The Sinking of the Lady Victoria

Dalkeith Advertiser, 6 March 1890: "THE LOTHIAN COAL COMPANY. - The Newbattle Collieries, &c., belonging to the Marquis of Lothian, and the Whitehall, Dalhousie, and Polton Collieries, & Co.., belonging to Mr. Archibald Hood, have been acquired, and will be worked on and after Wednesday next, 12th March, the The Lothian Coal Company (Limited)."
Dalkeith Advertiser, 13 March 1890: "THE LOTHIAN COAL COMPANY (LIMITED). - The prospectus of this Company has been issued. It has been formed for the purpose of acquiring and further developing the collieries at Newbattle, carried on by the Marquis of Lothian, and Whitehill, carried on by Mr. Archibald Hood, together with the leases held by Mr. Hood of the Whitehill and Eldin, Carrington, and Polton mineral fields, the whole forming an extensive mineral field of nearly 15,000 acres. The purchase consists of the whole plant, including 700 cottages, 600 wagons, buildings, locomotives, and machinery of every description, also the extensive brick and fireclay works carried on for many years at Whitehill. The purchase price has been fixed at £200,000, and the vendors have agreed to take payment of this amount in fully paid-up Ordinary shares, being the whole present issue of these shares. There are issued to the public 12,500 5%. Cumulative Preference shares at £10 each, and these will share ratably in the annual profits with the Ordinary shares after both have received 5%. The present output is at the rate of 310,000 tons per annum, but a large increase is expected after the expenditure of £100,000 on extensions and improvement, to meet which the capital to be raised by the Preference shares will be applied. At the present rate of output the supply of coal will last 600 years. After this expenditure, the engineers, Messrs. M'Creath, Glasgow, and Geddes, Edinburgh, estimate the annual profits at £24,000, while Messrs. William Armstrong & Sons state the same at £30,000. The chairman of the board of directors is the Marquis of Lothian, and the managing director is Mr. Hood. The subscription list will close to-morrow.
There was a great demand for coal in Great Britain in the late 1880s and the price went sky-high as production failed to keep pace with the demand. Many pits throughout the country were being worked out simultaneously, their owners having failed to invest in the opening of new coal seams.
The main partners in the Lothian Coal Co. were Archibald Hood, who became managing director, and the Marquis of Lothian, who was chairman for the first ten years. Archibald Hood was a colliery entrepreneur with business interests in Wales and Scotland. He had leased the Whitehill coalfield from Robert Wardlaw Ramsay of Whitehill in 1856 and, over a number of years, added the leases of adjoining coalfields belonging to three other proprietors, the Earl of Rosebery, Robert Dundas of Arniston and the Earl of Dalhousie.
It was estimated that £100,000 would be needed to create a modern pit at Newton Grange and to build houses for additional workers. The sinking of the shaft at the new pit took four years and was completed in November 1894. It was 1,650 feet deep and was one of the deepest in Scotland. The shaft reached the Lower Coal measures giving access to vast reserves of coal, the upper coal measures being largely worked out.
The pithead workings were completed by 1895 and comprised an extensive range of new buildings with the most up-to-date machinery. Large railway sidings were built with direct access to the main Edinburgh to London railway line.
"The sinking and fitting of the Lady Victoria pit at Newbattle colliery which began in 1890, inaugurated a new era in mineral developments in the two counties (Mid and East Lothian). From every point of view the colliery was one of the best equipped in Scotland." (Andrew Cunningham, Mining in Mid and East Lothian, 1925). The Lothian Coal Company were amongst the earliest in Scotland to generate their own electricity and provide electric light underground. They also experimented with compressed air coal cutters in 1890 and electric coal cutters in 1895.
The new pit was called the Lady Victoria Colliery after Lady Victoria Scott, eldest daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch and wife of the chairman of the Lothian Coal Company, Schomberg Henry Ker, 9th Marquis of Lothian, the miners have always known it as 'the Lady Vic' or just 'the Lady'.
The opening of the Lady Vic was not, however, an altogether happy affair. Coal production elsewhere in Britain had caught up with demand, prices had dropped and wages had been substantially reduced. The daily minimum wage had fallen from 5/- (25p) in 1892 to 3/- (15p) in May 1893. It rose to 3/6 (17½p) in August, but a claim for 4/6 (22½p) a day was refused in October 1893 to the anger of the men, who decided to take action. A series of one day strikes was planned by the union, the Mid and East Miners Association.
The 700 men at the three Newbattle pits (East and West Bryans and Dixon's) took Wednesday 1st November off and the next day the first shift was locked out by the management. The lockout lasted nine weeks. The 1/- (5p) a day (which had been granted elsewhere) was offered to the men but only on condition that they worked an eleven day fortnight instead of the usual ten days. The men refused. The other Midlothian miners paid a levy of 2/- (10p) a head each week to support them and from the funds accumulated the Newbattle men got 8/- (40p) a week, plus 1/- (5p) extra for each child under thirteen. A fair number of men left Newbattle to work elsewhere. At the end of the year a compromise was reached, the 1/- (5p) rise was awarded and the men agreed to take their idle days at different times and keep a shift of men at work on alternate Saturdays.
In June 1894 the colliery owners throughout Mid and East Lothian notified the men of a reduction from 4/6 (22½p) a day to 3/6. (17½p) At a mass meeting in Dalkeith the miners voted by 3203 votes to 230 to strike for no reduction. The strike was long and bitter and there were angry and violent incidents on picket lines. After 17 weeks the men went back. They had to accept the reduction and got no guarantee that there would be no further reductions.
Early in 1895 the Lothian Coal Company reduced the pay to 3/- (15p) a day and made an eleven day fortnight compulsory. Elsewhere in Midlothian a ten day fortnight still prevailed.

Thorough research by Mike Cotterill and Colin Denovan on behalf of the Scottish Mining Museum has revealed that the minute books and account books of the Lothian Coal Company have been lost or destroyed. Such information as has been discovered about the early days of the company comes mainly from newspaper reports and other sources researched by Messrs. Cotterill and Denovan. The Dalkeith Advertiser carried reports of most of the earliest annual general meetings of the company, but not 1890 - 1895 nor 1897. Details of share ownership, summaries of current accounts and other details from 1908 onwards had to be lodged with the Board of Trade and are available for study.
The following is part of the Lothian Coal Co. Annual Report of 1895-96.
Dalkeith Advertiser, 29 October 1896: "The year has been very free from labour troubles and accidents, the only important interruptions to work having arisen from want of orders owing to the depressed state of the coal market. Since the date of last report, the output from the Lady Victoria Pit, which then was about 500 tons a day, had increased to about 800 tons a day, the quality of the coals continuing to be satisfactory. Before the tonnage from this pit could be much further increased, it would be necessary to obtain houses for the additional miners who were required to develop the output, the Company's present accommodation being fully occupied, and there being no available dwellings within convenient distance of the colliery. A building company was in process of being formed to erect workmen's houses, a sufficient number of which were to be leased by the company. The Chairman, in moving the adoption of the report, said that the coal trade during the past year had been in a very depressed condition. Many companies had suffered large losses, and some had suffered so much than they had been obliged to shut up altogether. Considering the position of the Lothian Coal Company, it was satisfactory to say that this Company had been able to show a profit on the year. The directors felt great regret that they were unable to declare a divided, but they could not do so until they had altogether wiped out the debit balance, which they hoped to do next year."
The profit that year was £8,000 and this had risen to £19,000 by 1897 - 1898, which was the Lothian Coal Company's best year up till then. The chairman stated that, "In consequence of the strike in Wales, the coal trade in Scotland had shown considerable activity, though it had not done them very much good..." A wage increase at the company's pits had meant, "additional and unavoidable expenditure of many thousand pounds." 1899-1900 was an even better year with profits of £44,500.
The company set up by the Lothian Coal Co. in 1896 to build houses at Newton Grange was the Newbattle and Whitehill Building Co. The first houses in a scheme called Dean Park were completed in 1898 at a cost of £12,000 - approximately £128 a house. A further 93 houses were finished in 1899 and 1900 as part of a large scheme named Monkswood. The population of Newton Grange and Cowden Grange doubled in ten years from 1,210 in 1891 to 2,406 in 1901.

There were a number of societies springing up in the village and some amenities had been established. A park had been made in the field on the south side of the village. There was a cricket team, a junior football team, a cycling club, whippet racing, and quoiting. The village had a district nurse (from 1889) and a new school near the Bryans (built 1893). The old colliery schools then became the Lothian Halls which were used for village meetings, concerts, displays and dances. Newton Grange had its own brass band, an annual flower show, an amateur dramatic society and a Burns Club. Other organizations in the village included the Newbattle Girls Friendly Society, the Good Templars' Lodge and the Lothian Lodge of Scottish Mechanics.
The history of licensed houses in Newbattle parish prior to the opening of Newton Grange's two pubs at the end of the nineteenth century is the subject of the next chapter.

Chapter 2 | Contents | Chapter 4