VOICES OF 1842

 

 

 

Lockdown restrictions were in force

when Benjamin Price started his job

at Big Pit. With few visitors, he used

his time to research the lives behind

the names in the Government report

on child labour in the South Wales

coalfields. Helen Morgan reports:

 

                                                                                                         

                                                                Image : Drammer and Air Door Keeper       

Commissioners investigating conditions of work, pay and other social issues took evidence from industrial proprietors, managers, surgeons and clerics about children as young as 6 or 7 years old. One child labourer was William Williams but, as anyone trying to trace their Welsh ancestors knows, this name was a non-starter. So, Ben tried the less usual names until he finally found two significant leads. First was Zelophaed Llewellyn. The other was Henrietta Frankland. In the 1841 Census she was living in Cyfarthfa Row that backed on to the canal and river Taf. The family had moved there from Newent in Gloucester, reflecting a widespread movement of the rural populace to the burgeoning industrial heartlands. A year later the report lists her as 12-year-old drammer (moving the carts underground) at Cyfarthfa. In 1849 her mother died during the cholera outbreak. By 1851 the family has moved to Aberdare. —  her father is still a collier, as is her eldest brother, John. She, too, works at the colliery until she is run over by a horse. In 1861 she was a lodger working as a dressmaker. She never married and died in the 1860s.

Ben found no further mention of Zelophaed. But, when he tried a simple Z Llewellyn, he found him in America, listed in the 1850 Federal Census. This told him that Z was baptised in Ynys Gau chapel by a prominent non-conformist minister. Next, Ben found Z’s father, mother and birth date in the Merthyr records. Finally, he found the entire family on the immigration list in New York, having arrived by ship from Liverpool in 1848. From New York, they took their mining skills to Pennsylvania where anthracite mining was booming. By 1862, Z’s tax return records him earning twice as much as he would have as a coal miner in Wales. Then, the unexpected: Z was conscripted during the American Civil War and deployed to tunnel under the Rebel lines to detonate explosives — more than 50 years before the Welsh waged war underground against the Germans. 

Ben Price’s talk on the Voices of 1842 on March 19th at the Borough Theatre starts at 7.30pm. It is free to members. Non-members may join on the night (£15). 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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