From the Cardiff & Merthyr Guardian 160 years ago today….
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The Dowlais Boiler Explosion of November 1836
by Victoria Owens
185 years ago today, a terrible explosion occurred at the Dowlais Ironworks. To mark the anniversary, eminent historian, and biographer of Lady Charlotte Guest, Victoria Owens, has written the following article.
Although nineteenth century industry relied heavily upon steam power, people were slow to recognise the dangers that it presented. In 1836, an accident occurred at Dowlais which showed just what elemental peril high pressure steam could present. Dowlais House, home of ironmaster Josiah John Guest and his family, stood on the very margin of the Dowlais Ironworks and in her journal Guest’s wife Lady Charlotte wrote a graphic account of the boiler explosion that took place one November morning.
Guest had risen early. His nephew Edward Hutchins hoped shortly to purchase a share in Thomas and Richard Brown’s Blaina Iron Company and the two men planned to visit the Browns’ Works on the Ebwy fach riverin the course of the day. Charlotte got up while her husband was breakfasting, and as she dressed, she distinctly felt the house tremble. At first, it reminded her of what she had read about earthquakes – not a phenomenon of which she had any direct experience – and she reasoned that ‘something – not perhaps very awful – must have happened at the works.’ Hearing a window rattle she assumed, undaunted, that her fourteen-month old son Ivor was amusing himself by shaking it.
A vast explosion, the crash of a falling stack and the sound of bricks cascading onto the roof of the house disabused her of her error, and hearing the sound of escaping steam, she guessed that a boiler had burst. It was, she realised, ‘the centre one of the New Forge Engine, and consequently very near the House, towards which all the fury of the explosion was directed.’ While it was not unusual for eighteenth and early nineteenth century industrialists to live close to their works, 1836 plans of the Dowlais Works show the New Forge with its engine actually bordering the gardens of Dowlais House which was left ‘strewn with bricks, cinders and broken glass.’ Amazed and appalled, Charlotte later found a brick in her bed and discovered a heavy piece of iron ‘weighing several pounds’ embedded in an internal wall. Apparently it had passed straight between two servants as they chatted in the first-floor corridor. Meanwhile, a couple of workmen on the charging platform by the furnaces had an equally lucky escape. According to Charlotte, a ‘steam pipe fell between them and the furnace they were charging upon the bar they were using, which it knocked out of their hand.’ If the sentence-structure is somewhat awkward, it may reflect her shock at recalling how she saw the projectile strike the bar used to thrust coke, ore and flux into the furnace mouth clean out of the men’s hands. George Childs’ 1840 depiction of Dowlais labourers gives an idea of the impact that the sight must have made on her. ‘Most thankful I was,’ she wrote later, ‘that we were all in the house together. Had Merthyr [her private name for her husband] been in the works (which he would have been a quarter of an hour later) my alarm would have been infinitely greater.’ Caught in the blast, the boiler stack seemed to rise from its base to pause, ‘as if poised,’ in the air before crashing down from its 120 foot height across the Guests’ lawn, breaking all their windows’ and killing a man and a boy as it fell..
Outside her bedroom, Charlotte found Susan the nursemaid with young Ivor in the passage. As they ran downstairs in search of John, they felt the whole building shake. John was, in fact, already hastening upstairs to look for them and husband and wife simultaneously realised, appalled, that neither of them knew what had happened to their two-year old daughter Maria. Charlotte thought she had been eating an early breakfast with her father while John, in the stress of the moment, could not remember what he had done with her or whether she had even been with him. After a few moments of numb alarm, they found the little girl safe with the housekeeper, neither hurt nor unduly frightened. Seeing a crowd surge across his garden John went out to comfort them as best he could, before seeking to assess the extent of the damage to the works’ buildings.
The following week’s edition of the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian carried not only a report of the explosion but also a comprehensive description of the boiler. A new installation, it was apparently 42 feet long and 6 feet in diameter. Despite weighing 18 tons and being embedded in solid masonry, it had burst with enough force to thrust it clean off its foundation and carry it over some ten yards’ distance before coming to rest at right-angles to its original position. A large piece of flying masonry had hit a house nearby, home to seven people. The man who had been sleeping in the room into which it actually landed somehow avoided injury, but not all the inhabitants were so lucky. John Howe, a fireman, and the boys David Thomas and John Jones both lost their lives, while ‘the wife of Daniel James, founder’ was badly injured. Meanwhile the New Forge where the boiler had been located, was blown to smithereens – ‘damage’ which the newspaper estimated at not less than £1000, ‘without taking into account the loss occasioned by the suspension of the works.’
At the inquest following the explosion, the jury returned a verdict of accidental death upon the deceased. Significantly, the coroner explicitly ruled out any question of culpability on the part of the Dowlais Company’s chief engineer John Watt. Local opinion – and presumably Watt himself – linked the cause of the explosion to the rupture of a boiler-plate immediately over the fire. The Dowlais Company’s decision in 1838 to name a new plateway locomotive ‘John Watt’ may well reflect the esteem in which John Guest held his colleague.
For general information about boiler explosions, see http://www.historywebsite.co.uk/articles/boiler/explosions.htm
Memories of Old Merthyr
We continue our serialisation of the memories of Merthyr in the 1830’s by an un-named correspondent to the Merthyr Express, courtesy of Michael Donovan.
We must now start from the Dynevor Arms towards the Iron Bridge. A curriery premises was erected and for some time carried on a little way down on the right hand by Messrs M. Davies and Wayne. This was one of the Davies’s of Pantyscallog and a Wayne of the Gadlys, but Mr Wayne migrated to the Carmarthen Tinplate Works, which he carried on for many years.
Anterior to the curriery there was in this very locality a nailmaker working by the name of Samuel Jones. At this time all nails were made by hand (cut and wire nails not yet known). They were all made of slit rods, a process that, as far as South Wales works are concerned, has entirely ceased, and the making of a nail was really a good specimen of the handicraft. There was a small bellows blowing upon the point of the nail, and the work was always carefully held so that the air current passed up the rod. The why and wherefore of this has many a time been thought over, and I acknowledge that no satisfactory solution has ever been found.
Lower down was the residence of of Mr Coffin, who, in addition to curriery, was, or had been, the clerk of the Small Debts Court, and thus became very obnoxious to some, so that at the time of the Merthyr Riots his house and furniture suffered damage at the hands of the mob. One of his daughters afterwards married Mr Thomas Wayne, and resided at Glancynon, near the Gadlys. The other married a Mr William Llewellyn, of Abercarn, the then mineral and other agent of the Llanover Estates. There was a jeu d’esprit in the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian in or about the time of Mr Wayne’s marriage, showing how very careful he had been, for he not only obtained a wife, but a coffin also.
The British Schools followed Mr Coffin’s garden, and then the Three Horse Shoes Inn, kept by a Daniel Stephens. The next and adjoining was the premises of Mr John Bryant, whose curriery was (as Mr Coffin’s was also) across the road, and Mr Bryant also took Pride’s storehouse for his trade purposes after the railway had rendered canal traffic obsolete, or rather obsolete as far as shop goods were concerned, to Merthyr at that time.
Close to Mr Bryant’s house is a way to Aberdare, which joins the road up from the Dynevor Arms, close beyond Mr Jeffries’ house. On the opposite side of this opening was the Cyfarthfa Surgery. Mr Edward Davies was the head, and in physique always reminded me of the Emperor Nicholas of Russia. Years after, Dr Davies lived at the Court House, and practised after he had left Cyfarthfa. The Miners’ Arms was adjoining. The residences coming next were built by a Mr Teague subsequently.
To be continued at a later date…….
A New Cemetery
The article transcribed below appeared in the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian 160 years ago today (7 May 1859).
Our new necropolis has this week been formally opened for the burial af the dead. It consists of about 21 acres of ground, and is situated about, two miles from Merthyr, beyond Cefn Coed y Cymmer and between the Brecon road and the River Taff. It was purchased at a cost of about £2000; and from £2000 to £3000 more have been laid out in walling it in, in the erection of chapels for the use of Churchmen and Dissenters, and in laying out the ground and making roads, walks, lodges, gateways etc.
The ground has been divided into three portions – one for the use of the Established Church, one for Dissenters, and one for Roman Catholics; and these several portions have now been formally dedicated to their respective uses. It was expected that the Church portion would have been consecrated on the 29th instant; but this was postponed to Tuesday last. In the meantime the Roman Catholics had taken possession of their ground, and had opened it for burial according to the uses of their church.
Much discussion has been for some time going on among the dissenting part of the population as to the mode of dealing with theirs. Having been violently opposed to the ceremonial of consecration practised by Churchmen, and having habitually denounced all consecrations of burial grounds as useless forms, if not something worse, they were placed in an awkward dilemma. If they abstained from any formal proceedings they would give the Established Church an opportunity to outshine them in the public eye; and if they had a formal service they turned their backs on their own professions, nullified all their own arguments, and would after all give a deliberate and imposing sanction to that consecrational usage which they had so often denounced. These various arguments were used over and over again in most of the dissenting chapels and Sunday schools. Where the spirit of nonconformity prevailed it was resolved to abstain from any demonstration, and to adhere to the fixed principles of their forefathers; but in the meantime a new spirit has found its way into dissenting chapels, and they incline to follow the example of the Established Church, while violently and even bitterly denouncing their example.
The object of the latter class was to produce a demonstration of the numerical superiority of the nonconformist part of the population; but in this respect it was a comparative failure; for several congregations discountenanced the movement, and others only half approved of it, so that they only put forth half their strength. The first intention was that all the children of the dissenting Sunday schools should take part in the demonstration but, owing to a prevalent disapprobation of the object thereof, and to a feeling that the motives in which it originated were uncharitable and unchristian, only a few schools turned out on the occasion, and of those some were divided and only displayed half their real numbers. Among those which joined in the demonstration were the Sunday schools in connection with Zoar Chapel, High Street Chapel, Adulam Chapel, a part of the Welsh Wesleyan School, and that of the Wesleyan Reformers.
Viewed in itself, and apart from the spirit which dictated it, the demonstration had several points of interest. The day was fine; the children, led by their ministers walked in procession, and, as they wended their way towards Cefn, they sang hymns appropriate to the occasion, making the streets vocal with their silvery tones, and populous with pleased hearers and spectators. Having arrived on the ground, religious services were celebrated in the chapel dedicated to the use of Dissenters; and addresses were delivered by several ministers and laymen. One of the speakers even went the length of asserting the propriety of consecration, and the superiority of the Nonconformist form of it. “Today,” said he, “we consecrate this ground with prayer; tomorrow it will be consecrated by ceremonies.” As if Churchmen could not pray as well as Dissenters.
Passing by this exhibition of bigotry, which we are happy to find met with the disapprobation of many Dissenters, we pursue our narrative. On the following day, the ground set apart for the use of Churchmen was consecrated by the Right Rev. the Bishop of Llandaff, in accordance with the rites of the Established Church. The Burial Board paid his Lordship the compliment of attending in their corporate capacity; and a considerable number of ladies and gentlemen – Churchmen and Dissenters – attended on the occasion.
The new burial ground having been formally opened on these several occasion, and in its several parts, will now speedily become the last resting-place of many of the inhabitants of this locality.