bonky wenches

[janeld]

In the black country the women working at the pit surface during the middle of the 19c,were known as bonky wenches, what exactly was the kind of work they did . I know they sorted coal but what does this involve.

[blacksheep]

mainly picking the stones out of it I think. Sure it's not wonky benches?

[Peter_uk_can]

Bonk is to hit or strike,so may be they broke up the large pieces of coal.

I worked in the mines back in the 60's but never heard the term. In the mid 19C coal was all hand won and it was easier for the miners to load mine tubs with large pieces which would have to be broken down before bagging.

[Alan Welsford]

In the black country the women working at the pit surface during the middle of the 19c,were known as bonky wenches.
As doing a "Google" on the exact phrase "bonky wenches" doesn't produce a single hit, I have to say I'm rather doubtful this is actually true!

Where does the information come from, please ?

Alan

[Peter Goodey]

I suspect that "bonk" might be a corruption or local slang term for "bank". Hence the adjective bonky.

A bankswoman or pit brow girl/lass or pit head girl/lass picked stone or dirt from the coal.

[oxon57]

You appear to be on the right track. Coal fields are in short supply in this area, so I do not claim to know the first thing about the industry, but dropping the "y" and putting "bonk wench" into Google turned up an old Rootsweb message on the Black Country list from which it seems that a "Pit bonk wench" (Black Country) or "Pit bank wench" (Yorkshire) was "woman who worked on the Pit Bank picking small coal by hand for the colliery company."

[Alan Welsford]

OK, I'll give you that then.

Strange if "Bonk wench" can be "bonky wench" that Google doesn't recognise the latter, though.

I'm kind of surprised Googling for terms like this doesn't turn up a quite different type of occupation!

[janeld]

Well I did think that when I posted the question.
The phrase bonky wenches comes from the book 'the tipton slasher' About William Perry, the national champion bare knuckle fighter in 1850-57. His first love was a bonky wench called Jane Cotterel.
In Tipton they still use the phrase 'bonk 'for any type of hill.

[Sandra Parker]

Not in Australia, they don't!
Sandra

[Alan Welsford]

On a very large computer project I worked on, a French man was brought in to run the UK side of the operation.

When discussing recruiting additional staff to the project, he kept saying it would be useful to recruit people with "bonking experience".

It was some time before we realised he would have liked to poach staff from "bonks" like NatWest, Barclays, etc. :)

[janeld]

Well as Bill Bryson said,
"more than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to."