This book records the life and work of the women and girls who worked at the mines, smelters and clay works in the Tamar area, covering some twenty five parishes. This region can claim one of the longest written mining histories, with records of women at the 14th century lead smelters, and with still a few women working into the 20th century. The hey-day of female employment, however, was the 19th century, when most were working at the copper mines. In addition, there were bal maidens dressing ore at the lead-silver, manganese and tin mines, as well as at the extensive brick works and clay pits. When the copper lodes began to fail, and the copper mines diversified into arsenic production, bal maidens were still there dressing the very product hat had previously been regarded as waste. The last bal maidens seem to have finally laid sown their hammers, shovels, and barrows by about 1910. But that wasn’t quite the end of the story…