It is rare to find Victorian accounts of working people’s lives written in their own words. Thomas Dring’s “A Struggle Through Life” is one such rarity.

Born in Leicestershire in 1857, his family moved to Codnor when he was 8 and he began work immediately at Waingroves pit, at a wage of one shilling per day for a twelve-hour shift. After a spell on a farm in Staffordshire, the family moved back to Codnor and Thomas returned to work in a pit.

Aged 12, he ran away from home but was quickly returned and sent back to work. At 21, at the Pear Tree Inn in Ripley, he enlisted in the army. His regiment received their colours from Queen Victoria in Windsor and in 1879 were sent to South Africa.

He fought in the Zulu war and survived. On one march, he remembered seeing a large iron bridge marked with the words “Butterley Company, Ripley”. He left South Africa for India and stayed there 4 years before returning to England and civilian life in 1884.

Again, he returned to pit work. He married in 1886 and the family moved briefly to the North-East before returning to Codnor. They had nine children but only 6 survived into adulthood.

In 1900 he was called up into the army for the Boer war, but this time didn’t leave the country. In later life he lost his sight, but still lived to the age of 84. By then he was living in Heanor, and was the town’s “oldest soldier resident”.

His life was, no doubt, a “struggle” but in recording it he gave us a valuable insight into the past, thanks to his great-grandson Stephen Morse who preserved the account.