Where can I find an article of naked coal miners in Wales in the 1800's?

Question:

Where can I find an article of naked coal miners in Wales in the 1800's?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Working naked, whether in Wales or elsewhere, was common in 19th century coal mines.

The main reason for this was to maximize manoeuvrability in tight spaces. A lot of early mines had some extremely narrow and shallow passages. This was a matter of economics. Opening up large tunnels in order to access a thin seam of coal was not a profitable proposition for mine owners; and miners got paid not by the hour, but on the tonnage of coal that they cut and hauled to the surface; so nobody wanted to waste time and/or money on enlarging tunnels beyond the minimum needed for access to the coalface and retrieval of the cut coal. Although it is only a matter of an inch or two, the human body can slip through a tight space more easily without clothes than with them. Skin might get grazed, but it didn't snag and trap the miner.

It's wrong to assume that it is colder underground than on the surface, and that therefore one must wear clothes for warmth. I've been down quite a few mines, and - unless there is a steady fan-generated breeze down below - any physical exertion makes it feel HOT down there.

I'm not saying that ALL miners worked naked. That certainly wasn't the case. But in a few jobs, it was quite common for the miner to work virtually naked, to get that vital manoeuvrability.

The most common jobs in which this occurred were those of the CHILDREN dragging and pushing sledge tubs loaded with coal from the face to the shaft leading to the surface. Children were used for this task because they were smaller than either adults or pit ponies, and so could crawl on hands and knees along the low, narrow tunnels. Records from the 1840's tell of some tunnels less than 3 feet in height and width, although most seem to have been between 3 and 4 feet high.

There is an excellent book describing these conditions: -
"Hard at Work in Factories and Mines: The Economics of Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution", by Carolyn Tuttle; Westview Press, 1999.

Unfortunately, I haven't found any good online source that you could use as a reference.