Welsh Journals

Home life, domestic routines and household chores are given very full treatment in Growing Up In Wales, 1895-1938. It is quite striking to note the heavy domestic burdens and responsibilities placed on very young girls in those years-looking after younger brothers and sisters, doing a whole range of tasks around the house, and in many cases taking on part-time jobs to supplement the family income and very often having to leave school early to go out to work. Interestingly several respondents, to whom Jeffrey Grenfell-Hill refers in his introduction, spoke of fathers helping in the house by cooking and doing chores. This is, of course, contrary to the popular image of men in south Wales and indeed, it would appear, their contribution to domestic work was kept a well-guarded secret, and as one respondent noted, 'behind closed doors of course'. There are particular strengths to Growing Up In Wales. It is excellent on the impact of successive pregnancies on women's lives and the dangers of childbirth in these years of high maternal and infant mortality. It shows very clearly too how financial hardship and the needs of families confined the horizons and shattered the ambitions of young women in south Wales in these years. As one young woman, who shared the fate of thousands of other Welsh girls in the inter-war period and became a domestic servant in London, said to Jeffrey Grenfell-Hill; 'My life was one of unfulfilled dreams: to be a dressmaker and to play the piano.' This book should appeal to a wide audience. It is useful and informative for historians, particularly those interested in the lives of women in Wales. However, its accessible style and its essentially human stories should commend it to general readers with an interest in life in south Wales before the Second World War. DEIRDRE BEDDOE Pontypridd RESEARCHING LocAL History: THE Human Journey. By Michael A. Williams. Longman, 1996. Pp. xviii, 276. £ 42.00, hardback; £ 14.99, paperback. This is a rewarding, if at times infuriating, book which needs to be considered at several different levels. The first is that of the author's original commission: to write yet another 'how to' guide to local history research for amateurs. There are many such guides already on the market, and each stands or falls by what it adds to the information already available. In this context, the strong points of Michael Williams's book are