©National Archives

Pit Girls, 1893 Thomas Taylor photographed these pit brow girls near Wigan in 1893 just before they started work. They are wearing work-clothes like uniforms and are posed beneath a rough wall supporting a railway embankment.

Above them the coal wagon announces who these little workers belong to - W. & J. Turner, Wigan Junction Colliery, Wigan. The photograph gives workers and wagon equal status - both have a job to do.

In an age when child labour was commonplace, these girls had their part to play in the great enterprise of coal getting and profit making.