Welsh Journals

'THE BIGGEST ROOM IN MERTHYR': WORKING-CLASS HOUSING IN DOWLAIS, 1850-1914' THE struggle for public health in mid-nineteenth-century Merthyr Tydfil has been thoroughly documented.2 Less attention has been paid to the later housing problem in the town, which had its origins in the early years of industrialization but which continued until well into the present century. The tremendous rate of immigration which accompanied the growth of the iron industry at Merthyr gave rise to an urgent need for more houses, but the lack of any regulating authority resulted in new houses being built for the incoming workers as quickly and as cheaply as possible, initially in the immediate vicinity of the works, then wherever there was space available. This rapid rate of construction precluded any thought of drainage, sanitation, ventilation or the comforts of the occupants, and the town itself developed without any proper planning or street layout. By the middle of the nineteenth century the population of Merthyr was over 40,000 and there were more than 8,000 dwellings crowded into its narrow streets, courts and alleys.3 The lack of privies and sanitary facilities meant that the streets were filled with filth and refuse. Roads and footways were dirt tracks which in wet weather were turned into thick, black mud. The river, polluted by the ironworks, was an open sewer filled with human waste, its banks covered with heaps of rubbish. A journalist reporting on Merthyr in 1850 found no public sewer or drain, and only three water pumps and one shallow well, along with a few 'spouts' fed by mountain springs.4 Given such conditions, it is not surprising that the death rate in Merthyr was appallingly high; between 1848 and 1852 it was 33 per 1,000, the highest in Britain after Liverpool and Manchester. The average life expectancy of a labourer was seventeen, and two out of every five children born in these years died before the age of five.5 The conditions of the dwellings inhabited by the working classes of Merthyr played no small part in these statistics. This article has been developed out of my University of Wales Diploma in General Studies thesis presented at Coleg Harlech in 1992. 1 would like to express my deepest gratitude to Neil Evans, who not only suggested the subject but also located many of the sources used, corrected my numerous errors, and provided the guidance, support and encouragement I needed to write it. Thanks also go to Jon Parry for tracking down a number of sources, and to Caroline Jacob at Merthyr Public Library for her kind assistance. 2 Most notably by Professor I. G. Jones, in his Communities: Essays in the Social History of Victorian Wales (Llandysul, 1987), ch. 11, and in more detail in R. K. J. Grant, 'Merthyr Tydfil in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Struggle for Public Health', ante, Vol. 14, No. 4 (1989). 3 J. Gross, 'History of Housing in Merthyr Tydfil', Merthyr Historian, IV (1989), 151. Letters to the Morning Chronicle in Labour and the Poor in England and Wales, 1849-1851, ed. Jules Ginswick (London, 1983), pp. 11-15. 5 Jones, op. cit., p. 248.