But though no longer legally bound to these collieries, women continued to be employed in the same laborious and degrading occupation within the coal mines. Quarter of a century after the act of emancipation was passed, Hugh Miller, when working as a stone-mason at Niddry, in Midlothian, found the women-toilers still at their task, and he has left the following account of them: ‘The collier women of the village, poor over-toiled creatures, who carried up all the coal from underground on their backs by a long turnpike stair inserted in one of the shafts, continued to bear more of the marks of serfdom than even the men. How these poor women did labour, and how thoroughly, even at this time, were they characterised by the slave nature! It has been estimated that one of their ordinary day’s work was equal to the carrying of a hundredweight from the level of the sea to the top of Ben Lomond. They were marked by a peculiar type of mouth. It was wide, open, thick-lipped, projecting equally above and below.... I have seen these collier-women crying like children, when toiling under their load along the upper rounds of the wooden stair, and then returning, scarce a minute after, with the empty creel, singing with glee.’ Some of these women were still at work when, as a child, I first visited the district. It was not indeed until 10th August, 1842, that the act (5 and 6 Vic. cap. 99) was passed which declared it to be ‘unfit that women and girls should be employed in any mine or colliery,’ and absolutely prohibited any mine-owner from employing or permitting to be employed underground any female person whatsoever. [Sidenote: COLLIER HUMOUR]