Child Coal Workers
SOLD March 2018 |
Cabinet-card format albumen print circa 1885 showing child laborers picking slate out of newly mined coal. With photographer's label verso reading "Views In and Around the Coal Mines / Photographed and Published by / L. Hensel - Hawley, Pa." and subject list with a circle in pencil around "11 - Boys picking slate in a Coal Breaker."
The children's' grimy faces and uncomfortable postures in image are entirely factual. Given the timeframe, this image was probably not intended to protest their condition, but simply as illustration of a picturesque local industry.
Louis (Loudolph) Hensel began his career as photographer in 1875 and moved to Hawley, Pennsylvania in 1878. A downtown Hawley block fire destroyed most of his existing glass negatives in 1897.