In 1839, when he was seven, Joseph Skipsey went to work as "trapper" in the coal mines at Percy Main, near North Shields, "when the sum total of his learning," as he later wrote in the preface to A Book of Miscellaneous Lyrics (1878), "consisted in his ability to read his A.B.C., or at most his A.B. ab card"--that is, the alphabet, upper and lowercase. His job was to regulate the ventilation by opening and shutting a trapdoor when the tubs of coal came through, for sixteen hours a day, in the dark. Except in midsummer and on Sundays, he only saw light when a passing putter or hewer gave him the end of his farthing candle. The child passed the time by making up little songs his mates picked up and sang, and it was here, by the light of the occasional candle, that he...