Breaker boy
Type of coal-mining worker / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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A breaker boy was a coal-mining worker in the United States[1] and United Kingdom[2] whose job was to separate impurities from coal by hand in a coal breaker.
Though boys were primarily children, elderly coal miners who could no longer work in the mines because of age, disease, or accident were sometimes employed as breaker boys.[3] The use of breaker boys began in the mid-1860s.[4][5] Although public disapproval of the employment of children as breaker boys existed by the mid-1880s, the practice did not end until the early 1920s.[1][6]