South Yorkshire Times July 2, 1949
South Yorkshire’s Malayan Mining Colony
Back this week from Malaya with news of South Yorkshire’s little mining colony there is Mrs Charlotte Moss, wife of Mr Leonard Moss, former undermanager of Maltby and Denaby Collieries. Mr Moss went out from Britain nearly two years ago to become manager of Malayan Collieries.
With Mrs Moss, who arrived in Mexborough last Thursday, are her three children, Geoffrey (11), Pamela (10), and Robin (seven months), and Jeffrey Taylor (12), former Conisbrough boy. She has brought the older children back home to school.
Jungle Coalfield
Jeffrey, who is staying with his grandmother in Rowena Road, Conisbrough, is the son of Mr and Mrs Taylor, members of Malayan Collieries’ Yorkshire community.
On Wednesday Mrs Moss told me something of the life these South Yorkshire folk enjoy in their jungle befringed coalfield 5,000 miles from the old country. It is a coalfield far different from that to which we are accustomed.
These Yorkshire people, Mrs Moss explained, included Mr Noel Warmington, the company’s deputy general manager, a former official at Denaby pit; Mr Taylor, who went out from Denaby pit to become underground manager at one of the pits, and Mrs Taylor; Mr Percy Chetwynd, another Denaby man holding a similar position at another mine, and Mrs Chetwynd; and Mr and Mrs J., Nicholson and Mr and Mrs H. Beckett., from Wombwell and Brampton, both with two children each. There were also Yorkshiremen from ‘Maltby and Leeds.
No Gas Below
The company’s mines are situated at Batu Arang, and this, in the Malayan language, Mrs Moss ex. plained, means ” coal.” The mines had no shafts in the British sense, but followed the American pattern of a drift mine, with an entrance and a roadway driven steeply into the ground. There were also extensive opencast workings and a considerable amount of American mining machinery had been installed during the past two years.
Most of the men go to work on bicycles,” Mrs Moss said. “There are no buses to get them to the pit gates like we have here. They wear safety helmets, with a lamp on the forehead, and they smoke cigarettes down the pit! I was amazed when I went down the pit and saw a man light up. I had not realised then that the lights in their lamps were naked flames. There is, of course, no gas underground.”
Mrs Moss added that the men worked shifts, but the times were different from those followed in this country. And, in addition, there were no coal fires in the men’s homes! They all had wood fires. The timber came from the jungle and the people were in the habit of going out to gather their own.
Malayan coal was duller in colour than British coal, and the whole output, she understood, was consumed in Malaya itself on the utilities and similar services.