"No, they had to make sure hey could go on working,.....but they also had to make sure they could never run away.The operation was called "hobbling"."
Ever since I saw Stephen King's Misery, I wondered if mines ever did this. I had it in my mind that a Diamond mine in Africa was being referenced. I think it might be possible that Stephen King just made this up, but it seems like a very specific social practice, and I wonder if it ever really existed.
If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, in the movie the woman in question break's the main character's ankles with a Sledge Hammer in order to keep him from leaving. In the book, there isn't the same quote about hobbling but there the main character's foot is amputated.
Did mines ever break or amputate worker's legs in order to keep them from leaving the mine?
Edit: I found that the movie references the Kimberly Diamond Mine in Africa. Please extend my question to any other mine besides this one, I am interested to hear that as well.
I have never heard of this, because the compound system made it simply unnecessary in the De Beers era, and before that pay was actually something approaching adequate. The Cape Colony and Griqualand West before it had no laws against non-white prospectors, either, so a few early arrivals were not mere laborers. These workers and diggers wanted to make enough money to return home to the Highveld with guns and livestock, the marks of independent life and social wealth. Multi-year contracts and permanent settlement came later. See Worger's South Africa's City of Diamonds for some of this, though it is older.
Besides that, hobbling was counterproductive for mining in an era of manual retrieval, which the mines were well into the 20th century. Try swinging a pick, loading a cart, or even working a pneumatic drill with broken or malformed feet, and you'd see the point. Besides, such treatment would have created the worker revolts the conglomerates feared.
I won't say it never happened, in the wilder era of the early rush, but I've never heard of it.