Merthyr Tydfil, Wales·1841
Phillip Phillips, Witness No. 43
2 hr 32 min·22 May 2026·10 sources
On a single afternoon in 1841, a Welsh inspector found a 9-year-old boy named Phillip Phillips sitting alone in a coal mine, his face scarred from a fire he’d survived a year earlier — and he was still working.
This is the documented story of one of the worst jobs in industrial history, told through the parliamentary record that captured Phillip’s voice for forty-three words and then lost him forever. From the Plymouth Iron Works of Merthyr Tydfil to the dark passages where children as young as six controlled the air supply for hundreds of grown men, this is the daily life of the children who powered the British Empire — and the law that was meant to save them, but didn’t.
A long, careful walk through one boy’s working day, the world he came home to, and the silences in the records around him. Built from primary sources. Designed for slow, attentive listening.
Sources
as published with the film- Children’s Employment Commission, First Report (Mines), 1842 — testimony of Phillip Phillips, witness no. 43, collected by Robert Hugh Franks, Esq
- Parliamentary Papers 1842, vols. XV–XVII (UK Parliament archive)
- Hansard, House of Commons debate on the Mines and Collieries Bill, June 1842
- 1841 and 1851 Census of England and Wales (Glamorganshire returns)
- Ceri Thompson, From the Cradle to the Coalmine: The Story of Children in Welsh Mines (University of Wales Press, 2014)
- Gwyn A. Williams, The Merthyr Rising (Croom Helm, 1978; updated edition)
- Angela V. John, By the Sweat of Their Brow: Women Workers at Victorian Coal Mines (Croom Helm, 1980)
- National Museum Wales / Big Pit National Coal Museum, “Children of the Revolution” archive
- Dictionary of Welsh Biography — Hill family of the Plymouth Iron Works
- Northern Mine Research Society, Plymouth Colliery records
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