Collectie SOHC 6 - Coal miners and dust-related disease oral history project

16 compact cassettes + 23 MP3 files + 26 MS Word files + 2 folders

Transferred from SOHC in 2015 and 2016. The project's original SOHC ID was SOHCA/017. In addition to the title "Coal miners and dust-related disease", the material has occasionally been referred to by the title "Social history of coal-dust disease". At times its content has also been listed as a component of SOHC "Work and health in Scotland oral history project" and of SOHC "Clydeside heavy industries oral history project". The original recordings were made predominantly in 2004-2005 using a cassette recorder. In 2016, they were digitised to uncompressed, unaltered 24 bit/96kHz BWF format for preservation and 16bit/48kHz MP3 copies created for access.

Oral history project "Coal miners and dust-related disease" aimed to reconstruct the story of the human tragedy of coal miners' respiratory disease. It sought to "write the history of 'black spit' from its early discovery by Scottish physicians in the 19th century, through to the official recognition of coal workers' pneumoconiosis in 1942 and on to the campaigns to recognise bronchitis and emphysima as industrial diseases in the second half of the twentieth century that culminated in the landmark legal judgement in January 1998".

Of a reported number of 52 interviews undertaken, 27 survive as sound recording and transcript (14) or transcript only (13).

14 interviews whose sound survives were listed first, in roughly chronological order.

These are followed by 13 interviews that survive as transcripts only, in chronological order.

6 interviewees requested anonymity. Otherwise no access restrictions.

• Engels

This collection is part of the Scottish Oral History Centre Archive.

McIvor, A and Johnston, R (2007) \Miners' lung: a history of dust disease in British coal mining\ (Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate), pp. 319-324: appendix (lists entire oral history project)