“The workers were at it from first light till darkness, they often used to s1eep 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 1ife expectancy was 30 years for men and 35 years for

women. Everyone used to die of lead poisoning and miner's 1ung. Since 1980, much has

been written and said (by doctors, journalists and other people) about lead poisoning in Lavrio. doctors, journalists and other people) about lead poisoning ίη 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 coa1 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 wou1dn'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.