by Mike Hall
January 7th
1871: The Cardiff Times reported that ‘a capital dinner, consisting of roast beef, roast mutton and vegetables, accompanied by an abundant supply of plum pudding etc. was given to the whole of the poor of the parish in the National Schoolroom, Penarth. Judging from their appearance, they heartily enjoyed their repast. Before the guests departed the female portion had a quarter of tea given to them and those males who indulged in the soothing weed had some tobacco.’ (Quoted by E. Alwyn Benjamin in Penarth 1841-71, A Glimpse of the Past, D. Brown & Sons, 1980)
1893: Wales beat England for the first time in a rugby match at the Arms Park that nearly did not go ahead because of extreme cold. The pitch was frozen solid and play was only made possible by the groundstaff who lit fires all over the playing surface. Eighteen tons of coal were used and when the England team arrived in a blizzard they were amazed to see more than 500 hastily improvised braziers (buckets pierced with holes and raised up on bricks). (Robert Cole & Stuart Farmer, The Wales Rugby Miscellany, Sports Vision Publishing, 2008)
January 8th
1930: Cardiff City star Hughie Ferguson committed suicide at the age of 32. Transferred from Motherwell for a fee of £5,000 in 1925, Hughie had been a great favourite with the supporters, scoring 87 goals in 131 appearances, including the winning goal in the 1927 FA Cup Final. At the end of the 1928/29 season he was transferred to Dundee but never settled there. A back injury meant that he was less effective and the home crowd began to jeer him. A sensitive man, he could not adjust to this after the adulation he had experienced at Cardiff. Suffering from depression, he killed himself after a training session at Dundee and was found dead next to a gas ring in the dressing room.
1977: A happier anniversary for City fans. In one of the shocks of the FA Cup third round Cardiff defeated the mighty Tottenham Hotspur 1-0. The goal was scored by Peter Sayer who was only in the team because Robin Friday, Cardiff’s recent signing from Reading, was ineligible for the game. It was only his third goal in fifty-three matches and he later described it as ‘a moment of magic that I shall remember for the rest of my life’. (Dennis Morgan, Farewell to Ninian Park, 2008)
January 9th
1927: Hilda Medd of Stanway Road in Ely died following an illegal termination of pregnancy. The operation had been performed by Reginald Morris, later described as ‘a quack physician and amateur abortionist of the lowest order’. She was discovered dead in bed by her daughter. Her husband, a marine engineer, was away at sea at the time – and not, it was said, the father of the child. Police investigated, knowing that the woman had been ‘medically attended’ by Morris. The baby’s body was discovered buried in the garden, hardened by the winter frost. Morris was found guilty of manslaughter, having induced her miscarriage and left her in a condition that allowed a fatal infection to set in. He was sentenced to four years imprisonment. (Mark Isaacs, Foul Deeds & Suspicious Deaths in Cardiff, Wharncliffe, 2009)
1982: The roof of Sophia Gardens Pavilion collapsed after a snowstorm. Opened in 1951, the pavilion had been used for dances, meetings and exhibitions. The boxing matches in the 1958 Empire Games had taken placed there. (Stewart Williams, Cardiff Yesterday)
January 10th
1941: A large crowd gathered in Cathays cemetery to pay their last respects to the victims of the German bombing raid on the city the week before. The mourners were led by the Lord Mayor, Alderman C.H. McCale. He wore black crêpe on his chain of office and the maces held by the city macebearers were similarly covered. The remains of thirty or more bodies had already been interred and the ground covered by a large Union Jack. ‘That flag was a symbol of the spirit of Cardiff people,’ the South Wales Echo observed, ‘a mute but infinitely significant portent of the shape of things to come’. The report continued ‘survivors of families which had been practically wiped out were comforted by relatives and friends as they broke down under the stress of pitiful emotion. In one case ten members of one family, their ages ranging from seventy down to a boy of four, lost their lives.’ Many of the bodies interred could not be identified. ‘High and low, young and old, mingled around communal graves while they tearfully but silently honoured the dead.’
January 11th
1962: Smallpox arrived in Cardiff. A traveller from Pakistan arrived by train from Birmingham, unwittingly carrying the virus. Four other people infected with the disease were on the same flight from Pakistan and went to Bradford or Leeds. The outbreak that followed caused fifteen deaths across Britain. One of the Welsh victims was a pathologist who had carried out a post-mortem on one of the first people who died of smallpox. There was mass panic. Nine hundred thousand people in South Wales were vaccinated between January and April. There were forty-six confirmed cases of the disease in the Valleys but only one in Cardiff. In Cardiff: A Centenary Celebration, O’Sullivan and Jones explain why the South Wales Echo was always first with the news of any new case in the area. It seems that the paper’s Rhondda reporter Oscar Rees had a contact in a bookie near the ambulance station in Porth. One ambulance had been reserved for carrying smallpox suspects and every time this vehicle left the ambulance station the bookie phoned to tip him off!
January 12th
1635: The Bailiff and Aldermen of Cardiff were summoned to attend a meeting at Chester to decide on the apportionment of Ship Money throughout Wales. This meeting had originally been scheduled for Ludlow on the previous 29th December but it was rearranged at short notice because the original summonses had only been sent out on December 1st. But the representatives from Cardiff (along with those from Glamorgan, Monmouthshire and Newport) had already had a wasted journey to Ludlow and were not best pleased at having to trek north again. A letter now in the Pembrokeshire Record Office and addressed to the King’s ministers protests ‘havinge made a long and troublesome journey in vaine’ [sic]. (Lloyd Bowen, The Politics of the Principality, University of Wales Press, 2007)
January 13th
1806: Unable to cope financially with the modern world of free trade and open competition, the impoverished Cordwainers’ Gild of Cardiff agreed to sell the guild’s remaining assets to a Mr John Wood for £28 2s 6d. These assets included the ancient Cordwainers Hall at the corner of High Street and Duke Street. This had been their home since the twelfth century but now one of the most valuable commercial sites in the centre of the town passed into private hands. William Rees reports in Cardiff: A History of the City that ‘excavations in 1927 discovered the remains of this building which are now in the custody of the National Museum of Wales.’
1870: The birth of John Conway Rees, the first Welshman to captain Oxford University rugby team. He played for Wales three times, firstly against Scotland on February 6th 1892. His other two appearances were against England in 1893 (the season Wales first won the Triple Crown) and in 1894. He also played for Cardiff, the Barbarians, Llanelli and London Welsh. He taught at Sherborne, Rossall and Giggleswick Schools before spending the last thirty years of his life teaching in India. He died in 1932. (T.D. Breverton, The Welsh Almanac, Glyndwr Publications, 2002 / Wikipedia)
January 14th
1621: William Herbert was elected Member of Parliament for Cardiff, Llantrisant and Cowbridge. He later purchased the White Friars’ lands in Cardiff and built a fine house there. He became one of the Deputy Vice-Admirals for South Wales, Mayor of Cardiff and Constable of the Castle, a position he was appointed to at the start of the Civil War. King Charles I instructed him to seize the castle and collect the rents of the Earl of Pembroke who had sided with Parliament. After his death in 1645 his estates, said to be worth £1,000 a year, were bequeathed to his great nephew William Herbert of St Fagans in fulfilment of a promise made to the King after the Battle of Edgehill. (W.R. Williams, ‘Members of Parliament for Cardiff’ / www.british-history.ac.uk)
January 15th
2011: Tributes were paid to Stewart Williams, doyen of local historians, who had died at the age of 85. He was best known as the editor and publisher of the Cardiff Yesterda
y series. This eventually comprised thirty-six volumes and contained over 7,500 archive photos recording the life of Cardiff and its people. He had begun with the four volumes of his Vale of Glamorgan series (1959-62) which was followed by twelve volumes of the Glamorgan Historian. The success of Cardiff Yesterday enabled him to give up his job as publicity officer for the Western Welsh Bus Company and work full-time on his writing and publishing, assisted by his wife Betty and children Robert and Diane. Fellow author Brian Lee described Williams as an innovator: ‘When he wrote the foreword for my book A Cardiff Century in 2004, he mentioned his pride in having a copy of Cardiff Yesterday included in a time capsule. He just loved history.’
[When I started to do the research for this book, it was with Cardiff Yesterday that I began. It pointed me in the right direction and told me where to look for more information. Clearly, I am only the latest writer on Cardiff to follow gratefully where Stewart Williams has led!]
January 16th
1909: A party led by St Fagans-born geologist Sir Edgeworth David was the first to reach the magnetic South Pole. After education at Oxford, David began his career back in South Wales. In 1881 he presented a paper to the Cardiff Naturalists Society on ‘Evidences of Glacial Action in the Neighbourhood of Cardiff’. The following year he went out to Australia where he became Professor of Geology at Sydney University. In 1907 he was invited to join Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic and in March 1908 led the first ascent of Mount Erebus. During the First World War, he enlisted as a Major at the age of 58 and used his geological expertise to advise on the construction of trenches and dug-outs. He was knighted in 1920 and died in Australia in 1934. (T.D. Breverton, The Welsh Almanac, Glyndwr Publications, 2002 / Wikipedia)
1919: USS Lake Erie sank off Lavernock Point after a collision with the British steamship Hazel Branch. She had been one of a large number of vessels originally ordered by the British and built in Detroit but requisitioned by the American government when the US entered the war. After the accident she was salvaged and continued to trade for the next forty years. (John Richards, Cardiff: A Maritime History, The History Press, 2005)
January 17th
2011: In a consultation document on managing the flood risk in the Severn Estuary the Environment Agency expressed concern about the sea defences at Penarth. Unless improvements were made, the Agency warned, the Sea Wall could collapse due to frequent ‘overtopping’ by about 2040. The report noted that the Vale of Glamorgan Council had plans to strengthen the Promenade which, if done, would help to reduce the flood risk. The Severn Estuary Flood Risk Management Strategy also predicted that annual flooding could occur in parts of Cardiff and Newport by 2110 if flood defences were not improved. In this Consultation Document the Agency set out a programme of ‘phased improvements’ between 2060 and 2110 ‘to keep pace with climate change’. This was to be carried out ‘in a way that is sustainable for people, the economy and the environment’.
January 18th
1937: The grandstand at Ninian Park, home of Cardiff City FC, was destroyed by fire. At 3.45 a.m. a policeman saw flames coming from the stand, fanned by a strong wind. It took less than an hour for the grandstand to be reduced to a pile of hot, twisted girders. The brave efforts of the fire brigade prevented the fire spreading to other parts of the stadium but the offices, dressing rooms and the team’s kit were destroyed. Sadly, Jack, the stadium guard-dog, perished in the flames, but Trixie, the black cat which had been the club’s mascot in the 1927 Cup Final was rescued unhurt but badly singed. A petrol can was found near the safe in the burnt-out office and appeared to have been tampered with. It is thought that burglars had been trying to steal the takings from the weekend’s game with Grimsby Town (a 1-3 home defeat) but the gate receipts of about £2,000 had been removed from the ground immediately after the game. (M.J. Mace, ‘A History of Cardiff City Fire Brigade’, in Glamorgan Historian, 1977)
January 19th
1963: The inexperienced Clive Rowlands’ first game as Captain of the Welsh rugby team (v. England at Cardiff) was under threat due to the exceptionally cold weather. ‘We weren’t sure if the game would be played,’ Rowlands recalled later. ‘I’m panicking, selected as captain and not certain that I’m going to get to play. The weather was so cold that we didn’t train on the Friday’. The players were issued with gloves and warm woolly underwear. An army of volunteers got the ground playable. The players stayed in the changing rooms while the anthems were played and when they ran onto the pitch the surface was rock hard. ‘They shouldn’t have played it,’ Rowlands admitted, ‘but I’m glad they did because it was my first cap and I may not have got one if the selectors had been given a chance to change their minds’. Wales lost 6-13 but Rowlands went on to captain Wales thirteen more times. (Steve Lewis, The Priceless Gift: 125 Years of Welsh Rugby Captains, Mainstream, 2005)
January 20th
1607: A tidal wave, due to a tsunami or a storm surge up the Bristol Channel (experts disagree on which was the cause) caused severe flooding of the lowlands on either side of the Severn Estuary. The floodwaters stretched for over twenty miles alongside the river and up to four miles inland. An anonymous chronicler wrote that the waters ‘are affirmed to run with a swiftness so incredible that no greyhound could have escaped by running before them.’ Flooding was not uncommon in Cardiff at that time but no one had ever experienced a calamity on this scale. St Mary’s Church was seriously damaged and its foundations undermined. Parts of the churchyard were washed away. The church was later abandoned and a new St Mary’s built on a different site in 1840. The outline image of a church on a wall in Great Western Lane is thought to depict the old St Mary’s whose foundations lie under Wetherspoon’s. It was said that 200 bodies were found embalmed in the salty mud near Marshfield when the waters receded. (John Richards, Cardiff: A Maritime History, The History Press, 2005)
January 21st
1939: Miners’ Leader and novelist Lewis Jones (born 1897) died in Cardiff at the end of a hectic day in which he had addressed over thirty meetings in support of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. He had been an active trade unionist in the Nottinghamshire and South Wales coalfields. After the General Strike in 1926 he had been imprisoned in Swansea Jail for three months. An individualist, his turbulent private life and his distrust of Stalin’s personality cult led to his being repeatedly suspended and disciplined by the Communist Party. He was sent home from the Soviet Union for remaining seated during a standing ovation for Stalin. He led three Hunger Marches to London during the 1930s. In 1936 he had been elected as one of two Communists on Glamorgan County Council. (T.D. Breverton, The Welsh Almanac, Glyndwr Publications, 2002 / Wikipedia)
1982: The Salutation pub in Hayes Bridge Road (first licensed in 1847) closed its doors for the last time, following its near neighbour, The Greyhound in Bridge Street (September 1855 to May 1981). The area was redeveloped and later became the site of Toys R Us. (Stewart Williams, Cardiff Yesterday)
January 22nd
1884: Nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Sullivan was sent to prison for a month by Cardiff Magistrates for having been drunk and disorderly the previous evening. It was the eighth time she had been convcted of drunkenness. (Western Mail)
1900: ‘Charles Mullett, a young man with a star-shaped plaster on his forehead, charged George Turner, a wizened-looking man of 59, with hitting him with a hammer at Ethel Street. The facts were that Mullet interposed in a quarrel Turner had with his wife. The prisoner, it was alleged, ran into the street after the woman flourishing the hammer. Responding to her cries for help, Mullet ran between them and received the blow intended for the wife. The defence was that there was a struggle and that Mullett made an unauthorised intrusion into Turner’s home. The bench imposed a fine of 40 shillings or one month’s hard labour.’ In another case on the same day, Margaret Walsall (40) was charged with assisting in the management of a disorderly house at 5 Little Homfray Street. She had a previous conviction for ‘shabeening’ (brewing illicit spirit
s). (Western Mail)
January 23rd
1923: St Illtyd’s College, Courtney Road, opened. It was staffed by the Catholic De La Salle brothers who went on to serve education in Cardiff for seventy-four years. Over seventy former pupils of St Illtyd’s were later ordained to the priesthood. The college buildings were badly damaged by a German bomb on the night of 4th March 1941 but the school continued to function in what was left of the premises. (John O’Sullivan & Bryn Jones, Cardiff: A Centenary Celebration, The History Press, 2005)
2011: Designer Tim Rice (41) of Grangetown announced his ambitious scheme to redecorate the interior of Brains Brewery’s ‘Yard Bar & Kitchen’ pub diner by plastering the ceilings of the toilets with hundreds of pictures of bottoms. Asked where he would get his ‘models’, he told Wales on Sunday, ‘I’ve been looking everywhere from porn sites on the internet to cosmetic surgery catalogues. I’ve even put out requests to my friends on Facebook to take their own pictures and email them to me. I wanted to go for a look that defied description’. His award-winning redesign of the former dairy at Pontcanna into an art gallery included ‘burlesque dancers can-canning across crocodile-skin floors’.
