Miners - Part 1

Sulfur Miners of Sicily

For thousands of years, sulfur has been mined in Sicily, where Mt. Etna and other volcanoes have left rich deposits.  This photo was taken c. 1950 in the Floristella Gtorracalda mines.

Almost all the miners worked naked, because of the stifling heat deep in the mines, up to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit).

 A sulfur miner.

The veins of sulfur were extracted by men with pickaxes, and heavy loads of sulfur were carried away by boys as young as 7 or 8 called carusi who were virtual slaves.  Booker T. Washington, himself born a slave, visited the mines in 1910 and wrote: "A sulphur mine in Sicily is about the nearest thing to hell that I expect to see in this life."

The use of young boys ended in the 1930s, but teenage carusi were still used until the 1950s.  Power drills were also introduced.  This photo is dated 1930.

But the work was still backbreaking and the mines still as hot as hell.  This 1953 photo is from Fulvio Roiter's book Visibilia.

This video is part of a 1963 Italian industrial film about sulfur production.  Apparently in 1963 this was still business as usual.

The last Sicilian sulfur mines finally shut down in the 1980s, driven out by American competition.  American sulfur is extracted from wells or produced as a waste product from oil and natural gas, not mined by naked miners.