24th June 1955 
Worked Down Pit At 80

After working 68 years underground in local pits - most of them at the coalface, getting coal by hand - 80-year-old Mr. James Connor, of School Road, Pontefract, has retired. Mr. Connor celebrated his 80th birthday on 20th May, which was just another working day for him. He began on the haulage in 1887, when he was 12, and started "I’t coil" when he was 17, at the Isabella Colliery, Garforth, long since closed. Since then he has worked at three pits at Leeds, Wheldale, Fryston, Glass Houghton, and the Prince of Wales Colliery, Pontefract, from which he retired. He has worked underground all the time, broken only by four and a half years service in the First World War, which he spent with the Green Howards in India after being transferred from the K.O.Y.L.I.

When he began work Mr. Connor was paid a shilling a day, from 6am to 3 or 4pm. Although he speaks highly of improvements in the miners working conditions he has never worked with coal cutting machines. Until he left the coal face in the early 1940’s to do lighter work, he got his coal the hard way. Born at Alfreton, Derbyshire, Mr. Connor went to Garforth as a youngster, but for most of his life he lived in Castleford. He moved to Pontefract when his house was severely damaged by the explosion at Hickson’s chemical works in 1930. Fit and active despite his age, Mr. Connor is typical of his generation. He clearly "reckoned now’t" to publicity when he was visited by a representative of The Express and was equally non-committal about how he was going to spend his retirement. But there was a humorous twinkle in his eyes, which showed he intended to enjoy it with the same purposefulness that he stuck to his work.