Welsh Journals

THE DIARY OF A WORKING MAN, 1872-1873: Bill WILLIAMS IN THE FOREST OF DEAN. Edited by Bess Anstis and Ralph Anstis. Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, Stroud, 1994. Pp. xxiv, 136; illus.; map. £ 9.99. This diary of a young colliery clerk and storekeeper in the Forest of Dean came to light in 1965, over ninety years after the diarist made his concluding entry. It was found by a five-year-old boy amidst a trunk of other books in a shed in Cinderford. The child decided that it would make an excellent scribbling pad. Fortunately, adult intervention ensured that this intriguing item survived relatively unscathed by crayon. The diary opens abruptly, without any explanation of why William Henry ('Bill') Williams decided to keep it, on 16 July 1872. It closes with equal abruptness on 4 May 1873. In the intervening ten months the diarist recorded his life in Cinderford and his work at the nearby Trafalgar colliery in some detail. Bill Williams was, the editors tell us, the illegitimate son of Thomas William Oakley, a Monmouth solicitor and a member of a landowning family at Mitchel Troy, Monmouthshire. Oakley seduced Elizabeth Williams, one of the family's servants, and young Bill, born at Trelleck in 1847, was the result. How the editors know this is not revealed. They speak with confidence about Bill's upbringing by foster parents in Monmouth and an abortive spell as a clerk with a Hereford solicitor, but no sources for this information are given. What is certain is that by 1872 Bill Williams was working as a storekeeper at the colliery ofW. B. and T. B. Brain. He recorded his daily routine faithfully. He described the stores he received and issued, the various cash transactions he made, the errands he was sent on by the Brains, and the quarrels he had regularly with those workmates in the stores and office who, like him, worked close to the boundary separating mental and manual labour and were acutely conscious of affronts to their status and dignity as a result. Bill recorded the strikes that regulated relations between the colliers and their employers without much comment or emotion ('Works playing'). His own relations with his employers are dealt with in more detail and with more feeling. W B. Brain treated him without much formality or reserve, yet this was not always welcomed: Bill's resentment of Brain's sarcasms and teasing over his poor timekeeping is all too evident. The diarist's activities beyond the workplace are of equal, probably greater, interest. His devotion to the tonic sol-fa, his earnest attempts at self-improvement (manifested in self-taught shorthand), and his inability to remain faithful to his girlfriend Beck, a Gloucester servant girl, are all demonstrated. As the editors state, the diary is 'lightly edited'. For this