Mexborough and Swinton Times, November 29, 1919
Mr T Hill
A Miners Leader and Mr Chambers
Thomas Hill, of Conisborough, a miner and checkweighman at the Cadeby Colliery, a member of the Parish Council and the Rural District Council, the Parochial Committee and the Urban Powers Committee, gave detailed evidence as to sanitation, particularly with regard to the privvy middens and the scavenging. He was in favour of urban powers, partly because he thought it would help the speedy conversion of these middens. The Parochial Committee and decided that they should be converted, but the Rural Council deferred it back will stop he was informed that was because Mr Chambers was not present.
Mr Spencer Baker: So if Mr Chambers elected to stay away forever, this question could never be attended to? – I should have my doubts
Mr Hill added that the discharged soldiers of the district were in favour of the application, and were of opinion that they were entitled to have A1 houses to live in.
Mr Talbot, K.C.: I’m sure our sympathies are with your last observation, Mr Hill, but do you suggest that Mr Chambers is indifferent to the housing of the men employed by his company? – Well, we have been agitating for 10 years now to get conversions, and those places are not converted yet. I wish to suggest that it is in his power to make these conversions if he wishes to do so.
Mr Talbot: He says he objects, because he wanted the scheme to be for the district as a whole.
Mr Hill: He once told me, when I asked him what he was going to do about that mass of corruption, he said, “I don´t know that I shall do anything until the enquiry has sat.”
He said he thought it ought to have been applied to the whole district?- I think it was quite understood between the Parochial Committee and Mr Chambers that we should set about the conversion from all quarters where they were needed.
Therefore on that particular point you are in agreement with Mr Chambers? – Yes, Mr Chambers told me he was in favour of that scheme 20 years ago.
Regarding the water, Mr Hill said he did not complain either of the cheapness of the abundance of the quality, though it was a little hard and took more than an ordinary amount of soap.