Janine Wiedel: ‘In the industries I covered, the working hours were long and physically exhausting but there was always time for leisure activities. A time for meeting up with friends and work colleagues and a time to relax and forget the day’s hard work’‘Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter was Britain’s major centre for the manufacture of gold and silver products, retaining many traces of its past.
The Vulcan of the book’s title was the son of Juno and Jupiter: god of fire and metal working. Wiedel says: ‘Items to be gilded were plunged into a steaming hot solution. Florence retained the secret formula for her “magic brew”.
‘The journey to the depths of the pit face was several miles or more, the passage usually made on foot, often bent double with only the narrow beam of a headlamp to guide you. At the coalface was a cutting machine.
‘George worked at Littleton for 20 years as an electrician and left reluctantly in 1992, shortly before the mine closed, leaving the large workforce with little employment in the area. Most of the younger people went on to other jobs; many of the older ones never worked again.
‘Salters Lane Footrill was one of the few remaining “independent” mines. It was run by nine men and still worked almost entirely by hand. It took many weeks to persuade the men to take me down. I was handed a hard hat and headlamp and on the second day was allowed to take my camera and tripod but no other lighting.