Welsh Journals

MINES, MIGRANTS AND RESIDENCE IN THE SOUTH WALES STEAMCOAL VALLEYS: THE OGMORE AND GARW VALLEYS IN 1881. By Philip N. Jones. Pp. x, 97; 26 figs. & 21 tables. Hull University Press, 1987. £ 5.50. This book provides us with an in-depth study of the 1881 census enumerators' books for the Ogmore and Garw valleys, examining a number of issues concerned with the creation of a mining community, in particular social composition, residential structure and the pattern of migration. Personal familiarity and population size seem to have been major factors in the choice of study area, Jones being particularly wary of using statistical procedures to draw a sample from the entire steamcoal field, preferring instead to concentrate on a 'typical' mining community and to study it in totality. The Ogmore and Garw valleys in 1881 appear to fit the bill: a youthful population of c. 6000; an occupational structure dominated by coal mining; Welsh-born migrants outnumbering non-Welsh by four to one; and migrants typically originating from industrial south Wales, rural Wales or south-west England. Jones, aided by the MIST computer package, successfully teases out of the census enumerators' books as much descriptive material as possible. Migrants, in the main part males, from particular areas are found to cluster together in the receiving area, with heads of households more likely than lodgers to come from contiguous mining communities. Short-distance migration predominated over long-distance, with 'personal contacts and localised information fields' playing a significant role. By construction of sibling time-paths and family migration paths, Jones establishes that there were essentially two methods of movement to the study area: one-link movements, which were essentially short-distance movements; and two-link movements, the bulk of which consisted of an initial long-distance movement to the coalfield followed by a short-distance move within it. The process of family formation in almost half of the 648 cases is found to have begun before movement to the study area. Lodgers clearly played an important economic function in this 'frontier community' and they normally came from the same cultural and geographic background as the head of the household, in many cases this being the result of close birthplace ties and/or kin-relationships. Nevertheless, instances of English lodgers staying in Welsh households were found. In the case of marriages there was also a tendency for the bride and groom to be from the same ethnic group, but Jones considers that mixed marriages played an important role in cultural assimilation. It is at this stage in his arguments, however, that Jones's inferences become less convincing. In particular his conclusion that, despite separation and segregation between various components of the population, the intensity of their work experience and its communal implications led to an assimilation between the Welsh and English rather than to a maintenance and strengthening of any barriers, seems to be drawn out of thin air. This really brings us to the main problem with this book, that is, the dichotomy between a very detailed, carefully worked and informative description of migration paths and residential patterns, on the one hand, and the lack of detailed corroborative