. I shall contact the company called Dudley (at Dudley in the Black country) and other possible sources that you good people have indicated. Hopefully I, (or we) may be able to find an answer and I shall be able to sleep easy in my bed at night afterwards.

Regards

Andy

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,#
Date: 25 May 15 - 12:31 PM

Good to hear from you, Andy. My email has not been answered as yet, but it hasn't been returned either, and that's a good sign. Here's hoping.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: r.padgett
Date: 25 May 15 - 01:51 PM

I emailed Nat Mining Museum at Netherton Wakefield yesterday. awaiting any reply

Ray

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 27 May 15 - 04:52 AM

Thanks for all the interest and assistance folks. We shall get there in the end. I have e-mailed Natalie Braber as suggested by LFF but no reply yet. Have also e-mailed the company Arthur Dudley in the Black country. Again, no response yet. However I'll hang on in hope and expectation.
This very day, I have decided to have an excursion to the National Mining Museum near Wakefield. Its something I have been meaning to do for ages but never got round to. I may be able to glean some information from them, maybe before they reply to Ray Padgett.
Cheers folks

Andy

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 29 May 15 - 05:19 AM

Well, as mentioned in the above post, I visited the mining museum near Wakefield a couple of days ago. It was well worth the trip, an enjoyable and informative experience and I shall certainly repeat the exercise at some future time.
I asked two people about the term 'Dudley'. The first was an ex-miner who was working as a volunteer assisting on the paddy train taking visitors around the site. He told me that he and his colleagues referred to a 'Dudley-bottle' when speaking of the article in question. He also said that he could only assume that the name came about because it was made in Dudley (the town) or that it was manufactured by a company called Dudley.Further questions to a lady on the information desk were met with the same response. No-one could give me a positive answer as to the actual source of the name. There were examples of these water bottles around the museum but none bore a makers name.
So, despite a good day out, I got no closer to finding the origin of the name. I shall further await a response from Natalie Braber and the Dudley manufacturing company and continue to delve.
Let you know anything in due course.

Regards and thanks

Andy

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: r.padgett
Date: 29 May 15 - 10:04 AM

Certainly recommend anyone interested in mining to visit and go down the mine to see the conditions and a conducted tour is included!

some years since I went down btw!

Ray

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,dbt
Date: 30 May 15 - 03:17 AM

Not much to do with the question ........... but there is mention of a Dudley in there somewhere.
Remember any of this Ray?
Reared in Barnsley.


Rusty and battered old snap tin

Corduroy trousers wearing thin

Sparking clogs

Bull terrier dogs

Whitsuntide clothes, Sunday school walks

Pea shooters made from Hogweed stalks

Copper boilers and peggy tubs

Hide and seek in the vicarage shrubs

Minty Beechnut chewing gum

Dainty toffee tin as a drum

Coconut matting and hand pegged rugs

Little old ladies fetching beer in jugs

Pawn-broker's shop

Home made ginger pop

Tin baths hanging on a nail outside

Curtains closed when someone died

Hobnailed boots

Liquorice roots

Capstan cigs for fuller strength

Bonfire sparkler at full arms length

Scraping segs

Gipsy pegs

Swooshing sound of tipped home coal

Old people talking of the Dole

Black gas meter at the cellar head

Grandma's supper, cheese and bread

Dad's Sunday night's Oxford bags

His Monday morning old pit rags

Spic and Span hidden in dad's sock drawer

Two layers of lino on the cold stone floor

The Coronation Union Jack

Cowboys and Indians on the stack

Dolly blues

Bobbies in twos

Tweed flat caps

Narrow ginnel gaps

Greedy moths and camphor balls

Big black pinnies and crocheted shawls

Camphorated oil rubbed on my chest

Sticky rubber buttons on my vest

Conveyor belt sledging down the stack

Six old pipes in grandad's rack

Cigarette cards

Black fire guards

Grandma's shoes with buttons on

Back door left open, budgie gone

Children's matinee at the flicks

Weekend chore of chopping sticks

Lentil soup made with two penarth of bones

Next door family name of Jones

Philip's rubber stick on soles

Woollen socks with compulsory holes

Big brass fenders

Nasty money lenders

Clatter of clogs on pavement flags

Tatters collecting bones and rags

Yorkshire pudding

Cellars flooding

Dammed up streams for swimming pools

Hard backed chairs and three legged stools

Playing Hopscotch in the street

Sherbet dips and humbug sweets

Remembering mam's Coop divi number

Vinegar soaked onions and sliced cucumber

Old tin Dudleys

Penny Jubblys

Cobbled road and ginnel entry

Backs unmade for half a century

Wet through weight of Duffel coats

Granddad making fishing floats

Homemade jam

Special Sunday ham

Schoolyard games and snowball fights

Roaring fires on winter nights

TB jelly test and codliver oil

Barnsley dooers, booits, coit and coil

Dad coming home with panda-eyes

Baby sisters non stop cries

Age of four saw my first banana

Casablanca Sam playing a black "piarna"

Woodbine cigs

Syrup of figs

Terraced rows from here to ever

A cousin at grammar school, oh so clever

Green gas lampposts to play around

Seaside days in "Lost and Found"

Potties allies and shiny mabs

Fishing off the pier for greedy crabs

Carbolic soap

Just living in hope !

Monday morning steam, soap and bleach

Drying sheets as far as the eye could reach

Party sandwiches always potted meat

Jelly trifle a special treat

Checking seams were straight for my mam

My sister in MY Silver Cross pram

Sunday tea

Dad's beet-knee

Treacle sandwiches with margarine

Grandma's picture of the Queen

Wooden pens with scratchy nibs

Sooted chimney cleaning squibs

Looming headgear, whirring wheels

Clackaty click of Segs in heels

Early morning Knockers up

My very own terrier pup

Penny ducks

Coal leader's trucks

Colliery fire fighting competitions

Catapult armed hunting expeditions

Short back and sides

Magic lantern slides

White five pound notes as big as sheets

Butcher's van with flies and meat

Warm creamy milk

Collier's scarves made of silk

Pit buzzer blasting in the morning

All bikes had bells for pedestrian warning

Playing cricket with a home made bat

Panic in the street, Gladys has seen a rat

Pit Lane puddles with blackened crust

September winds and swirling dust

Fennings Little Healers and Beecham's Pills

Donkey stoned steps and window sills

Fish and chips

Pit club trips

Broken biscuits at half price

Beetle Drive with real bone dice

Cheating conkers pickled and baked

New potatoes boiled when scraped

Kettle always on the boil

Granddad using words like "toil"

Sacred allotments with pigeons and banties

Every kid had a hundred aunties

Eagle comic with Dan that dared

Glass bowl alien made me scared

A single Oxo from the corner shop

Sat on a board in the barbers for a crop

Cig machines with packets of two

Tea in brown teapots left to brew

Always the acrid smell of burning wood

The sloosh of feet in thick black mud

Green and black old Morris eight

Dad's overloaded dinner plate

Money saving hobbing foot

Unexpected fall of soot

First sliced bread at the Coop shop

Bristly yard brush and raggy mop

Coal cellar lids

Street skipping kids

Grandad's pigtail bacca with extra jockey

World's best boxer, the proper Rocky

Roughened hands holding tight to mine

Thee and Thar, theirn and thine

Canaries and linnets in wooden cages

Frequent strikes for better wages

Corned beef hash

Nettle rash

Proper pork sausages made with meat

Indian tepee with mam's clean sheet

Two ounces of ham for five of us

Penny fare to Barnsley on a bus

Fog and smog most winter days

Great granddad still having Victorian ways

Salt and pepper on dripping cakes

Special wash with Lux soap flakes

Marching miners' demonstration

Standing frozen in a dark bus station

Scrumping apples

Choice of chapels

Burning slag heaps at every pit

Gas mantles ever so gently lit

Waistcoat pockets with droopy chains

The special smell of old steam trains

Dad's pit socks like curly board

Dustbin lid and wooden sword

Saggy knitted swimming trunks

Laid in bed wakened by some noisy drunks

Albert Hurst's black pudding sarnie

Street entertainment with Sally's Army

Streets named Charity, Faith and Hope

Lifebuoy, Fairy and Sunlight soap

Knocking on doors and running off

Frightened by grandad's gasping cough

Inch thick toast on bell-wire fork

Sent outside whilst Mam and Aunty Mary talk

Pink pig brawn in basin shapes

Daily pit stories of narrow escapes

Tanners, bobs and half a dollars

Education missed by clever scholars

Snow flakes falling white but landing grey

Po-gun and draughts for Christmas day

Pigeon lofts in black and white

Sticks and paper a dad made kite

A ton of home coal delivered in twenty lumps

Chicken-pox, scarlet fever, lurgy as well as mumps

Myxomatosis and blinded rabbits

Picking your nose and other habits

Gabardine macs and Wellington boots

Searching ponds for frogs and newts

Bull roar fires up cast iron pipes

Knitted tank tops with coloured stripes

His Master's Voice and Josef Locke

Aunt Mary's noisy antique clock

Maypole deliveries on a bike

Stalking the canal for small Jack pike

A Barnsley lad another Tyke !!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 30 May 15 - 05:15 AM

Just for the record I think "Reared in Barnsley", the poem above, is from Daz Beattie.
.link to some other poems

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 30 May 15 - 05:55 AM

What a grand poem ! Thank you so much for posting it.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: Thompson
Date: 30 May 15 - 05:57 AM

You might try emailing Dr Matthew Parkes of the National Museum of Ireland, whose address is at the foot of this page announcing a seminar of the Mining Heritage Trust http://www.learnaboutarchives.ie/index.php/events/75-qholding-on-to-your-historyq-mhti-archives-day
If Dr Parkes can't help you, he may send you to someone who can.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: Thompson
Date: 30 May 15 - 05:59 AM

(All this reminds me of a long dispute on a discussion on The Atlantic's site, where a picture had been published of an Oklahoma farmer's cottage during the Depression. The dispute was about the purpose of a hooded cape with goggles set in. Nobody could work out what it was for. Some time afterwards, I read that these were commonly worn when going outdoors so you wouldn't be blinded by the dust. Forgotten artefacts…)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: r.padgett
Date: 30 May 15 - 09:33 AM

Yep dbt remember much of the thread you have posted above!!

Miners' home coal delivery was an event and dad was usually at work when it came so we all got the coal in shovelling it down the hole to the coal cellar, some times the coal cobs (dunt think this is a Yorkshire word ~ big lumps!) had to be broken to get smaller pieces down!

Coal fires and reeking smoke and fire guards, set pots and gas geezers, outside toilets and cellars of course

Getting the fire going by "drawing" with the Barnsley Chronicle and small shovel to make a draught and producing flame in the sticks etc!

Ray

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 31 May 15 - 07:04 AM

Yes, thanks for posting the poem dbt. Wonderful! In the near future I shall recite it (read it) at our folk club and I'm sure it will bring back many fond (or otherwise!) memories to a lot of our members. Many, many, of the things mentioned therein strike a chord with me, having spent my childhood in the South Yorkshire coalfields area. Meanwhile, the search for the elusive 'Dudley' name carries on.
Regards to all

Andy

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,dbt
Date: 31 May 15 - 08:43 AM

Andy would I be correct in thinking that your folk club might be at Kiveton Park, if so, would there be quite a few ex-miners in the audience? I have a another similar rambling list involving coal mining memories and terminology.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,David Nuttall Wakefield
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 05:21 AM

The poem /posting from dbt says it all.......bringing back so many memories . Thank you ! I think the National Mining Museum may well welcome a copy as it reflects so many aspects of the mining life and community which should not be forgotten .I have sent it to my brother and sisters who will also appreciate it from that era when we grew up in South Kirkby and Hemsworth . Thanks again !!

David

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,David Nuttall , Wakefield
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 05:45 AM

I neglected to mention....for dbt and Andy...you would both be very welcome to come along to the mixed songs, tunes, poems etc which I help to run in Wakefield. We would love to hear your poems etc. Please enter WAKEFIELD FOLK CLUB in to MUDCAT for more details. Hope you can come along...the next session is on 7th June.

David

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 06:50 AM

dbt, yes you are correct about Kiveton Park Folk club. There are not many miners left around here these days, like a lot of places and none visits the club now. However I was at a birthday bash yesterday and one of our ex-members told me, as many have over the last 2 weeks or so, that he recognises and has used the term but can't give me it's origin. However,Natalie Braber, who was suggested by LFF has replied to my mail. Although she cannot give a positive answer at the moment, she is very interested and will expand the search from her end.
So maybe the net tightens on the elusive Dudley?

Also thanks to Dave Nutall for info on the Wakefield Folk Club sessions. Can't get along to the next event but will bear in mind for the future

Regards to all

Andy

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,r.padgett
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 10:01 AM

Many thanks for your enquiry, I'm sorry for the delay in contacting you but I was away last week. It seems most likely that the Dudley water bottle got its name because the company which made them, called Acme, was based in Dudley. The company also made the metal lunch tins, known in Yorkshire as snap tins.
I've included an image of one of the bottles in our collection showing the makers name

I'm sorry that I can't give you a definitive answer but I hope this helps.

With best wishes
Anne Bradley
Curator (Social & Oral History)
National Coal Mining Museum for England
Caphouse Colliery
Overton
Wakefield
West Yorkshire WF4 4RH
Tel : [phone]
Fax [phone]

Ray

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,r.padgett
Date: 01 Jun 15 - 10:32 AM

Posted to my fb page as well unable to post the image ~ looks as though it was/is metallic?

Ray

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 02 Jun 15 - 10:37 AM

Refresh

Ray

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: Dennis the Elder
Date: 02 Jun 15 - 11:17 AM

Probably my Granddad Dave that patched your Dad up on the Face, before he went to hospital, if it was needed.
They then would both go back to their and our homes in Northfields Grove.
Andy, Wakefield Folk Club is certainly worth a visit or two, some excellent and varied singers and musicians.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 02 Jun 15 - 02:54 PM

Made for some interesting googling. You've doubtless seen these but just for the record ... links to googled bottle / Dudley(/W Mids) / metal spinning :
http://www.quarrybankhistory.org/Contents/Quarry%20Bank/People/JOHN%20STEVENS.htm "... "   "...Dudley"
http://www.historywebsite.co.uk/Museum/metalware/metalwarehall.htm
http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Midland_Metal_Spinning_Co
http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/National_Pressure_Cooker_Co
http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Acme_Tin_Stamping_Co
http://www.leemarkspinnings.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2&Itemid=3
http://www.ukmetalspinning.co.uk/about
http://www.whhill.co.uk/aboutus.htm
http://www.midlandholloware.co.uk
www.historywebsite.co.uk/Museum/metalware/general/stroud.htm
http://www.historywebsite.co.uk/Museum/metalware/fearncombe/fearncombe01.htm

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 04 Jun 15 - 12:31 PM

I will try to folow up the Acme company in the west midlands, as suggested to Ray Padgett by Ann Bradley, Curator at the Coal Mining Museum, Wakefield and see if this outfit still exists and can tell me anything relevant.
Meanwhile, I also have had a reply from Jessica Lambert, Assistant Curator (Collections) at the Black Country Museum in Dudley, West Midlands. She has consulted their mining history expert who has said that bottles of this type were made by the firm E.C. Theedam Ltd, ironmongers and colliery furnishers who were (and maybe still are), based in Dudley. She has supplied me with a couple of links to a bit of history about them.
Her conclusion is that the water bottles most likely got the name 'Dudley' because the manufacturers were based in the area and maybe that is as far as we can go.

However, I shall continue my investigations into Acme and E.C. Theedam in the hope that someone will be able to tell me that their company was the manufacturer. Any conclusive results will be posted later.
Once again regards and thanks.

Andy

Subject: RE: Folklore: Miner's water bottle
From: Dennis the Elder
Date: 04 Jun 15 - 02:05 PM

is it the Same Acme that made the football referees whistles?