Major mining disasters, such as those at Marcinelle (1956), Courrières (1906), Aberfan (1966) and Luisenthal (1962), have left their mark on our memories. But behind these collective tragedies lurks a more diffuse violence, often passed over in silence: that of the thousands of repeated and sometimes fatal workplace accidents that shattered the bodies of male and female workers.
It’s this reality that historian Nicolas Verschueren (Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences) is exploring through a groundbreaking research project. Kept at the Sauvegarde des Archives Industrielles, Commerciales, Ouvrières et Minières (SAICOM) center in La Louvière, accident registers from the 1930s, listing almost 100,000 victims, have been unearthed. Thanks to ULB’s Département des bibliothèques et de l’information scientifique (DBIS), they are now being digitized and ocerized (converted into computer-readable text using optical character recognition) to form a database that is unique in Europe. It will enable a detailed analysis of the direct causes of accidents and a mapping of the dangers of mining work.
But beyond the figures, these archives reveal the social and economic issues surrounding each injury. They shed light on the mechanisms of compensation, control and care, where colliery managers, insurers, doctors, judges, workers and families clash. The miner’s body becomes a veritable battlefield, at the crossroads of economic and human interests.
As the pages turn yellow, one question emerges: what value should be placed on a miner’s life?
See the photos on Better Call Science, the ULB research Instagram account
