Lord Brassey and the mines in Sardinia

The enlightened entrepreneur who looked after the accounts of the mining company and the welfare of the workers, with an eye to the environment and the land. Leading this 'revolution' in the early 1900s with major technical and social changes in the mines of Ingurtosu and Gennamari at Arbus and San Giovanni at Iglesias in Sardinia was Thomas Allnutt Brassey. An enlightened and far-sighted man that Mauro Giuseppe Buosi, a geologist with long experience in mining, recounts in his book 'Lord Brassey, Lord Thomas Allnutt Brassey, Genius and Enterprise of an Aristocrat in Sardinia'.

It is a journey through an ever-changing world, where the progress that has characterised mining, the advent of technology and research, has travelled in parallel with the welfare of the workers. "The mining industry managed in Sardinia, specifically in the Ingurtosu, Gennamari and San Giovanni operations," writes journalist Giampaolo Meloni in the presentation, "represent the greatest commitment both in terms of industrial enterprise and in the attention paid to the human and social relationship with employees.

'Just as he made lead and zinc production grow,' Meloni continues, 'he similarly took care of the needs of the community that grew and demanded better conditions of wages and quality of life'. A course that Mauro Buosi reconstructs with photos, documents and written accounts of a period that left its mark on the mining population. It is certainly no coincidence that among the documents recovered by Mauro Buosi in his research that spanned Italy and Great Britain, there is also the letter that, in 1919, the workers of the Ingurtosu mining district sent to Lady Brassey following the death 'of their master', in which they wrote 'The best man in our World'. A definition with good reason and not by chance since it was Brassey himself who set up, for the workers in his mines, insurance for accidents at work, a medical service with free care and medicine, schools for the workers' children and mine hospitals. And then the messages for the holidays, the thanks of the workers and the wishes of the 'master' who speaks of the perspective and importance of the work of the workers. An epic that ends when Brassey disappears because, whoever comes in his place, has a different vision. Not a nostalgic book, but a piece in the great mosaic that tells the story of the mining epic, made up of ups and downs, protests and conquests. And progress.

"Lord Brassey, Lord Thomas Allnutt Brassey, Genius and Enterprise of an Aristocrat in Sardinia", published by Isolapalma, 291 pages, 60 euro