His country was still fighting the First World War when Mr Cowan, from Fife, left school to become a miner at the age of 14. He retired in 1965 and died, his health broken, ten years later.

Mr Cowan had seven children, who became accustomed to their father’s constant battle for breath.

James Cowan, now aged 70, has a vivid childhood memory of a holiday when, although he had been nowhere near a pit for a week, his father suddenly had a coughing fit “and spat up coal dust”.

“It’ll be the death of me,” he told his son.

Mr Cowan remembers his father telling him that in 1917 the 14-year-old ventured — for the first and last time — to complain about the choking coal dust he was inhaling. “They told him that it was organic and wouldn’t do him any harm. So that was that.”

When British Coal was finally ordered by the courts to pay compensation to miners — or their families, if they had already died — whose work had led to chronic chest disease, the Cowan family did not think to apply. One day, however, a flyer dropped through the letterbox of Janet Noble, one of Mr Cowan’s daughters, from a Newcastle firm of solicitors, Mark Gilbert Morse. This proclaimed its expertise in winning compensation for miners.

Her claim was registered in 2003 and in June a letter finally arrived from the firm: “I am writing to inform you I have now received a full and final settlement offer which would result in a payment to the estate of £7.13.”

It is likely that the size of the award was reduced because Mr Cowan was an ex-smoker — ten cigarettes a day until his early fifties — and because British Coal was found liable only for employment after 1954.

His son told The Times that he would have felt less insulted if someone had walked up and spat in his face. “My father retired on a pitiful pension and our mother spent the last 18 years of her life without a husband. That offer was an absolute insult.”

The family refused to accept the offer, which may turn out to have been a wise decision. If, as seems likely, a £500 minimum payment is introduced, they will benefit from it, unlike the 27,000 claimants who have already settled for an award of less than £500.

Mark Gilbert Morse, meanwhile, continues to prosper. The firm has registered more than 25,000 claims. Of these, 14,776 have been settled, for which the lawyers have been paid £41.7 million by the Government, an average of £2,820 per claim.

When it first began handling claims, the firm’s lawyers sliced up to 25 per cent from the compensation awards made to its clients.

Although it has insisted that such deductions “were in accordance with the law and guidelines at the time”, Mark Gilbert Morse says that it has now voluntarily chosen to re-pay all the money it took from claimants’ compensation.

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