Tag: Ivor Street (Dowlais)

The Dark Side of Convict Life – part 22

by Barrie Jones

Chapter XIX. Henry recounts his association with the convict Samuel Blisset and how he helps pass on a message to Samuel’s daughter, Hannah Williams, following his release from Parkhurst. Blisset shot his wife Margaret on the 15th November 1894 outside her shop at 112 Ivor Street, Dowlais. Margaret a ‘well known’ greengrocer, died of her wounds on the following day. 

The Dark Side of Convict Life (Being the Account of the Career of Harry Williams, a Merthyr Man). Merthyr Express, 28th May 1910, page 11.

Chapter XIX

THE DOWLAIS TRADEGY RECALLED

During my stay in Parkhurst, I never got into much trouble, for though I was passed as perfectly sane, nevertheless, I was well treated by the doctors. Parkhurst is well known as the dead station; the last camping place it has been to many of the criminal class. Men suffering from all manner of diseases are to  found here – consumption, heart disease, pleurisy, dropsy, and a great many fit cases. I was in Parkhurst over three years, and during that time not one single week passed without some poor, unfortunate passing away to the unseen world.

I was surprised to see down there poor Samuel Blisset, who was sentenced to twenty years on the 12th of November, 1894, for the manslaughter of his wife, and I cannot help thinking that his case did not merit the heavy sentence passed upon him for, when all is said and done, it was more of an accident than a crime, and there is doubt that if had had been allowed to go into the witness box, as is done these days, and give his own evidence, then he might have cleared himself. I had not much of a chance beyond a passing word to speak to him, but I can well remember a few weeks before my liberation telling him that I would take a message to his daughter in Dowlais, and after some difficulty in searching I found her, and I received a great welcome. The poor woman had evidently been trying and trying to get her dear father’s sentence remitted, but the poor woman’s application each time met with a refusal. Samuel Blisset was fifty-four years of age at the time of his trial, and I suppose he was given the heavy sentence thinking he would not live to see it through. But what man proposes, God disposes, and Samuel Blisset now has his liberty, and is now restored to his daughter to live the remainder of his life in peace and happiness, and when the time comes he will not be buried in a convict’s grave, where no flowers nor headstones marks the place. Let us hope that Samuel Blisset will live with his daughter for many years yet. For a convict is a man who has a heart that can feel joy and sorrow just like another, so do not treat him worse because misfortune is his curse. But he is the son of some mother, remember.

Before closing this chapter I will give an account of a poor, week-minded lad, for he was far away from budding-manhood. This young fellow’s name was Calladine, and he was subject to fits, and very bad fits they were, too, which took him some time to get out of them. He was a light-hearted – although light-headed – friendly, little fellow, and many a chat we had together, but his conversation pointed strongly to brain trouble, for sometimes when speaking to one he would suddenly stop and look into the sky, as if looking for his next words. It was heart rending to hear him speak of his coming liberty, but the poor little chap never dreamt that in a few weeks’ time he would be laid to rest in the convict’s cemetery at Newport. One morning, coming over the steps of the Protestant Chapel, this poor fellow fell down in a  fit. He was taken to a hospital, and after recovering, he declined to stay there. While in the straight jacket I heard his shouts and cries, which were most pitiful to hear, and I was working at the time sweeping the gutters underneath the padded cells. The following night he was taken from the infirmary to the separate cells, ready to appear before the governor the next morning, but when the officer opened his cell door, poor Calladine was cold and stiff, having expired during the night.

To be continued…..

Merthyr’s Chapels: Elim Chapel, Dowlais

Elim Pentecostal Chapel, Dowlais

In 1873, a schism occurred at Beulah Chapel, and the Minister and 34 members left that chapel and started their own cause.

They acquired a piece of land on Walter Street and they built a small tin chapel there and called it Tabernacle. Within three years however the number in the congregation increased dramatically and it was decided to build a larger chapel. Three cottages and a shop were purchased in Ivor Street and new larger chapel designed by Mr John Williams, was built in 1876.

When, several years later, the schism between the two congregations healed, the congregation at Tabernacle moved back to Beulah, and Tabernacle became the Undenominational Christian Mission.

Tabernacle Chapel in Ivor Street after it had become the Undenominational Christian Mission. Photo courtesy of J Ann Lewis.

In 1919 a group of men, who were converts from the 1904/1905 Welsh Revival, invited Stephen Jeffreys of Llanelli to conduct a series of Revival Meetings. Both this group and Stephen Jeffreys himself had come into contact with some of the newly formed independent Pentecostal group.

Stephen Jeffreys. Photo courtesy of J Ann Lewis.

They were offered the use of the Undenominational Christian Mission, at first renting it and then, in December 1919 buying it at a cost of £600. Late in 1924 there was the first formal agreement between the leaders of the church and the Elim Pentecostal Alliance. The chapel was called Elim-Tabernacle and became the first Pentecostal Chapel on the British mainland.

This agreement was renewed in 1927 and the church became a member of the Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance in 1928.

The old chapel was forced to close and was demolished in 1974 due to the redevelopment of Dowlais and a new chapel, Elim was built in 1975 in Upper Elizabeth Street and continues to prosper.

Merthyr Memories: Memories of Dowlais – part 2

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.

Ivor Street in the 1970’s, shortly before it was demolished. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

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.

The Station Arcade in the 1980s. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

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.

Sandbrook House. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Collection

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.

Merthyr Memories: Memories of Dowlais – part 1

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?

Dowlais Market in the 1960’s. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

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.

Atkins Shop and Dowlais Library. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

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.

The Co-op in Dowlais. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

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…….