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Occupations & Trades of the Shale Oil Industry
Refinery staff
The mining of shale, its retorting and refining, and the packaging and distribution of its products, involved many different processes. Each step in the production process was often the responsibility of a different occupation or trade. Each occupation had its own wage rate and representation, and often carried its own social status.
Some of the more specialist occupations are listed below; often a variety of terms were used to describe a particular occupation, depending on the location and period.
- Bottomer: a person employed at the pit bottom to load hutches of shale into the pit cage.
- Breakerman: a person employed at oil works to break lumps of shale, or tend a shale-breaking machine.
- Brusher: a person employed by the company to maintain underground roadways.
- Chainman: a person employed to link or unlink hutches from a moving haulage chain. Either underground or on the surface.
- Charger: a person employed to load shale into the top of retorts.
- Chain-runner (see Chainman).
- Checkweighman: a person employed by miners to ensure hutches of shale were fairly weighed.
- Cooper: a person constructing or repairing barrels in which oil was transported.
- Contractor: a Miner contracting with the company to work shale at an agreed rate per ton.
- Crowpicker: a person employed by the company to check hutches of shale and reject any stone included in this.
- Drawer (mine): a person loading shale into hutches and drawing these to a roadway. Normally employed by a Contractor.
- Drawer (surface): a person employed to load and move hutches.
- Engineman: a person in charge of a winding or haulage engine.
- Engine tenders: a person assisting an Engineman in tending or minding an engine.
- Faceman: a Miner, usually a Contractor.
- Fireman: a person stoking a boiler or furnace, or (in early days), tending a furnace at the foot of a mine shaft to affect ventilation.
- Gulletman: a person employed to withdraw hot waste from the base of the retort into hutches.
- Labourer : a general assistant, sometimes assisting a tradesman.
- Miner: a person responsible for the working of shale normally through use of explosives, usually as a Contractor.
- Oncostman: any person employed by the company to maintain the underground workings of a mine.
- Ostler: a person responsible for the care of ponies used for haulage underground.
- Oversman: a person employed by the company to oversee an area of mine workings.
- Pitheadman: a person in charge of activities at the pit head such as the off-loading of cages and the weighing of shales.
- Pithead runner: a person, working at the pithead, linking or unlinking hutches to haulage chains or cables.
- Placeman: a Miner or Contractor working a particular working face in stoop and room workings.
- Platelayer: a person employed to lay or maintain railway track.
- Pony driver: a person working ponies for underground haulage.
- Pressman: a person operating a filter press used in paraffin wax production.
- Refiner: a person involved in the processing of oil products.
- Retortman: a person in charge of the operation of oil retorts.
- Retort drawer: see Gulletman.
- Roadsman: a person employed by the company to maintain underground roadways
- Runner: see Chainman
- Shale breaker: see Breakerman
- Sinker: a person, often employed under contract, to sink new shafts
- Smith: a mechanic employed to construct or repair equipment, often by making components in a forge.
- Smith's striker: a person assisting a Smith often by hammering components during forge work.
- Stoker: a person firing a furnace or boiler.
- Stillman: a person working stills used in the refining of oil products
- Sulphate man: a person involved in the production of Ammonium Sulphate.