Published at 11:12, Thursday, 02 August 2012

UP until the turn of this century few knew, or cared, about the role played in the local coal industry by those doughty women known as screen lasses. People like Annie Ferguson helped address that situation.

In 2004, an oral history workshop attracted a handful of local women prepared to step forward and tell their long-forgotten stories of hardship and hard work, of sisterhood and stigma. To work on the screens was not considered a respectable way to earn a living – such women were regarded as rough and sometimes ostracised by society.

Annie could not have been more of a lady. She and her like are the end of a dying breed we will not know again, imbued with a strength of spirit to meet all of life’s adversities drawn from the steely determination and physical effort required just to do the job and put food on the table.

Annie, who died on Thursday, thought herself a fairly ordinary person. She wasn’t well travelled, took no part in public life – she kept a clean house, cared for her family and did her own garden. Others, though, might consider her quite extraordinary. May she rest in peace.

Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk