by Rosie Harris
They would huddle in groups planning the forthcoming uprising with passion and excitement. The rise and fall of their voices reminded Kate of the men who had gathered in the cave on Coity Mountain where she’d taken shelter.
Moving amongst them as she collected up empty tankards, Kate listened. A word here, a phrase there, she stored them as avidly as a squirrel does autumn nuts. Later, in her attic bedroom, unable to sleep because of the vivid glow from the blast furnaces that gilded the walls and ceiling, she would ponder on what she’d heard. The words built up a picture, pieces falling in place as neat as any patchwork quilt.
Kate’s heart went out to those who slaved underground in the blackness of the coal mines or worked in the stinking heat of the ironworks. She sensed that their heartfelt cry for better conditions and proper representation was not one of greed but borne of the need for survival for themselves and their families.
The demands she’d heard repeated over and over again seemed reasonable enough to her. She summarized them in her mind:
Votes for all men over the age of twenty-one.
Elections to Parliament every year.
The abolition of property ownership as a qualification to becoming a Member of Parliament.
Members of Parliament to be paid for their attendance in London so that even working men could afford to stand as representatives.
Three hundred constituencies of equal number of electors.
A secret ballot so that workers could not be pressurized as to how they must vote.
The names of the Chartist leaders, Jack Frost, a draper in Newport, who had at one time been its mayor, William Jones from Pontypool and Zephaniah Edwards from Nantyglo, were spoken in whispers. Repeatedly she heard the name Owen mentioned and longed to ask questions, yet knew that once she did every man amongst them would clam up. Dark-eyed Celtic men, suspicious and furtive, they often lapsed into their native tongue if they thought she was listening.
‘Just wait until we attack London, mun. Then we’ll bloody show ’em!’
‘Plenty of support, see. I heard we’d collected over a million signatures.’
‘D’ye know, if those sheets of names were joined together they’d be three miles long!’
‘Signatures are no good, boyo, it’s an attack we need.’
‘Any day now!’
‘Just as soon as we receive word from the men in Birmingham.’
‘What about the cotton workers from Lancashire?’
‘And men from the woollen mills in Yorkshire?’
‘Just hold on… they’re all with us.’
Although she listened and remembered, it was always the mention of the name Owen that made her ears prick up. Her heart would thunder with excitement, then dip down into her button-boots as soon as she realized the Owen they were talking about couldn’t possibly be David.
There were so many men called Owen that her mind was in a welter of confusion.
For some it was a first name, like Owen Roberts, one of the puddlers at Pwll-dhu, or Owen Hughes, who lived in Stack Row. Then there was Owen the Bread in Market Street and Eli Owen, a sidesman at Horeb Chapel, who had lost his left leg when molten iron ore had splashed it so badly that it had to be amputated.
Every day, or so it seemed to Kate, she heard of a new Owen, and none of them was the man she longed to find.
Towards the end of the week, Kate began asking the men who drank in the Bull for directions to Fforbrecon colliery.
‘What do you want to go there for, cariad?’
‘The far side of Blorenge.’
‘Not the sort of place for you to be visiting on your own, my lovely.’
‘You’d be safe enough if you’d let me take you,’ they joked.
‘All right then, which of you is it to be?’
Ifor Hughes, one of the engineers from Garnddyrys, was eager to accompany her but he withdrew his offer after a tongue-lashing from some of the other men.
‘Best not, cariad,’ he told her, laying a heavy hand on her arm.
‘And why not?’
‘There’s been a lot of trouble over there recently, see!’
‘I know. I thought that was why I needed an escort,’ teased Kate.
‘The Scotch Cattle might set on us if they find us poking our noses in where we shouldn’t and then where’d we be?’ he prevaricated.
‘In real trouble, I can tell you!’ another man warned.
‘Why are you in such a hurry to leave here, anyway?’
‘I’ve got to find someone at Fforbrecon,’ Kate told them stubbornly, all laughter gone from her voice.
As she lay in her hard narrow bed that night, watching the red glow on the ceiling and listening to the thundering pulse of the ironworks, Kate made up her mind. She’d go there alone. Why should she fear the Scotch Cattle? They might look fearful dressed up in skins, their faces blackened and horns strapped on their heads, but it was hardly likely that they would apprehend a woman or try and take her to the military.
She’d been assured that Fforbrecon was on the other side of the Blorenge, so if she followed the sheeptracks along the lower slopes she should reach there in due course. She’d leave her canvas bag behind at the Bull. If David wasn’t at Fforbrecon then she’d come back and collect it. If she did find him, then Dai Roberts could give her things away to whoever he pleased, since she wouldn’t need them. David would buy her as many new gowns as she wanted.
‘You owe for breakages,’ Dai Roberts glowered when Kate reminded him that she had completed her week and that now her debt was cleared she was moving on.
‘One glass and a chipped cup!’ she said scornfully.
‘Stay on another week and I’ll pay you another three shillings,’ he promised.
‘Is that all!’
‘Better than nothing when you’re penniless.’
With order restored in his living quarters, hot food prepared for him daily and another pair of hands doing the bulk of the work in the bar, Dai Roberts felt himself to be in clover and knew he would be a fool to let her leave.
‘Make it four shillings.’
Knowing the men clustered round the bar were listening, he agreed. He would have liked her to stay for good. She was a hard worker and the men had accepted her. It was as if she had always been about the place. She had a ready smile and was good to look at. He’d noticed that since she’d been there many of the men who dropped in on their way home returned again later in the evening. Whether for the pleasure of drinking in her company, or to discuss the Chartist issues, he wasn’t sure, but it pleased him because his takings were up.
Her presence seemed to have a calming influence on the men. Uncertain of her political loyalties they kept their heated discussions in check.
Not that she seemed in the least interested in them or their gossip. In her plain blue gown, her black curls pulled back into the nape of her neck, she looked more like a nun than a barmaid. From the way she rebuffed any who tried to take liberties, she might well have been one.
‘Why move on when you’ve nowhere to go? You can have the bedroom next to mine,’ he offered. ‘Much warmer than up in that attic.’
‘There’s handy now! You could be real cosy, my lovely,’ added one of the men with a meaningful wink.
‘It’s kind of you, but no thank you,’ Kate told him. She flushed delicately. ‘I must go to Fforbrecon, I have to find someone.’
‘This man you’re looking for… is he your husband?’
Kate smiled non-committally. She didn’t wish to confide in Dai Roberts or anyone else, but she was willing to listen if any of them had more to say.
‘You know there’s been trouble over there,’ Dai Roberts said guardedly, his dark eyes watching her.
‘Only to be expected the way they treat their workers,’ argued one of the men.
They even use young children in the coal pits at Fforbrecon,’ added another.
‘They use them here at the ironworks, as well,’ Kate flashed angrily. ‘Last ni
ght a lad came with a scarred face and one hand so badly burned he couldn’t use it.’
‘Walli Howell’s boy, you mean.’
‘Terrible accident that!’
‘Hardly call him a child, though. Going on twelve, he is. Old enough to watch out when they’re ladling hot ore and make sure he is standing clear.’
‘Daydreaming he must’ve been, and missed the shout.’
‘Silly young bugger!’
‘No one to blame except himself, really.’
‘At Fforbrecon, it’s said they use little ones of only four or five to open the safety doors.’
‘Poor little mites!’
‘Down there, all on their own in the blackness, with rats running over them.’
‘Twelve-hour shifts, mind you!’
‘More often than not they’re that tired and hungry that they drop off to sleep.’
‘And that’s when they fall on to the track and get run over by the coal trucks.’
‘If they’re lucky they die.’
‘If they don’t they end up begging.’
‘Too crippled to ever work again, see!’
‘And that’s not the worst part,’ Dai Roberts said, clearing his throat. ‘Some of the galleries are so low and narrow that a grown man can’t even crawl through them, so the wicked buggers use the smallest children to haul the trucks!’
‘Strap a harness on them, see, same as on a pit pony!’
‘Two or three tons of coal in some of those trucks that they have to pull.’
‘With their blackened faces and hands and their half-naked bodies, covered with grazes and sweat, they’re barely human.’
‘The chains rub ’em so raw that they can’t stand or sit after a few days. Bleeding they are!’
‘A lot of them collapse under the strain,’ sighed Dai Roberts as he pulled himself some ale.
‘Or from hunger,’ added another as he pushed his tankard across the counter for a refill.
‘It’s a happy release for them when they die.’
‘Hard on their families, mind.’
‘A few pennies a week less towards paying the rent, see!’
‘Stop!’ Kate’s hands went up to cover her ears, to shut out the cruelty the men were describing so graphically. She couldn’t believe David would allow such exploitation. He was far too kind and gentle. He couldn’t even bear to see a horse ill treated. If he knew such atrocities were going on at Fforbrecon he would stamp them out.
Was this what had given rise to the trouble that everyone hinted at but seemed unwilling to talk about? she wondered uneasily.
Chapter 24
Kate’s arrival had made life more pleasant for Dai Roberts, yet for all that, he felt uneasy. He had been landlord of the Bull long enough to sense when trouble was brewing and was aware of the unrest amongst his customers.
Although he sympathized with the Chartist aims he kept his opinions to himself. He’d had experience of the conditions the men worked under and was aware of the depths of degradation to which many of them and their families had sunk. His own wife was dead and he had no children, yet he still felt concern for youngsters who were put to work underground as soon as they could walk and talk.
The Bull, like so many other ale-houses in Ebbw Vale, was owned by one of the ironmasters. Although Dai Roberts was left to run things in his own way he was as much a slave of Crawshay Bailey as any man who drank there.
The beer was bought by men who worked for Crawshay Bailey with wages he’d paid them and the profits went back into his coffers. To make doubly sure of this, the men’s wages were paid out in the Bull and Dai Roberts had instructions that if the agent was late to give the men credit until he arrived.
The price of the four or five pints of beer that went down each man’s throat while they waited was deducted from their wages, together with any other credit they may have chalked up since the previous payday. Often the men were too drunk to count if the money eventually handed over to them was correct or not.
Crawshay Bailey also owned most of the Tommy Shops in Blaina, Nantyglo, Brynmawr and Blaenafon. The prices of the goods in them were a third or more higher than in the nearby towns. The women had little option but to use them since the only way to get paid in full was by accepting the specially minted brass coins.
Those who demanded the silver coin of the realm, so that they could spend them in the open market in Pontypool, Abergavenny or Newport, had a levy deducted.
Dai Roberts hated the system. Many times since his wife had died he’d thought of leaving the Bull and seeking some other kind of employment. Then he would remind himself how much better off he was than puddlers, coal trimmers, or limestone carriers, and hesitate about making any change.
Running an ale-house was child’s play compared to working twelve to fourteen hours in the heat of the blast furnaces, or deep underground in the dark confines of the pits.
He’d known men have their hand, wrist and forearm burnt to the bone, one enormous red weal where the molten flash of ore had splashed. He’d seen men with legs rigid and swollen, the skin heaped in a high, puckered ridge where molten iron had settled, making the blood boil. He’d watched men having slugs of lead removed from arms, legs and even their faces.
A knife would be levered in beneath the rigid lump, prising the metal upwards until it came clear, dropping with a resounding thud on to the floor. The long, jagged gash that remained was too painful to clean so it was left to bleed or fester. A gaping wound that, when it eventually healed, would leave an unsightly scar.
He’d seen puddlers with their faces blistered, going blind, their red eyes constantly watering. Others, with their hands bandaged against the cruel heat, knowing that within a few years all their joints would dry out and then their legs would grow heavy, their walk painfully slow.
Blaenafon was the refuse dump of the Bailey Empire. Men, maimed and deformed by accidents, short of a leg or an arm, crouched on their hunkers at street corners or hobbled along on crutches. Others staggered uncontrollably, afflicted by nystagmus caused by working for long periods in the flickering light of candles or oil lamps. There was no cure for the giddiness and blackouts they suffered.
Kate’s arrival had resurrected all his doubts and misgivings. She was so young, so pretty with her pink and cream cheeks, her big blue eyes and glistening black curls. She was like a breath of the countryside he’d known as a boy, when he’d lived in a farm cottage in Govilon.
Then, one Fair day in Abergavenny, he’d met Marie. He’d crossed over Blorenge the next weekend to court her. She’d won his heart and fired his ambition with her stories of the big money to be made working in iron.
His youthful mind had been inflamed, his heart pounding in time to the giant thud of the drop hammers. He’d not noticed that children in Blaenafon looked old at ten, or the men whose eyes had been put out by a blast-kiss, or whose empty sleeves were tied with string. He’d been too excited by the sight of the entire mountain becoming one single fire as flames from the maze of furnaces blended into the darkening sky. The thundering, whining background had been music in his ears.
Marie had been dark-haired and dark-eyed, brawny from working underground pulling a coal tram since she was eight. She’d been ripe for love. Besotted by what Marie offered he had taken a job underground, exchanged farm for pit, not realizing the terrible mistake he was making.
Slowly his senses returned and the sights around him sickened him. Marie laughed when he protested about children as young as six and seven being forced to work underground, in charge of the ventilation doors. Or about girls, as well as boys of ten or younger, being harnessed like animals so that they could haul the loaded coal trams through cuttings too narrow for them to even stand upright.
Then came the day when he couldn’t stand working underground, in the claustrophobic darkness, another minute.
‘What will you do?’ sulked Marie. ‘My wages won’t pay the rent.’
‘We’ll manage.’
‘There’s something else you’d best know before you quit. I didn’t intend telling you yet.’ Her dark eyes softened and she pressed herself close against him, her arms around his neck, pulling his ear down to her mouth as she whispered her secret.
For a moment he couldn’t believe what she was saying.
‘Are you sure about this, cariad?’
‘Of course. A woman knows, doesn’t she,’ she replied coyly.
He held her close, knowing he wasn’t ready for such responsibility. He was barely twenty. They’d no real home, just a curtained-off half of a room in Shepherd Square which they rented for two and sixpence a week from Marie’s sister, Jenni. There was barely room for their narrow bed and the hooks they hung their clothes on, so how would they ever cope, he wondered.
‘I can go on working. Our Jenni will look after the baby,’ Marie told him as if reading his thoughts.
‘No!’ His pride was shattered. He’d seen a woman give birth underground and his stomach had churned at the sight. Those working alongside her had taken no notice as she screamed and groaned, her feet drumming against the roof of the gallery. Not until the moment of birth had they stopped to help her. Minutes later, because they were on piece work, they were back filling and hauling the trams. The woman had wrapped her newborn in a shawl and placed it on a ledge until the shift ended.
He was determined that Marie should never have to suffer such indignity. Back home at Govilon, even the cattle his father looked after were given better treatment.
Next day, to prove to himself and Marie that he could earn enough money to support both her and the baby, he’d changed jobs and become a puddler at the ironworks.
Two weeks later an accident left him disillusioned and horribly maimed. A vat of molten iron tipped, striking his middle. The pain, before he’d passed out, had been indescribable.
He regained consciousness in time to hear the doctor explaining in a grim voice to Marie that he would never father another child.
After his accident he pleaded with Marie to return to Govilon with him. Ebbw Vale had lost its enchantment. He longed to be back where the air was clear, where the sun wasn’t obscured by a yellow sulphurous smog. The glowing furnaces had become the pit of hell, the pounding drop hammers a death knell in his ears.