Collier Bet Marchant

The Blackdown collier who told the Bank Council in 4609 that no man alive could walk old pillar-and-stall workings in three days and know what he had seen.

Bet Marchant's people understand pillar-and-stall workings better than anybody in the county, and have walked what can be reached of the old seam under Enginemead in the dark. They put it at forty acres. The wharf company's surveyor, who went underground on three days out of nine, put it at eleven.

Asked about that survey by the Bank Council in 4609, she said that no man alive could walk workings of that age in three days and know what he had seen, and declined to say anything further about the surveyor. She hires as she pays, at the price the work is worth at the moment it is needed.

In person

Hard-featured and soot-marked, with strong forearms and a level stare. Above ground she wears a coarse dark dress; below, a collier's trousers, jacket and lamp.