Mineral Borer

[Malcolm]

In the mid 1850's, one of my people was described as a Mineral Borer. This was in the Cairneyhill area of Fife. I think there was a lot of coal mining in the area at the time but I don't think coal can be acurately described as a mineral. I could be wrong however.
It would be interesting to know what other materials were won from the soil and what sort of equipment would have been used. I have an image of a man in a field with a purpose and an auger but nothing more.
Any further enlightenment would oblige.
M

[Currie]

Hello Malcolm,

I suspect a “Mineral Borer” would be like a “Gold Prospector” or an “Oil Driller” i.e. someone who seeks out the existence of a resource before it is turned into a commercial operation. A mineral, generally speaking, is something you mine so I suppose coal would be covered.

This 1831 Encyclopaedia probably covers the situation.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=e8A ... 2&as_brr=1

This 1855 book gives a very detailed account of the techniques and machinery involved. (It almost makes you feel like going out into the backyard and giving it a try.) These Google Books are much better read downloaded.

http://books.google.com/books?id=92rCLR ... 2&as_brr=1

I’m not sure what mining, apart from coal, there would have been in Fife.

Hope this helps,
Alan

[AndrewP]

Hi Malcolm,

As you rightly point out, coal mining was the biggest "mineral" extraction in that part of Fife. There is an online transcription of the 1851 census for the village part of Cairneyhill, and that shows weaving to be the most common occupation, with one man declaring himself as a quarry labourer. I would suspect that outside the village, the main occupations would be in farming and coal mining.

Three or four miles away there were limestone works at Limekilns and Charlestown, so that is one possibility to consider.

All the best,

AndrewP

[paddyscar]

Andrew's response struck a visual for me.

Would a limestone quarry have blasted slabs apart? Drill or bore holes for inserting explosives to clear rock cuts for roads are visible along roadsides. Could that be what a 'mineral borer' did?

Just a thought,
Frances

[Malcolm]

Thanks Currie for the references. They are very interesting. I could read stuff like that forever. I read Mineral Borer as an explorative activity so perhaps folk were just sent out into a field to bore holes just to see what was there because they had the latest technology. I also discovered that my Morris man later became a Miner so perhaps there is a connection with coal after all. Alternatively, perhaps the powers that were came to realise there was nothing to go at under the soil other than coal and sent my man to work at its face.
Thanks also Paddyscar. I read up on granite quarrying on the Ross of Mull and they did indeed blast rock using explosives during the 1850’s. I’m not sure that limestone fits into this kind of activity as this rock type is usually evident at the surface. From my own limited knowledge, drilling holes for explosives is not quite the same thing as boring for minerals, water etc.
The facts behind Andrew’s comments are a mystery to me. I have studied every entry in the census returns and there is hardly a coal miner amongst them. Nor, from what I can gather were there any mills although the principle occupation was weaving. This tells me that the textile workers of Cairneyhill must have walked past the coal measures on their way to work in Dunfermline but, that's onother story come question.
Perhaps I’m reading too much into a single entry but with no other information, ones imagination has to sit on something.
Thanks once again for your comments.
M

[Montrose Budie]

As far as I'm aware a mineral borer was someone involved in the exploitation of a mineral resource as opposed to searching for a mineral.

Coal can indeed, in this context, be classified as a mineral, and maybe "mineral borer" is an upmarket version of "pit sinker" ?!

Other minerals exploited over the centuries in Scotland include not only precious minerals such as gold and silver, but also non-precious metals such as tin, copper, zinc and lead; as well as non-metal materials such as clays, - kaolin and fireclay, - and sulphur.

Whereas the main modern day sources of most of the above are now furth of Scotland, a century of more ago there were very many small local mines. For instance, about 1 mile from where I live there was a sulphur mine, which, some argue, gave rise to the nickname for inhabitants of this wee toon, 'Chinamen', due to the skin colouration of these miners (but be warned, there are at least two quite different, alternative explanations for the derivation of this nickname).

On that same theme, unknown these days to most residents, there were several local clay pits supporting a number of brickworks, and a large number of ironstone mines.

The various Statistical Accounts are a rich source of such local activities.

The drilling of holes in assocation with quarrying operations is, in my experience, more likely to involve an occupation such as 'shot borer or firer'.

mb