“The workers were at it from first light till darkness, they often used to sleep in the

galleries, and working conditions were dreadful. Serpieri had his own lead coinage

and he paid the workers in that. But you couldn't buy anything from town with it, so

Serpieri had shopkeepers of his own and the workers obliged to shop from them.

Down to 1935, the average life expectancy was 30 years for men and 35 years for

women. Everyone used to die of lead poisoning and miner's lung. Since 1980, much

has been written and said (by doctors, journalists and other people) about lead

poisoning in Lavrio.

Things like that strike me as really strange nowadays, when I think how much care

we take with our own children. When we were their age, we used to go swimming in

the sea after school. And where did we swim? Right next to the outflow pipes from

the French and American Companies, where all the waste from washing the ore went

into the sea.

Our mothers used to tell us the gunpowder was good for the bones and lungs. Much

they knew about it, poor women. The older people used to soak their feet in the bog

by the mine and then sit in the sun, because they said it was good for the arthritis

they' d got from the damp when they were working in the galleries. The Company trains burned coal, or rather coke. In the winter, we used to go to

deserted areas and wait for the train to go past. The workers always used to throw

off lots of lumps of coke to take home when they went home. All hell would be let

loose then, because we lads used to pounce on the coal and share it out with the

sons of the train-workers. When we took the pieces of coal home, hearing "good boy"

from our mothers was all we got for it. Never mind -that was worth having too. And

we'd be able to keep warm for a day or two. Ι remember my father, who worked in the galleries, saying that when they sat down

to eat what they'd brought with them, great big rats would appear to devour whatever

the miners left. The miners didn't harm them: down in those dark galleries, the rats

were their guardian angels.

If no rats made their appearance in a gallery on three days running, the miners

wouldn't go into it, because they knew that had to risk our lives at times. We had to

go down into the ancient shafts, 90 metres deep, on ladders rotten with rust, to repair

water pumps or the molten lead would be boiling in the cauldrons and we would have

to go up on to the cauldrons to repair a motor which was about to burn out, it was so

hot.”

Dimitris Moroglou narrative in S.B. Skopelitis, Lavrio (in Greek,

French, English), Athens, Exantas Publ., 1996, p. 419-420.

During the first time I was working down there, I would often awake at night. You

would wonder how you could come down when you saw the rocks hanging above

you. And it was not just that. Down there working conditions were very unhealthy. But

people must live. What to do? How many miners did they lose their lives? Tens of

them… Hard times. Each day we could play with death.

K. Loukas narrative (ex engine driver in Serpieri No 1 Tunnel) in

newspaper Sounio 06/07, no 148, p. 8-9.

Every night up there in the works of excavation, long before the sunrise, the miners

arrived…in front of the deep, dark mouth of every gallery with their weak lamps on

the one hand and their bread on the other, with crowbars, pickaxes and dynamite.

The bell rings, the grammarian reads each name and writes - present, absent, ill- the

catalog finishes and the foreman brings the key and opens the gate. […]The metal

bar closes again. The key is being put back in the key hole and the grammarian with

the foreman chat while walking about in the hut. Everyone’s hopes are to be found in

there and everyone’s fortunes depend on this place.

B. Daskalakis, The Uprooted, A Villager’s Narratives, (in Greek),

Athens, 1930, p. 130-131.

“[…] I entered the lift accompanied by my guide and as soon as the sign was given

to the engine driver our descent began […] At the same time, a humid cold started

being felt, and during the downward movement of the lift we could perceptibly hear

the sound of water dripping from the moist and slimy walls of the shaft […] as we

were moving upward a sloping tunnel we reached another one […] the ventilation

was inadequate and the atmosphere was tepid and sweltering. Only two workers

were toiling in a limited space; both were naked wearing the barest minimum

required by decency. Humidity, the odour of the mould and the exhalation of human

sweat are mixed with the smoked stench of the oil lamps that make stay in this place

very unpleasant. We are descending in a shaft almost vertical with three superposed

rope ladders; only one worker was to be found here stuck more than hundred meters

below the surface. We continue to move upwards in horizontal tunnels and while

holding our lamps we suddenly hear a demoniacal noise as if metal stones are

collapsing into the abyss […] the noise heightens, all at once from the dark end of the

gallery a moving light appears, after a while we distinguish the body of a man behind

it the trunk of an animal. Eight wagons are pulled by a sturdy horse preceded by the

worker. The noise turns ghastly from the rolling of the wheels and jerking of the

metallic wagons enhanced by the reflect sound of the tunnels […] We traverse more

tunnels, some horizontal some other slanted (oblique) and suddenly we noticed

something indescribably sweet and beautiful, the light of the day faintly penetrating

the inferno. It looks like liquid gold spilled on the black rocks of the tunnels […] A little

later we reach the surface in a cheerful location, verdant with pine trees and replete

with light and sun”.

Ι.D. Doanitis narrative, 1904 in G. Dermatis, The Colour of Time (in

Greek), Athens, Topos publ., 2009.