People, Places and Passions

Russell Davies

Description

The first of two volumes on the social history of Wales in the period 1870–1948, People, Places and Passions concentrates on the social events and changes which created and forged Wales into the mid-twentieth century. This volume considers a range of social changes little considered elsewhere by studies in Welsh history, accounting for the role played by the people of Wales in times of war and the age of the British Empire, and in technological change and innovation, as they travelled the developing capitalist and consumerist world in search of fame and fortune.

Contents
Prologue: Sources for a ‘sullen art’
Introduction: Private Lives: the individual and society
1 The structures of everyday life: endurance and endeavour
2 ‘Lead us into temptation’: consumerism, creativity and change
3 ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’: Ambition, Aspirations and Education.
4 ‘Ffair Wagedd’ - Vanity Fair: people, class and hierarchy
5 Hiraeth and Heartbreak - Wales and the World: curiosity, boldness and zest
6 ‘The Blood never dried’ - the Welsh in Empire: envy, greed and zeal
7 Ha! Ha! among the trumpets - a century of warfare : cowardice, courage and hatred
8 ‘Once more into the breach’: Wales and the Welsh go to war, again’: fear, terror and tragedy
L’Heure Bleue (The Blue Hour): a brief conclusion
Notes

Sujets

• Histoire
• Great Britain
• History
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 15 juin 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783162383
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

PEOPLE, PLACES AND PASSIONSPEOPLE, PLACES AND PASSIONS
‘Pain and Pleasure’: A Social History of
Wales and the Welsh, 1870–1945
Russell Davies© Russell Davies, 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any
medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or
incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the
written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance
with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission
to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to
the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place,
Cardiff CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78316-237-6
eISBN 978-1-78316-238-3
The right of Russell Davies to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77, 78
and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Typeset in Wales by Eira Fenn Gaunt, Pentyrch, Cardiff
Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshirei dri hanesydd, meistri eu crefft, a geisiodd ddysgu hanes fy ngwlad a’m
pobl i mi:
John Davies
Geraint Jenkins
Ieuan Gwynedd Jones
pe bawn ond wedi mynd i fwy o ddarlithoedd . . .
ac i bedair cenhedlaeth o Gymry sydd wedi cyfoethogi fy nhaith:

fy nhad John Haydn Davies, Dai a Beryl
Nerys
Betsan a Dylan, Ffion ac Udara
Cati a BecaContents
List of Illustrations xi
Prologue: Sources for a ‘Sullen Art’ xiii
Introduction: Private Lives, the Individual and Society 1
‘She ate the food of angels’: after the death of a fasting girl
‘Perchance to dream?’: private lives, public witnesses
‘Ac eto nid myfi’: individual experience, emotional expression
and society
Hen wlad fy mamau – our mothers’ land – women and Welsh
society
1 The Structures of Everyday Life: Endurance and
Endeavour 21
People and places: vital statistics
‘Ill fares the land’: the failures and fortunes of Welsh agriculture
Heavy metal: ‘the age of steel’
Industry and diversity: copper, tin and transport
How black was my valley? The rise and fall of ‘King Coal’
2 ‘Lead us into Temptation’: Consumerism, Creativity and
Change 55
Envy – ‘keeping up with the Joneses’: consumerism, fashion and
beauty
The conquest of time and space
Technology and social change
viiContents
3 ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’: Ambitions, Aspirations and
Education 91
Ambitions and aspirations, classes and masses.
Work.
‘The Corn is Green’: education, ‘the great escape ladder’
4 ‘Ffair Wagedd’ – Vanity Fair: People, Class and Hierarchy 121
The decline and fall of the Welsh aristocracy?
Great expectations: nobility and mobility
People and professions: the middling people
Useful toil: labouring lives
Bleak expectations: poverty and pauperism
5 Hiraeth and Heartbreak – Wales and the World: Curiosity,
Boldness and Zest 169
River out of Eden: migration and emigration
Gwalia Deserta: the Welsh in England
Wandering Stars
The American Dream
East of Eden: the Pacific Welsh
‘I Wlad sydd well i fyw’: Patagonia
‘To boldly go’: adventure and adventurers
‘The Worst Journey in the World’: explorers and exploration
6 ‘The Blood never Dried’ – the Welsh in Empire: Envy,
Greed and Zeal 229
The Welshman’s burden: the Welsh and empire
‘Rwy’n gweld o bell’: religion and imperialism
‘If this is your land, where are your stories?’: settlers and natives
‘The day of the scorpions’: the Welsh and the Raj
‘Emerald Peacocks’: imperial identity and the experiences of empire
‘The making of history’: the Welsh and the Colonial Office
Soldiers of the Widow: some ‘small, sad wars of empire’ Contents
7 ‘Ha! Ha! among the Trumpets’ – a Century of Warfare:
Cowardice, Courage and Hatred 275
‘Gwaedd y bechgyn’: Wales and the Welsh fight to end war
‘All Quiet on the Western Front’: some experiences of war
‘Keep the home fires burning’: the war at home
The Hall of Mirrors: the illusion of peace 1919–39
8 ‘Once more unto the breach’ – Wales and the Welsh go
to War, Again: Fear, Terror and Tragedy 319
‘The morbid age?’: Wales in the twenties and thirties
‘Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye’
‘Run Rabbit Run’: the war at home
Welsh Warriors
‘The Wizard War’: the battle of wits
‘These are the men’: Dunkirk and other disasters
The Real Cruel Sea: the war at sea
‘Their finest hour’: the war in the air
Hell on earth: prisoners of war
L’Heure Bleue (The Blue Hour): a brief conclusion 363
Notes 367
Index 465List of Illustrations
1 The powerhouse of the rural economy were the fairs and markets
which took place amid ‘a sea of human and animal waste’. This
one, at Llanidloes, took place in 1881. John Thomas Collection,
National Library of Wales.
29

2 Craftspeople at the Kidwelly Tinplate Works c.1910. The tasks
which required most dexterity were often undertaken by women
and girls.
41
3 Perhaps the first photograph of an aeroplane in flight in south
Wales, on 23 January 1911. The magnificent man was Ernest
Sutton, the flying machine a Blériot XI at Oxwich Bay. South
Wales Daily News.
78
4 The staff and owner of John Ashton’s shop in Carno,
Montgomeryshire, about 1885. A clear representation of power and
prestige in the hierarchy of a rural enterprise. John Thomas
Collection, National Library of Wales.
145
5 Despite his disability, ‘Harri Bach’ of Bodedern, Anglesey, had
to struggle to survive or otherwise starve. The work of such
carriers was a vital aspect of rural Wales (c.1875). John Thomas
Collection, National Library of Wales.
160List of Illustrations
6 ‘The Kid’: Owen Rhoscomyl in his cowboy years, c.1880–4.
223
7 The original Welsh action hero, Caryl ap Rhys Pryce.
Publicschool educated, son of the Welsh Raj, soldier and policeman
in Africa and leader of the socialist revolution in Mexico in
1911.
226
8 ‘The Great War 1914–1915’? Sadly, the optimism of the South
Wales Daily Post in January 1915 proved to be very premature.
276
9 The Swansea ‘Pals’ Battalion with their mascot, Tawe. The initial
belief that collecting men from the same area into battalions
known as the ‘Pals Battalions’ would aid recruitment was
disabused, when the fighting began and a single area or town was
confronted with catastrophic casualties. Source: Bernard Lewis,
Swansea Pals: a history of the 14th (Service) Battalion the Welsh
Regiment in the Great War (Barnsley, 2004).
283
10 Two war horses and heroes from Swansea. King and Bob, two
greys working for Hancock’s Brewery, ‘joined up’ in the euphoria
of August 1914 and survived, winning the 1914–15 Star Ribbons,
the Victory Ribbon and the General Service Ribbon. They worked
until 1929. South Wales Daily News.
293
11 Nurse Mary Jane Hughes (1887–1986) and some of her patients,
all of whom were from Llanelli. Being cared for by a
Welshspeaker must have eased some of the hurt and hiraeth of these
wounded soldiers. Source: Joyce Mollet, With a Camera in my
Pocket: the Life and Times of a First World War Nurse (Baddeley,
2005).
307
xiiPrologue: Sources for a ‘Sullen Art’
Nes na’r hanesydd at y gwir di-goll, ydyw’r dramodydd, sydd yn
gelwydd oll.
(Closer than the historian to the lost truths is the dramatist who
deals in lies).
R. Williams Parry, ‘Gwae Awdur Dyddiaduron’
Historians, especially those working on the earliest historical periods,
often bemoan their lack of sources. Others, with an echo of British
Rail’s excuse that the ‘wrong type of snow’ caused train delays,
complain that the material available does not allow them to answer
the particular questions they wish to ask. Anyone who has worked
on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is aware of
another difficulty – there is too much material for teams of academics,
let alone an individual, to read and comprehend. Thus the historian
of modern Wales must have considerable sympathy for the hero of
Laurence Sterne’s eighteenth-century novel Tristram Shandy, who
worries that, since he has spent two years chronicling the first two
days of his life, material will accumulate faster than he can cope
with it and, as time goes by, he will be further and further from the
end of his history.
The shelves of the libraries, museums and archives of Wales
groan under the weight of autobiographies, biographies, census
reports, diaries, family and personal papers, journals, letters, official
govern ment papers, newspapers, hymn books, novels and poems,
each of which is relevant to our study. Many of these documents
are now available on internet sites, providing the historian with
unbroken and unlimited access to the sources. In this respect a
priceless resource is the Gathering the Jewels project, which enables People, Places and Passions
the historian to browse the treasures of the Welsh archives from
1desk – or laptop.
It is almost axiomatic for many historians that the ‘facts’ of the
past are to be found in the ‘official’ documents created by a society.
The stately and staid volumes of the reports of ‘official’ bodies
appointed by governments, to inquire and enquire into specific
events or to observe and preserve society’s attitudes, are often
regarded as if they possess an almost biblical prescience and
infallibility. But we need to remember that official documents are
not exempt from the problems and pitfalls of all historical sources.
They too contain bias, opinion and prejudice and many are as much
creative works as they are factual testimonies. Official sources do
not always reveal the entire story. Public records such as court
papers and the Registrar General’s statistics provide skeletal details
that hint at vivid tales of illegitimacy, forced marriages, infant
mortality, enforced separations of warring partners and entire
families and neighbourhoods locked in moral decline. Other