The Kettle Boy

Most boys would start work once they had left school at the age of 14 or 15.  Their first jobs would often be with their father or older brothers.  They were given the jobs of looking after their tools, making the tea and running errands. Gradually they would work their way onto more specific jobs within the works until they earned a "man’s wage’.

One such boy was Marshel Arthur, who because of the death of his father left school at the age of ten in 1889 and began work as a tool boy under his older brother Tom, at Lower Goonamaris China Stone Quarry in January 1890.  His starting wage was 6d a day, paid monthly. He recalled his experiences in his autobiography.

"I remained at the quarry for fourteen months having when I left 8d a day.  My job was boiling water for "crib" and dinner, carrying and fetching toools from the blacksmith’s shop a mile away, chipping china stone, ie cleaning the dirty faces with a slad axe, and assisting in blasting operations by turning a boryer for a couple of men to it.  Not a very pleasant job for a boy of eleven, sitting on a damp board with two hammers pounding up and down a few inches from your nose, and being threatened if you got a three cornered hole, or didn’t keep the tool strictly vertical.  Another job I hated was fetching beer from Nanpean or St Stephens, and I was threatened with dire results if I should happen to let it fall and break it.  In one sense it did me good, for I’ve neer cared for the smell of beer since.

How I left the Quarry, was  because brother Tom gave me a "blowing up" for being too long fetching the tools from the shop.  I resented this very much, because it wasn’t my fault; the blacksmith, having another job on hand, finished it before he started with mine.  So that evening I told Mother I was fed up and was seeking another job.  I soon got one under Captain John Angilley at South Carloggas Pit, then I went to Tom and gave him one day’s notice to quit."