Coal delivery and elfin safety

[cl]

Always used to be 1cwt (which is close enough to 50kg) was the maximum one person lift. I seem to remember that help/training was advised though.

[cl]

Our coal delivery man always does 5 x 50kg and seems to find it fairly easy. He does have everything neatly set up for it though.

[News]

Possibly for larger houses, but the average Victorian terrace would have had an alley along the back gardens. The alley probably long gone now, as people extend their gardens a few feet.

Alternatively, a right of way across all the rear gardens, with gates in the fences.

[AnthonyL]

I think it took him 8 mins. He doesn't rush. A new guy came a couple of months back and tried a trolley with 2 bags on it. He carried the rest in standard fashion. He was about 6'2", young and fit so no doubt he'll end up 5'8" in a few years.

[michael adams]

And there are people going around photographing and documenting those coal hole covers as well

If they were relatively poor then they probably only bought their coal in small quantities in any case as they mightn't have enough spare cash to buy more. Quite possibly they had their own small sacks which they got filled at the shop on the corner and wheeled home in an old pram.

And if they lived in a back-to-back then maybe keeping coal in an old(tin) bath isn't myth

michael adams

[Huge]

The bloke who delivers our 47kg butane bottles (that's the weight of the gas - the tare weight of the bottle is on top of that) lifts them off the lorry and carries them round the back by hand. I can't even pick them up - I use a sack barrow to move them.

[Mike Barnes]

I visited a mountain hut in Czechoslovakia where those gas cylinders were carried up on a young man's back. I saw him taking a steep shortcut up the mountainside rather than using the path. Oh, and he had *two* of them.

[michael adams]

Especially if there was a sale on

michael adams

...

[michael adams]

Kid's stuff.

michael adams

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[Huge]

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[critcher]

my old dad worked in pit, we had a ton of coal delivered and dumped on the road, then it was tin bath and hump it all to coal house.

[damduck-egg]

Probably one of the reasons that not so long ago when Men retired at

65 a good number didn't live much longer anyway. And of those who did many could not enjoy a reasonably comfortable retirement due to back/neck pain and other joint problems. Before Hip joint replacement surgery was developed in the early 1960's people just had to live with the pain and the debilitation damaged joints caused. Wasn't just Coalmen, many other jobs now done with powered assistance such as digging building foundations were done by men wearing themselves out.

G.Harman