The Toughest Half: Women Who Underpinned Britain’s Greatest Industry

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Through a combination of historical narrative, fiction and biography, this book gives voice to the discounted ‘others’ - wives, mothers and daughters whose persistence, courage, pride and sacrifice contributed to mine-owners’ profits.

Their stories are told through the prism of historical events - the frightened little girl forced to work alone in subterranean darkness, the poverty-stricken young woman confronting an unwanted pregnancy, those enduring loss of sons and partners to a deadly occupation and women who, through adversity, seized the opportunities to wield their collective strength. The author, Elizabeth Stewart, was inspired to tell these unique and astonishing stories from her time growing up in the Derbyshire coalfields. Many are related from personal experiences as her mother’s story is woven through the narrative.
The Toughest Half is Elizabeth Stewart’s literary debut and the first time many of these stories of inspiring women have been told.