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'A BLESSING FOR THE MINER'S WIFE': THE CAMPAIGN FOR PITHEAD BATHS IN THE SOUTH WALES COALFIELD, 1908-1950 Neil Evans and Dot Jones1 In the bar of the Fritz Erler Akademie at Freudenstadt in June 1993 John Williams was explaining the nature of the south Wales coalfield at the turn of the century to a cross section of the multinational audience which Chris Harvie assembles for his conferences on European regionalism. He was emphasising that while women were formally excluded from work in the pits they were essential to the functioning of the industry because of all the household labour preparation of meals, baths and the washing of clothes which they provided. To underline his point he remarked that there were then no pithead baths. This is a perspective which Will Paynter has also supplied. Looking back to his youth he observed: 'Miners' wives in those days were housewives only and indeed in the prevailing conditions it was a full time job. [.] Pithead baths and canteens have perhaps been more of a boon for the miner's wife than for the miner.'2 Both correctly locate the issue as one which was of great concern to many women in the coalfield in the first part of the century and for which they campaigned vigorously. Two people who worked closely with John on the Llafur committee, found it a natural choice of subject to mark his retirement. He is, of course, one of the foremost historians of the coalfield and he also ensured that the recent upsurge in women's history in Wales was placed on a firm statistical base at least as far as the nineteenth century is concerned.3 The issue of pithead baths helps focus one of the emerging concerns of social history: the role of women in welfare movements. Recent work on various western countries has pointed out both the co-incidence and the interconnec- tion of the rise of women's political movements and the emergence of the welfare state.4 The connection was explicitly made in south Wales at the end of the First World War. Arguing in favour of women's increased participation in politics, the socialist newspaper Llais Llafur remarked: 'It is generally conceded that, especially in view of the imminent measures of social legisla- tion, it is eminently desirable that there should be a number of women on our District Councils.'5 In mining areas much welfare work was undertaken under the auspices of the Miners' Welfare Fund established in 1921 and was outside the remit of what is usually considered to be the welfare state. It was, however, a closely related concern and one with which women were closely involved from the beginning. Indeed the first reference we have found to pithead baths concerns the provision of baths for women. This was in 1863 and was, as far as we know, an isolated example. What placed the issue on the agenda in the first decade of the twentieth century was the provision of baths in continental Europe. As