burnished spine, private paintings

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After each shift my grandfathers and the other miners were pulled out of the pit covered in coal dust. When they returned home, their wives or children would wash them in a tin bath, but didn't wash their spine. Instead, they used the Venus mount of their hands to buff and polish the carbon powder into their skin. Eventually it became permanent. They believed that this strengthened their backs. Their White Shirts, Black Jackets, Roman Catholic Sunday Best Clothes covered their private and hidden black carbon paintings.

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