Note 449 — Chapter VI

Normansell v. Platt. John Normansell, the agent of the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association, stands second only to Macdonald as a leader of the miners between 1863 and 1875. The son of a banksman, he was born at Torkington, Cheshire, in 1830, and left an orphan at an early age. At seven he entered the pit, and when, at the age of nineteen, he married, he was unable to write his own name. Migrating to South Yorkshire, he became a leader in the agitation to secure a checkweigher, which the local coal-owners conceded in 1859. Normansell was elected to the post for his own pit, and rapidly became the leading spirit in the district. After the lock-out of 1864 he was elected secretary to the Union, then counting only two thousand members. Within eight years he had raised its membership to twenty thousand, and built up an elaborate system of friendly benefits. Normansell was the first working-man Town Councillor, having been triumphantly elected at Barnsley, his Union subscribing £1000 to lodge in the bank in his name, in order to enable him to declare himself possessed of the pecuniary qualification at that time required. On his death the amount was voted to his widow. Normansell gave evidence in 1867 before the Select Committee on Coal-mining, and before that on the Master and Servant Law, in 1868 before the Royal Commission on Trade Unions, and in 1873 before that on the Coal Supply.