Subjects

• gold mines,
• mining equipment,
• mercury bucket,
• miners used mercury in a number of ways to amalgamate gold,
• with each mill or battery operator having their preferred method depending on the nature of the ore. by the late 1850s the most common way of crushing goldbearing quartz ores or consolidated alluvial cements was in a stamp battery. the battery featured heavy iron stamp heads held in a frame,
• with each head often weighing up to 500 pounds (226 kg) or more (see msv 1880,
• page 45) (birrell 2005). stamp heads were lifted and dropped by a rotating overhead cam shaft driven by a steam engine or water wheel. ore was fed into a large cast-iron battery box,
• mixed with a steady stream of water,
• and pulverised by the stamp heads. in some batteries,
• mercury was placed in the base of the boxes to amalgamate with freed gold. the violent agitation of the mercury in the mortar box,
• however,
• could cause the mercury to break into myriad tiny globules that were carried away by the water with the tailings,
• thus losing a certain amount of gold in the process (thompson 1867; ritchie & hooker 1997). the water and sand slurry was splashed by the falling stamps from the box through fine mesh screens and onto inclined wooden tables below the mortar box (figure 2). the tables were covered with copper sheets or plates coated with mercury,
• which caught and amalgamated with a portion of the gold. the grey putty-like amalgam was periodically scraped off the sheets and retorted in a furnace to collect the gold and recover the mercury for reuse. mercury was inevitably lost from the plates,
• while poor maintenance resulted in further losses of gold and mercury in the tailings. mercury use and loss from gold mining in 19th century victoria. peter davies1,
• susan lawrence,
• and jodi turnbull,
• department of archaeology and history,
• la trobe university.