The Heritage and Culture of Merthyr Tydfil
The summer of 1899 was one of the hottest on records in Britain, indeed, it was recorded that it was the fourth hottest summer recorded since 1659. As a result of the weather, the whole of the country was suffering from a drought. Merthyr was no exception, however in August of that year, a number of burst water mains in the town exacerbated the situation.
These problems were reported in several newspapers 120 years ago today (26 August 1899):-
…..and on a lighter note:-
Following on (indirectly) from our last post, the news report transcribed below appeared in the Western Mail 145 years ago today (24 August 1874)
ACCIDENT ON THE BRECON AND MERTHYR RAILWAY
A STOKER KILLED AND A PASSENGER INJURED
On Saturday evening another accident occurred on the Brecon and Merthyr Railway, when the last evening train was wending its way from Brecon to Newport. At a quarter past six o’clock, just as the passenger train had approached Pant station at the point of junction which leads to the Dowlais branch, the engine, from some defect in the points or otherwise, left the rails, and, after an abrupt deviation towards the Dowlais branch, came to a standstill.
The stoker, on perceiving something wrong, either jumped off, or was violently thrown from the footplate of the engine. He was instantaneously killed. His name is John Price, of 26, Dolphin-street, Newport. The engine dragged after it one carriage, which appears to have become separated from the other portion of the train at the time of the accident, and in this carriage was a woman, named Elizabeth Jefferies, wife of a bailer at Ebbw Vale, whose leg was broken. The rear portion of the train passed for a short way along the main line. It contained a great many passengers, none of whom sustained injury. The injured woman was conveyed to the Bruce Hotel, Dowlais, where she received every treatment from Dr. Griffiths, of Dowlais. An inquest will be held on the deceased as soon, as practicable.
ANOTHER ACCOUNT
(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT)
MERTHYR, SUNDAY
This line seems fated to become notorious in the annals of accidents. The inquest has not yet been held over the remains of the victims of the last, when another occurs, and this time to a passenger train.
On Saturday evening the “4.30 passenger” from Brecon to Newport was arriving at the Pant Station, a little way from Dowlais, and where the main line to Newport forms a junction with the branch to Dowlais, when the locomotive suddenly left the metals, and a scene of wreck and disaster at once occurred. Though only 500 yards or so from the station, the pace of the train was rapid. I am not aware whether the carriages are furnished with continuous breaks, but I believe this is the case, and thus up to the closest vicinity of the station the pace is rapid. The locomotive kept exceedingly close to the metals, but it must be noted for future examination on the Pant side.
Some of the carriages were upset, and two of the passengers at least severely injured. One of them at the moment of the accident opened the carriage and jumped out and broke her leg. She was a very stout woman, and this case may be serious. One of the carriages was completely overturned, and the passengers thrown in a heap, but no bones were broken. The stoker, a young married man, named Price, aged 26, was thrown under the wheels of the locomotive and instantly killed. This was the only death, but the injuries received were numerous, though all but two managed to go on with the train.
The scene of the accident has been thronged, but only a heap of matchwood, the remains of one of the carriages, showed where the calamity took place.
It seems a difficult matter to account for the accident. Had the points been at “half”, precisely the same thing would have occurred, but in this case the points are worked from the signal box, and were locked at the time. It will be seen by the official inspector’s report that the first trace of leaving the metals is at the points, and the first blow on one of the fish-plates. Could the flange of the wheel have struck this at a critical place, the facing points just before or on a curve are extremely dangerous, and should be altered.
This is the first accident that has occurred in the locality, which is one of great archaeological interest. The place is called Pantcoed Ivor, and is so named from the redoubtable worthy who scaled Cardiff Castle and sorely grieved the doughty earls of Glamorgan in days of yore. Nearby is a hollow where he is traditionally supposed to have fought his last battle, and on the other side a place called Rhyd-y-bedd, which is associated with his burial. Here, then, by ancient wells, and amidst the moss and the ivy of the past, comes another railway disaster, and its scenic accompaniments, which, too often, alas, mar one of the noblest handmaids of civilization. Where Ivor Bach marched in battle array the locomotive sweeps, and trains of commerce and pleasure are rapidly brushing aside a locality which is only again brought into notice by this railway catastrophe.
by Sarnws
Ivor Street in particular had a reputation for being generous to beggars, who in those days would just walk up the middle of the road, often silent, cap in hand, and the children would run in to tell their mothers, who in turn would spare a few coppers.
This was in the thirties. By now we had moved from “Merthyr” which generally describes Merthyr itself, Dowlais, Penydarren, Heolgerrig, Pant, Georgetown Twynyrodyn etc. One day I dashed in from the street, quite excited, to tell my mother that there was a beggar, cap in hand, walking down the middle of the road just chanting “Ho Hum, Ho Hum” repetitively. She was as excited as I was and in turn dashed out to put something in his hat. It was a link with “home”, for he was well known to her.
I remember that beggars were quite a common sight. My father in the very early nineteen hundreds, before going to work as an apprentice blacksmith, worked in Toomeys. He was paying in to the bank one day when a beggar who used to push himself around, mounted on a small flat trolley with the aid if two short sticks, was paying in. When he reached the counter, the clerk checking in not an insignificant amount asked if he had had a good day. The reply was, “Average”.
On a few occasions at about 8.30 pm on a Saturday there would be a message from one of the houses in Pontsarn or Pontsicill, to the effect that some friends had dropped in so would Mr. Toomey send up the brace of pheasants he had hanging. My father would be sent on the errand, having been given two-pence for the tram, and with the kind instruction that he needn’t come back.
Until the day she died, sadly quite young, if someone asked my mother when making her way to the train for her weekly visit, where she was going, the reply was always the same, “Home for the day”.
I remember my father, when on a visit to Merthyr when Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles were still there, showing me the Trevithick memorial in Pontmorlais, and being brought up with knowledge of the social and industrial heritage of “Merthyr” and its contribution to the world.
Is it possible when the light is just right that a mirage of the Coal Arch can be seen?
Does the glow from the Bessemer converter still light the night sky?
When I retired, thirty years ago I took the elderly aunt of a colleague to lunch in the Teapot Cafe at the end of the Station Arcade, which was the main exit from Brunel’s station. A lady came in with her husband, nodded to me and smiled. She turned to her husband and I could see her say, ”I know that gentleman”. I could not place her, and just nodded as we left.
A little while later I saw her again in the company of friends or family one of whom I knew. I was drawn into their company. The lady had been living on Orpington as teacher and then head teacher for thirty-five years, so had not encountered me in that time. It transpired that she remembered me from Dowlais school, fifty years before.
My son has a silver pocket watch and chain, given to me by my uncle, of the same christian name just before he died. It was bequeathed to him by an 
uncle, again of the same name. His aunt had it serviced for him by the clockmaker half way up the arcade. That must have been about 1920.
As you entered that clockmaker’s premises, facing you was a huge grandfather clock. Integral with the pendulum was a cylinder of mercury. This expanded and contracted with temperature change, compensating for the temperature variation in the length of the pendulum rod, seemingly so simple a concept, but how brilliant.
I was telling a colleague, who had been brought up in Dowlais, but previously unknown to me, that I could remember standing under the railway bridge at the end of Station Road, sheltering from the rain, and watching the Fish and Chip shop opposite, in Victoria Street I think, burning down. He turned and said that he had been there too. That had happened, I think, in the winter of 38/39. Thirty-five years or so before.
I have tooted the car horn many times on Johnny Owen, out for his morning run. I always got a wave of the hand in return. What a number of boxers and other sportspeople Merthyr has produced. The last years of my working life were in Merthyr, and being steeped in its history by my parents, it was interesting to encounter family names which were familiar to me, particularly the Spanish ones, as I was familiar with their family histories to some extent.
My parents are buried in Pant Cemetery, as are Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles, Cousins and more. Whenever I visit I cannot but drive around Dowlais, now much changed, but a place to which I am still drawn.
Except for one year, October ‘38 to September ‘39, when I attended Dowlais Junior School, and was a patient for three months in the childrens’ hospital which occupied the original Sandbrook House, I have not lived in Merthyr since I was a baby. When I was discharged from Sandbrook House I had been indoors for nearly the whole of my stay and insisted on riding up as far as the Hollybush Hotel on the open top deck of the tram. The era of the tram ended very shortly afterwards.
I seem to have read or heard somewhere that nature has implanted within you a sacred and indissoluble attachment to the place of your birth and infant nurture, perhaps Tydfil’s martyrdom has created this aura about Merthyr which evokes such hiraeth.
by “Sarnws”
If only I could sleep just for one night, in winter, in the front bedroom of the house which now stands where my grandfather’s did, in Church Row in Dowlais, nearly on the corner of Ivor Street, would I in that early morning reverie, half awake and half asleep, hear the frost hardened paving stones ringing with the footsteps of hundreds and hundreds of men making their way to the Ivor Works and the trains taking them over Dowlais Top to the mines and coke ovens beyond?
Are too, the ghosts of women scurrying from the Tip Station along Station Road and Church Row, past the Bonevitch’s shop, to Dowlais Market, with a basket of merchandise in the crook of each elbow to be seen?
In those days when times were hard, “Daddy Thorn”, as he was known to the local children would come out of retirement as a sugar puller, and make a walking stick of “rock” for a birthday present. This fuelled our activities as roller skating was a popular pastime, and Church Row was surfaced and as smooth as silk. I can now admit to stealing grease from the axle boxes of the goods wagons parked opposite the Stables by the market for my roller skate wheels, as the statute of limitations applies, hopefully.
You could buy spare roller skate wheels from Atkins the ironmonger down the hill from the Co-op, and I often went there to buy “carbide” for my grandfather’s flame lamp.
Dowlais Library was, still is I think, just by the site of the Co-op, and even though I did not appreciate it at the time, was told later that the librarian was so addicted to snuff that every book was so scented.
I would go to the Co-op to fetch pipe tobacco for my grandfather, which came in a foil sealed tin. I still remember the aroma as the foil was peeled back. One of the staff on the provision counter was a Mr. Sheen, always in immaculate whites. To see him boning out a side of bacon was a demonstration of skill. In those days bacon was not laid out ready, but cut on demand. If it ran out you would patiently wait and look on as the Provisions hand fetched and boned another side.
If the “American Cheese” came to an end the provision hand would appear embracing a barrel shaped cheese weighing fifty-six pounds, and cut it up with the wire cheese cutter. Everyone waited, with no complaints.
At the end of Mary Ann Street there stood a bakery which in summer would be open to the world, where real bread was baked.
In Dowlais market the stall always doing a roaring trade was the faggots and peas stall. Traditionally most people would add a sprinkling of vinegar, probably to cut the richness of the faggots.
One regular vendor was the man selling corn ointment, who, to demonstrate the effectiveness of his treatment would stamp his highly polished black boots on the flagstones.
I was told of one old lady, a self appointed arbiter of the quality of poultry sold in the market, who never bought a bird, but would go from stall to stall prodding the breasts of the chicken on show with a hatpin. She would then pronounce on the quality of the merchandise.
An older colleague could remember the matriarch of a rather rough and ready family who on pay day would take the husband’s pay, go down to the market, and buy and don a new apron. She would then gather up the hem to form a shopping bag, and do the weekly shop . When the family had consumed her purchases, they went hungry ‘till the next pay day.
If the term “Disposable Income” had been common parlance then it would have had no relevance for the majority who survived from pay day to pay day.
Dowlais in the 1930’s. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm
To be continued…….
From the Merthyr Express 110 years ago today (24 July 1909):
In our last but one post (http://www.merthyr-history.com/?p=3174), mention was made of the arrest of Dick Tamar for the murder of his mother. Below, courtesy of Carl Llewellyn, is a transcription of the report of his confession and execution, that appeared in The Cambrian on 30 July 1842.
In a Second Edition of our last number, we published a report of the Execution and Confession of Richard Edwards, alias Dick Tamar, who at the last Assizes for this County was found guilty of the Murder of his Mother, Tamar Edwards. We this week republish the same for the information of our distant readers: –
This atrocious Criminal was executed at Cardiff this morning (Saturday). The convict was visited on Friday night by the Rev. Mr. Stacey, who remained with him for several hours. He seemed to be perfectly resigned to his fate, and frequently offered up prayers to the throne of grace for mercy in the last hour. We understand that several of the Dissenting ministers of Cardiff applied for permission to visit the wretched man, but that he declined seeing any spiritual teacher except the Reverend Chaplain, whose incessant endeavors to bring the poor creature to a proper sense of his situation, are beyond all praise.
Tamar slept soundly after the Reverend Chaplain left him. At twelve o’clock be awoke and left his bed. He expressed himself as being perfectly easy, and appeared firm and collected. At an early hour this morning (Saturday) crowds assembled round the goal, which gradually increased to about eleven thousand persons. At the dawn of day, the worthy Chaplain visited Tamar. Shortly before six o’clock, he asked for tea and bread and butter, and smoked a pipe with apparent unconcern. He observed to the Governor about this time that he was in “very good spirits”.
The Sheriff arrived at the goal at half-past seven in the morning. Edwards was then engaged in prayer with the Chaplain. Shortly before eight o’clock the Sheriff, accompanied by the officers of justice, proceeded to the condemned cell, and formally demanded the body of its miserable inhabitant. Having taken leave of the Chaplain, Edwards was placed under the hands of the executioner, who pinioned him in the cell. Dick repeatedly protested his innocence he underwent the terrible operation with remarkable firmness. The mournful procession then moved down the pathway in front of the Governor’s House, the Chaplain reading portions of the Burial Service. The convict did not show any fear, he wept slightly. Assisted by two turnkeys, he mounted the scaffold, on which he stood with the utmost firmness. Just prior to the rope being placed round his neck he said, “Hear me, I have been guilty of every crime except murder and thieving.” The fatal knot was then tied, and the cap drawn over the criminal’s face, not a muscle quivered – the bolt was then withdrawn, and Dick Tamar after one or two struggles ceased to exist. He did not appear to suffer much.
The body of the criminal was suspended for an hour, and then cut down. Several medical gentlemen were present for the purpose of taking a cast from the head.
Thus, died the Merthyr murderer whose name and crimes will be long remembered.
At the convict’s urgent request, the Holy Communion was administered him. On being asked how he felt, he said, “I have confidence, and hold fast in God’s mercy to me.” He frequently repeated the following verses, which he had committed at some previous time, to memory:-
Mae’r dydd bron myned heibio,
Mae’r haul bron myned lawr,
Mae’n amser ninnau’n tynu
Tua thragywyddoldeb mawr.
Mi af o flaen yr Orsedd,
Er dued yw fy lliw,
Pwv wyr na cha’i drugaredd,
Un rhyfedd iawn yw Duw.
O Arglwydd cladd fy meiau
Cyn fy nghladdu i,
Mewn eigion mor o angof
Sydd yn dy gariad di.
Ni alla’i ddim gwynebu,
Dydd y farn sy’ ddod,
Os na fydd claddu beiau
Cyn hynny wedi bod.
The following is a translation of the above:- “The day is nearly gone, the sun is nearly setting, and our time is drawing towards Eternity. I shall go before the judgement seat, though my crimes are so black; and who knows but that I shall obtain mercy, for God is wonderingly gracious. Oh! Lord, bury my sins before I shall be buried in the depths of Thy love; for I cannot face the day of Judgment, which is to come, unless my sins are buried before that lakes place”.
CONFESSION OF RICHARD EDWARDS.
In the early part of the week, the Culprit made the following statement to the Chaplain:-
“I was not alone when my mother came by her death There were three presents beside me. My child (10 months old), was in bed in the room. My mother died on Thursday night. When dead, two women placed my mother in bed beside my little boy, where the corpse remained until the Monday night following. The two other persons present, beside me and my wife, when my mother died, were the nearest relations of Peggy (my wife). Peggy and the other person had been in the womb of the other. These three persons told my father-in-law and my mother-in-law’s sister, that they had passed that night in Cefn Coed Cymmer. I gave my mother a blow about the jaw, because Peggy cried out that my mother was beating her. My mother fell down under my blow.
Peggy, her mother, and brother then laid hold on my mother. My mother did not speak; she groaned for some time. I saw Peggy and the other two squeezing her throat until she ceased groaning. I was in liquor: the three others were not. This happened about 12 or 1 o’clock, I cannot tell exactly, for there was no clock or watch there. And now, if Peggy had been allowed to be examined by me in the Hall, I would have made all this known then. Peggy asked me to bury her. I said I would not, I would leave her there, for I was afraid to be seen. I told them they had killed my mother. They begged me to keep everything secret. We all remained in the house till the dawn of day. I then went up to Dowlais, and the others returned home (to my father-in-law’s, as they say) and told their story about being at night at Coed y Cymmer.
I met my wife again about six o’clock the evening of the following Monday, at her aunt’s house, at Cae Draw (Jane Phillips’s) and we went together, the child in her arms, to my mother’s house. My wife placed the child in the opposite side of the bed to where my mother’s body was lying. We then together dragged the corpse out, and placed it under the bed. We continued to live in the house dining the rest of the week sleeping five nights in the bed under which the corpse lay! I was full of anxiety all the week, and on Saturday I started off the day my mother’s body was discovered, leaving my wife in my mother’s house. I was absent from Saturday until the following Wednesday, when I was apprehended in the Cast-House at Dyffryn, and wandering about.
I tell the best truth – the truth I should tell in the presence of God, where I shall he next Saturday – to you now. My blow did not kill my mother, for she groaned afterwards. Her death was caused by their meddling and scuffling with her on the ground. I know not exactly ill what manner. I mean Peggy, and her mother, and brother was scuffling with her. Neither of these three charged me at this time with having killed my mother. This is all true as I shall answer to God. I know nothing of the death of any other human being, male or female. If I did, I should confess it now, having gone so far. But I am guilty of every other sin or crime, excepting theft or murder. And now I have no more to say, having told the whole truth, and my heart is already feeling light. I began to feel lighter yesterday, when I determined and promised you to confess everything”.
The mark X of RICHARD EDWARDS
The whole of the foregoing statement was read over in Welsh by Mr. Stacey, and explained to Richard Edwards, and signed with the mark by him in my presence, this 18th day of July 1842.
JNO. B. WOODS,
Governor of the County Gaol
From the Merthyr Express 110 years ago today (5 June 1909):
by Dr Meilyr Powel
Over the past few months I’ve been working on a small project to re-house a war memorial from the First World War. The plaque commemorates three members of Elizabeth Street Presbyterian Church, Dowlais, who were killed during the war: Able Seaman David Albert Stephens; Private Archie Vincent Evans; and Second Lieutenant Thomas Glyn Nicholas.
The plaque was discovered in a second hand ‘junk’ sale, and together with my supervisor at the time at Swansea University, Dr Gethin Matthews, we applied for a collaborative research grant from the First World War Network to re-house the memorial as an exhibition at Cyfarthfa Castle, Merthyr.
The project has now been completed, with the exhibition being unveiled to the public on Saturday 4 May during an afternoon of talks on Merthyr and the First World War. Two information panels accompany the display of the plaque, along with the production of a small booklet with additional information on the three men and war memorials in general.
The first name that appears on the war memorial plaque is that of David Albert Stephens. After doing some research, we know now that Able Seaman D. Albert Stephens was killed in the largest sea battle of the war, at Jutland on 31 May 1916. Albert, originally from Llandovery, married Dowlais born Catherine and had two young children, Katie and Thomas. They were all bilingual and Albert worked as a stoker in the local iron works when war broke out.
At Jutland, Albert was a gunner on board HMS Invincible, part of Rear Admiral Horace Hood’s 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron, when it was hit in the turret amidships, which detonated the magazines below, caused a huge explosion, and split the ship in two before sinking. It took just 90 seconds for the Invincible to sink. Thousands of sailors perished at this fateful battle. Indeed, the Battle of Jutland involved around 100,000 men in 151 British and 99 German ships, and lasted 72 hours with over 8,000 shells fired. Only six out of 1,032 crew members of the Invincible survived, but Albert wasn’t one of them. His name also appears on Plymouth Naval Memorial.
Private Archie Vincent Evans is the second name on the memorial. Archie was born in 1892 in Treorchy to Thomas and Henrietta Evans. He had three younger brothers, Tom, Trevor, and Harold, and lived at Lower Union Street, having previously lived at Horse Street. Archie and his parents were bilingual, although his brothers were noted as English speaking only. His father, Thomas, was a restaurant owner and former rail inspector, while Archie himself worked as a grocer’s assistant with William Harris and Sons in Alma Street.
Archie served with the 9th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, which was part of 36 Infantry Brigade, 12th (Eastern) Division. It appears he was conscripted to the army in 1916, and in October that year his battalion launched an attack at Le Transloy, just west of the village of Gueudecourt on the Somme. The attack was a total failure, the battalion losing 15 officers and 250 other ranks that day. Archie, just twenty-four years old, was killed in the attack. His name also appears on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme.
Second Lieutenant Thomas Glyn Nicholas is the last name on the memorial. The son of Thomas Richard and Mary Jane Nicholas, and brother of Rees and Dilys, Thomas was articled to the solicitors D. W. Jones and Co. before volunteering for service in the army. His father had been a clerk at Lloyd’s Bank. Thomas was educated at Merthyr County School and Worcester Grammar School and seemed set for a long career in the legal profession before the war began.
Following the outbreak of war, duty called for Thomas, and on 15 July 1915 he received his commission as a Second Lieutenant. He was assigned to the 18th Battalion (2nd Glamorgan) Welsh Regiment. This battalion was formed in Cardiff in January 1915 as a Bantam Battalion, a battalion which had lowered the minimum height requirement for recruits from five foot three to five feet. However, he was soon attached to the 14th Battalion (Swansea Pals) Welsh Regiment.
Thomas was part of a working party with the 14th Battalion when he was killed in February 1917 at East Canal Bank on the Ypres Salient. Thomas was the only man in the battalion killed or wounded that day. He was just twenty years old. He is buried in Bard Cottage, Belgium, and his name also appears on Merthyr County School’s own memorial.
The Merthyr Express reported Thomas’ death and quoted Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Hayes, writing to Thomas’ parents: ‘His death will be a great loss to the battalion. He was always cheerful under all conditions, however bad they were. I looked upon him as one of my most promising young officers.’
Elizabeth Street Church remembers
After the war, state and civil institutions began to commemorate the dead. Cenotaphs were erected in many towns and cities, with London’s Whitehall Cenotaph, unveiled on 11 November 1920, providing an official site of remembrance for the British, and later Commonwealth, dead. Many of the public monuments built in towns and villages throughout Wales were subsequently based on Edwin Lutyens’ design of the Whitehall Cenotaph.
Churches, schools, clubs, and societies also honoured their members who were killed during the war. Around 35,000 Welshmen were killed during the First World War and many of them are remembered on plaques such as this, from Elizabeth Street Presbyterian Church, Dowlais.
David Albert Stephens, Archie Vincent Evans, and Thomas Glyn Nicholas were not the only members of their church to have served during the war.
In addition to several other members, the minister himself, the Reverend Thomas James, joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and served on both the French and Italian fronts.
This memorial plaque is representative of hundreds of chapels and churches across Wales which saw their members enlist in the forces during the First World War. The fact that so many Welshmen did not return home is testimony to the devastating impact of the war on communities across the country. In one church in Dowlais, it was felt deeply.
From the South Wales Daily News 120 years ago today….
