She is a gifted chemist and is using the set-up of the washhouse to anaesthetise the miners and distill from them the neuro-chemicals that enable sleep.
The disputes between coal companies and miners over wages and working conditions were always rancorous and often violent, typical for the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Larvae are typically herbivores and feed on the foliage of trees and shrubs, with occasional exceptions that are leaf miners, stem borers, or gall makers.