Time Traveller Series

When nine-year-old Sarah accepted the challenge to travel back in time, she had thought she might meet Robin Hood or King Arthur. She had not bargained on joining a rag-tag band of half-starved children toiling deep under ground in a south Yorkshire coalmine. She becomes a ‘trapper’ - a child who sat hour after hour in darkness and pulled on a string to open a trap to let the trucks of coal hurtle onwards just inches away from their toes; that is until the mine starts flooding.

In 1812, the scandal broke, shocking the ‘social caring’ middle classes that children as young as seven were working in the mines. The story came out because 26 children died when the mine at Silkstone flooded. Today you can read a small memorial in Silkstone parish church to their death. This book is another memorial.