Chapter 5: Environment
potential population of 160,000 in the urban districts of Ebbw Vale, Nantyglo and
Blaina, Abertillery, Abercarn, Risca and portions of the Mynyddislwyn, Bedwellty
and Tredegar urban districts and St. Mellons Rural District. The Pontypridd and
Rhondda trunk sewer served its respective areas and trunks sewers were similarly
employed to serve the Ogmore and Afan valleys. The topography of the south Wales
area naturally lent itself to this system of trunk sewers and other areas of south Wales
adopted this means of disposal during the interwar period. By 1926 the Rhymney
Valley main trunk sewer was completed65 and work continued into the 1930s to
connect subsidiary sewers to it. By 1933 subsidiary sewers in the urban districts of
Rhymney, Bedwellty, Mynyddislwyn, Bedwas and Machen in Monmouthshire and
Caerphilly and Gelligaer in Glamorgan and were connected to the Rhymney Valley
Sewerage Board trunk sewer.66 A further trunk sewer scheme to serve the Afon
Lwyd, or ‘Eastern valley’ of Monmouthshire, had first been suggested to Parliament
before the First World War but was rejected due to disagreements between the local
authorities involved in the scheme.67 A trunk sewer serving Llantarnam and
Llanfrechfa Upper urban districts was completed in 1931 but the greater part of the
Eastern valley was not served by a trunk sewer for the whole of the interwar period.68
The second system utilised in south Wales was that of sewers connected to
sewerage works that treated the sewage, by chemical or bacterial means, and then
discharged the effluent into a nearby river or stream. Areas served by this type of
system included the Merthyr and Aberdare districts, the neighbouring urban districts
of Maesteg and Ogmore and Garw and the adjoining Penybont Rural District, and
finally the hinterlands of Neath and Swansea.69 This system varied in nature within
south Wales. For example, the populous areas of Merthyr, Aberdare and Mountain
Ash was served by just two sewerage farms while the much smaller Pontardawe Rural
District contained no less than seven proposed or constructed sewerage schemes, each
provided with a complete sewage disposal works.70 Finally, many of the large coastal
65
Monmouthshire CC, RMOH (1926), p.17.
Ibid., (1933), p.33.
67
Chappell, South Wales Regional Survey Committee, Sewerage, p.2; for a history of the protracted
negotiations and elephantine measures to promote this scheme see Monmouthshire CC, RMOH (1937),
pp.129-134.
68
Monmouthshire CC, RMOH (1931), p.39; the Ministry of Health sanctioned a scheme in November
1937 but work had not begun when war broke out in 1939. By the late 1940s the county medical
officer was still stressing the need for this work to be carried out; see Monmouthshire CC, RMOH
(1937), p.134; Ibid., (1945-1947).
69
Chappell, South Wales Regional Survey Committee, Sewerage, pp.1,6-7.
70
Ibid., pp.6,13.
66
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towns utilised a variation of the other systems and discharged sewage directly into the
tidal waters of a river or into the sea. The problem with this method, it was stated,
was that in many cases the outfalls into the sea were not situated at a sufficient
distance from the towns and sewage tended to drift back above the towns on the flow
of the tide.
In the absence of any of these three systems of disposal, sewage was most
often discharged directly into rivers and streams. The effects were disastrous. In the
Eastern valley of Monmouthshire, all sewage was discharged in its crude state into the
Afon Lwyd, with the exception of one out-fall at Panteg where the sewage was first
treated and then released.71 While the trunk sewer serving the Llantarnam and
Llanfrechfa Upper areas did lessen the amount of crude sewage released into the river,
the Afon Lwyd continued to pose serious health risks throughout the 1920s and
1930s. The county medical officer, Dr. D. Rocyn Jones, was greatly concerned by the
state of the river:
The nuisance created in the vicinity of some of the sewer outfalls, during the
drier periods of the year when the flow of water in the river is not sufficient to
carry off the whole of the sewerage is repulsive and a probable menace to
health, whilst the emanations given off from decomposing sewage matter are
most offensive and is a cause of numerous complaints. In addition anyone in
the vicinity of the Afon Lwyd on a summer’s morning may see colonies of all
kinds of flies feeding upon the decomposing sewage matter from whence
many of them gain access to the larders and food stores generally.72
The river constituted an open sewer from Blaenavon at the top of the valley to the
point it entered the Usk at Newport.73
Sewerage systems employing long lengths of underground piping were
generally efficient but were not without their problems. Chief among these were the
effects of mining subsidence on the many miles of underground piping. This problem
was obviated in some instances by the construction of sewerage pipes on brick pillars
above ground, but for most districts on the coalfield subsidence was the cause of
considerable damage and the source of much trouble and cost to the local
71
Monmouthshire CC, RMOH (1922), p.48.
Ibid., (1929), p.24.
73
WBH, Box 3, R. Bruce Low, Report on the Sanitary circumstances of the Abersychan Urban
District, 11 February 1929, p.2.
72
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Chapter 5: Environment
authorities.74 It was a major problem in the Rhondda, for example, where numerous
leaks resulted each year.75 Such leaks soaked into the ground and could seep into
rivers and even water supplies. The medical officer of Brynmawr attempted to shift
the blame for a typhoid76 outbreak in his area in 1924 from the leaky condition of the
sewer in the district to the habits of local people who, he claimed, were in the habit of
throwing excrement onto the main road. The medical officer’s protestations might
have been more believable had he not then claimed that in any case the sewer had
been deliberately broken in order to provide a ground for a claim against the
council.77 The Welsh Board of Health considered the Nantyglo and Blaina Urban
District to be particularly liable to typhoid infection and gave the views of the
Brynmawr officer short shrift. Outbreaks in the Nantyglo and Blaina area in the past
had ‘almost without exception’ been traced to water infected by sewage leaking from
the Brynmawr sewers.78
Subsidence was having dire effects on the sewers of the Rhondda. By 1933
the subsidiary sewers in the mid-Rhondda area were said to have deteriorated to such
an extent so as to make them ‘totally ineffective as channels for sewage’ with the
result that sewage had to be discharged into the river.79 This was not the only
problem faced by public health officials in the Rhondda. H. Richards has written how
a considerable amount of excess capacity meant that the sewers in the Rhondda
served the district admirably and that very little investment in the sewerage
infrastructure was necessary between the years 1914 and 1960.80 This was not the
opinion of the medical officer of health who commented in 1923 that the main sewer
of the district, 17 miles long and discharging into the sea, had served the area
‘admirably’ but due to the rapid growth of population the sewer capacity was now
barely adequate even under normal conditions – ‘any interference with the flow or an
74
WBH, Box 49Q, R. Bruce Low, Report on the Sanitary Circumstances of the Maesteg Urban
District, 9 February 1926, p.20, (own pagination); Rhondda UD, RMOH (1925), p.19; Nantyglo and
Blaina UD, RMOH (1932), p.10.
75
Rhondda UD, RMOH (1927), p.72.
76
Typhoid is spread by bacteria shed in the stool of an infected person being ingested through
contaminated food or water and is usually caused by a breakdown in the separation of sewage and
water supplies; see Kiple, The Cambridge World History of Human Disease.
77
WBH, Box 13Q, Minute sheet of conference with R. Bruce Low held on 2 December 1924, p.2.
78
WBH, Box 58Q, Correspondence from Welsh Board of Health to Mr. Infield (Ministry of Health?), 8
November 1927.
79
Rhondda UD, RMOH (1933), p.68.
80
H. Richards, ‘Investment in Public Health Provision in the Mining Valleys of South Wales, 18601914’, in C. Baber and J. Williams (eds.), Modern South Wales: Essays in Economic History (Cardiff,
1986), pp.130-131.
208
Chapter 5: Environment
undue increase in the volume of the sewage causes the secondary or subsidiary sewers
to be overcharged.’81 The Rhondda sewers were so troublesome that the entire length
of the main sewer from Treorchy to Trehafod had been enlarged or re-laid by 1936.
In the following few years, many of the main and subsidiary sewers were similarly
renewed, most of the work financed by grants from the Commissioner of the Special
Areas.82 Wyndham Portal found that the Rhondda Urban District council, in common
with other authorities, had a long list of sewerage work that they were unable to
proceed with because sanction was being withheld by government departments.83
These were the three methods by which houses that were sewered discharged
their waste. In addition, of course, there were a certain proportion of houses that was
not connected to any form of sewer system. Such houses depended on a variety of
‘conservancy’ systems, all of which were considered less satisfactory from a sanitary
point of view than sewers. In his examination of housing in Victorian Britain, Martin
Daunton has written how ‘Sanitary history reveals a hierarchy of conveniences
ranging from cess-pools, through middens, ash-closets and pail-closets, to water
closets.’84 Cess-pools and middens consisted of large, pervious receptacles that held
more than one week’s sewage.85 As the nineteenth century passed so receptacles were
made impervious and smaller so that in some cases the receptacle was reduced to a
pail beneath the seat of the closet. At the top of the ‘sanitary hierarchy’ was the water
closet, which itself had a number of forms. The variation in closets utilised within an
area was determined by the byelaws in force in that particular area during its
development and by the improvements that a council could make in the meantime.86
Cesspools, privies, pail closets and dry earth closets were mainly vestiges of
the nineteenth century and existed to a greater or lesser degree in just about most
81
Rhondda UD, RMOH (1923), p.79; the Aberdare medical officer similarly complained that the
calibre of the main sewer in his district was too small to deal with the amount of sewage produced;
Aberdare UD, RMOH (1924), p.91.
82
Rhondda UD, RMOH (1936-1939); these grants allowed work to be carried out that had previously
been postponed because of economic considerations; see the Reports of the Commissioner for the
Special Areas.
83
Reports of the Investigation into the Industrial Conditions in Certain Depressed Areas, [Cmd. 4728],
1933-34, xiii, p.169; Pontardawe RD, RMOH (1934), p.8; Nantyglo and Blaina UD, RMOH (1935),
p.7.
84
M. J. Daunton, House and Home in the Victorian City. Working-Class Housing 1850-1914 (London,
1983), p.248.
85
The difference between the two was that in the case of middens ashes were mixed with the sewage to
form a semi-solid mass while in cess-pools nothing was mixed with the excrement.
86
Daunton, House and Home in the Victorian City, pp.248-249.
209
Chapter 5: Environment
communities in south Wales during the interwar period,87 but it was in the rural areas
that these systems were most prevalent. The scattered, isolated nature of the rural
communities meant that piped sewerage systems were prohibitively expensive and
could only be extended to these areas in a very piecemeal fashion. This depended to a
large extent on proximity to large urban areas. The rural districts of Magor and St.
Mellons (which were amalgamated in 1934 to form the Magor and St. Mellons Rural
District) lay in close proximity to the water supplies and trunk sewers that served
Newport and the populous Monmouthshire valleys and could be connected relatively
easily. Even as early as 1928 the greater part of the St. Mellons district was served by
the water-carriage system.88
Rural areas further removed from large urban areas were less fortunate. The
majority of houses in the Monmouth, Abergavenny and Chepstow rural districts and
the outlying parts of the Magor Rural District were still unsewered during the 1920s
and depended on older systems of sewage disposal.89 In these cases it was usually the
householders themselves who were responsible for the disposal of waste. This
evoked complaint from public health authorities as it was found that water supplies
from shallow wells or surface water were put at risk by the superficial burial of pail
contents and by overflowing cess-pits.90 The ministry’s inspector, Dr. R. Bruce Low,
complained that householders residing at Pontneddfechan in the Neath Rural District
were prone to dump the contents of their pail closets directly into the river or else onto
the river-banks leaving them ‘grossly polluted’.91 Public health authorities were alive
to the problems of sewage disposal and water supply, and efforts were made to extend
sewers to include rural communities and isolated farms during the interwar period.92
Nevertheless, most rural communities in eastern Monmouthshire remained unsewered
by the outbreak of the Second World War.
87
In areas not served by a piped sewerage system new houses built during the interwar years had to be
provided with conservancy type closets; see for example Port Talbot MB, RMOH (1922), p.41; Magor
RD, RMOH (1927), p.5.
88
Bruce Low, Untitled report on a sanitary survey of the St. Mellons Rural District, p.2.
89
Monmouthshire CC, RMOH (1930), p.54; Monmouth RD, RMOH (1925), p.5; Chepstow RD,
RMOH (1921), p.7; WBH, Box 2Q, R. Bruce Low, Untitled report on a sanitary survey of
Abergavenny Rural District, 10 February 1923, p.2; WBH, Box 37, R. Bruce Low, ‘Sanitary Survey of
the Magor Rural District’, 5 May 1928, p.2.
90
Low, ‘Sanitary Survey of the Magor Rural District’, p.2.
91
WBH, Box 61Q, R. Bruce Low, Untitled report on the sanitary circumstances of the Neath RD, 23
May 1929, p.4, (own pagination).
92
See Monmouth RD, RMOH (1920-1939).
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Differences in the sanitary infrastructure of the various areas of interwar south
Wales were partly due to their level of urbanisation. This difference can be seen in
microcosm in the case of the Chepstow Rural District, which was split into two parts
by the Newport to Chepstow main road. The northern portion comprised about threequarters of the total land-area and yet only two-fifths of the population. The majority
of the population in the district was to be found in the increasingly urbanised southern
part that was, in the interwar period, becoming a commuter belt for Newport. The
medical officer commented:
This distribution of the population, here as elsewhere, determines the
provision or otherwise of sanitary and utility services. Thus in the semiurbanised southern portion of the district there may be found domestic water
supplies, a water carriage system, a scheme for refuse removal, as well as
provision of “company” electricity and gas. Practically none of these services
are to be found in the scattered district north of the road.93
Urban communities in south Wales enjoyed much better facilities in regard to
closet accommodation and sewerage systems than the rural areas and yet even here
the legacies of the nineteenth century remained to pose public health risks. It is
evident that the vast majority of households were connected to sewers well before the
interwar period.94 To take just a few examples, 91% of all closets in the Gelligaer
Urban District were connected to water-carriage sewerage systems by 1920 while the
figures for the Rhondda and Tredegar were even more impressive – 99.5% and 98.6%
respectively. In Aberdare 97.6% of all closets were connected to sewers by 1924.95
Throughout the interwar period, public health authorities were gradually able to bring
about the replacement of pails and privies with the connection of houses to sewerage
systems. This was, of course, made easier by the trunk sewers and newly installed
water services that had been made available. Connections to the Western Valley
trunk sewer had been held up by the war but efforts were intensified in the early
1920s to convert privies and closets to the water-carriage system. Similarly, as the
Rhymney Valley trunk sewer was completed connections were made and closets
converted. The county medical officer urged local authorities to press on urgently
with the work96 but found that they were not as zealous as he would have liked and
93
Chepstow RD, RMOH (1938), pp.5-6.
See Appendix 5.1.
95
Gelligaer UD, RMOH (1920), p.41; Rhondda UD, RMOH (1920), p.63; Tredegar UD, RMOH
(1920), p.8; Aberdare UD, RMOH (1924), p.91.
96
Monmouthshire CC, RMOH (1922), p.47; (1923), p.44.
94
211
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that householders were unable to carry out the work due to financial burdens.
Locked-out miners in Ystradgynlais took advantage of the stoppage of 1926 to
connect their houses to the local council’s sewerage scheme. The economic
conditions of the time were tending to retard this work to some extent but progress
was being made, even if only gradually.97
In Swansea, the borough council inherited a large number of insanitary closet
types in 1918 when the borough boundary was extended to include the old-established
communities of Treboeth, Llansamlet, Fforestfach and Bonymaen. This extension
added over 5,000 pail closets and privies to the borough and an 11-year sewering plan
was drawn up to remedy the nuisance.98 This plan was postponed because of the high
cost of materials and it was not until 1925 that the scheme was reactivated and
progress made. Subsequently, sewers were extended to every part of the borough and
insanitary closet types abolished.99
Conversion of insanitary closet types continued through the 1920s so that by
1929 the Monmouthshire county medical officer was able to assert that nearly the
whole of the closet accommodation in the industrial areas was of the water-carriage
type.100 Nevertheless, problems remained. Many households remained without any
closet accommodation whatsoever. About 600 old houses in Aberdare were without
separate closet accommodation while in Blaenavon ‘large numbers of houses’ lacked
such accommodation.101 At some places in Blaenavon only one closet was provided
for the use of three families while at many places one closet served the needs of two
houses. A Blaina resident, speaking to Mollie Tarrant, voiced the probable sentiments
of a large number of householders at that time: ‘No matter what else, every house
should have its own lavatory. It’s only healthy.’102 Where such insufficiency existed,
it was stated, trouble was experienced in keeping the closet in a sanitary condition for
‘although used in common by members of two or more households, it appears to be
no one’s business to flush and cleanse, with the result that foul and dirty closets are
97
Monmouthshire CC, RMOH (1920-1939); Tredegar UD, RMOH (1929), p.8; locked-out miners in
Ystradgynlais took advantage of the stoppage of 1926 to connect their houses to the local council’s
sewerage scheme; Llais Llafur, 29 May 1926.
98
Swansea CB, RMOH (1920), pp.29-30; Ibid., (1922), pp.32-33.
99
Ibid., (1925-1939).
100
Monmouthshire CC, RMOH (1929), p.26; increasingly during the 1930s it was only the outlying
farms and hamlets that remained unsewered in the industrial areas.
101
Glamorgan CC, Quarterly Report of the County Medical Officer to the Public Health and Housing
Committee held on 29 February 1924; Monmouthshire CC, RMOH (1929), p.26.
102
A. Calder and D. Sheridan (eds.), Speak for Yourself. A Mass-Observation Anthology 1927-49
(London, 1984), p.108.
212
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not uncommon.’103 Although a legacy of the nineteenth century, the inadequate
provision in Blaenavon was not helped by the economic conditions of the interwar
years as the medical officer noted that to enforce provision of a separate closet would
cause severe hardship for house owners.104
Other areas that suffered a high concentration of insanitary closet types
included Hafodyrynys in the Abersychan district where pail closets in close proximity
to living rooms predominated despite the fact that the village was within a few yards
of the Western Valley trunk sewer.105 Similarly, Cwmavon near Port Talbot
depended to a large extent on pail closets and it was only in 1923 that a sewer was
constructed to serve the area.106 Prior to this, over 1,000 pail closets existed in this
village and these were emptied by council workmen. When being emptied the
contents of the closets often splashed into the road creating ‘a serious nuisance and
even danger to health’ and the waste was eventually buried in a local tip provoking
complaints about the smell from residents.107 By 1926 over 500 closets had been
connected to the water-carriage system leaving over 600 still to be connected.108
Connections slowed during the 1930s as owners were reluctant to carry out the work
because their leases were due to expire. There still remained over 100 houses
dependant on pail closets by 1933, although the majority of these houses would, in
any case, have been cleared under the 1930 Housing Act.109
Generally, closets connected to a water-carriage system were more sanitary
than those closets dependant on cess-pools or pails by virtue of the fact that sewage
was immediately conveyed into the sewerage system.110 However, potential health
risks were also posed by problems encountered with water-carriage type closets.
Firstly, in some instances water supplies were insufficient to enable closets to be
flushed and cleansed adequately.111 Secondly, hand-flushed, as opposed to cisternflushed, closets depended on the effectiveness and regularity with which householders
flushed and cleansed them. Bruce Low doubted the sanitary efficacy of hand-flushed
103
Monmouthshire CC, RMOH (1929), p.26.
Blaenavon UD, RMOH (1933), p.8.
105
Monmouthshire CC, RMOH (1927), p.20; Abersychan UD, RMOH (1931), p.15.
106
Port Talbot UD, RMOH (1923), p.50.
107
Neath RDC, Report upon the Sanitary Conditions of District by the Medical Officer of Health and
Surveyors, April 1920, p.17; Port Talbot UD, RMOH (1926), p.35.
108
Port Talbot UD, RMOH (1926), p.35.
109
Ibid., RMOH (1933), p.66.
110
However, some low-lying areas found that their sewers did not flush because of the lack of slope
and sewage would wash back to the closet; see Monmouthshire CC, RMOH (1920-1939).
111
Monmouthshire CC, RMOH (1928), p.16; Nantyglo and Blaina UD, RMOH (1926), p.8.
104
213
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closets. In his survey of the Maesteg Urban District he found that even when there
was no shortage of water the closets were ‘neglected and frequently blocked up’ and
in a ‘disgusting condition of filth.’ This he attributed to the ‘carelessness and neglect’
of the householders.112 The proportion of hand-flushed water closets varied from one
area to the next. Of those in the Nantyglo and Blaina and Maesteg urban districts
about 10% and 50% respectively possessed flushing cisterns while the majority of
closets in the Abersychan district were cistern flushed.113 Even Cardiff possessed
around 14,000 hand-flushed closets and the medical officer there described their
conversion to cisterns as a matter requiring ‘urgent attention’.114 Public health
officials sought to compel owners to convert to cistern-flushing closets throughout the
period although here, as elsewhere, they came up against the poverty of house-owners
in their efforts.115 Furthermore, some officials commented that it was a difficult
matter to keep cistern-flushed closets in good order ‘owing to the rough treatment
they received from careless tenants.’116 Similar to comments that working-class
families kept coal in the bath or damaged gas-meters with their clumsiness, this seems
to have been another of that type of middle-class assertion that working-class families
did not deserve to possess modern amenities, at least not at public expense.117
If the water supply and sewerage systems of south Wales were improving
during the interwar period then the same could not be said for standards of air quality.
The industries of the area were chiefly to blame for the dire standards that
characterised south Wales. The coal industry continually produced a supply of coal
dust – the ‘dust epidemic’ as Bert Coombes characterised it118 – that was a constant
source of irritation. Dust blown from pit-heads, railway sidings and docks, sullied
clothes on washing lines, made the domestic burden of keeping a house clean more
onerous than it already was and generally tarnished the everyday environment of
south Wales:
Bruce Low, ‘Report on the Sanitary Circumstances of the Maesteg Urban District’, p.22.
WBH, Box 58Q, R. Bruce Low, Untitled report on the sanitary administration of the Nantyglo and
Blaina UD, 17 January 1929, p.3; Ibid., Report on the Sanitary Circumstances of the Maesteg Urban
District, p.22; Abersychan UD, RMOH (1921), p.11.
114
Cardiff CB, RMOH (1928), p.81. This problem had been resolved by the late 1930s; Cardiff CB,
RMOH (1937), p.103.
115
Low, Untitled report on the sanitary administration of the Nantyglo and Blaina UD, p.3.
116
Aberdare UD, RMOH (1938), p.73.
117
See for example Commission of Enquiry into the Coal Industry, vol. II, Reports and Minutes of
Evidence [Cmd.360], xii, 1919, p.1021, para.24,409.
118
B. L. Coombes, Miners Day (Harmondsworth, 1945), pp.52-53.
112
113
214
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Now in the 1920s and even before . . . it would be a very common sight to
have the whole of the Docks covered in a great cloud of black coal dust . . . if
the wind ever got around to the east, which it frequently did during the winter
months. I well remember my mother used to dash to the back of our home,
which was in St. Nicholas Road, Barry, and close all the windows in order to
stop the coal dust from blowing into the house.119
Proximity to a pit-head, a railway line or the docks was the important factor, and the
large extent to which housing in the mining communities of south Wales was
clustered around the collieries was thus relevant, ‘giving rise to much uncleanliness
and discomfort.’120 In congested areas such as the Rhondda, where houses had been
built in close proximity to the collieries, this difficulty was ’a serious one and causes
much annoyance.’121 T. J. Bell Thomas, the medical officer of Maesteg, on the other
hand, was able to comment in 1930 that ‘Although a colliery district the inhabited
areas [of Maesteg] are much cleaner than many other mining districts, the collieries
being well away from the populated areas, which is unusual in the valleys of South
Wales.’122 Topography, the time and nature of the expansion of the coal industry in a
particular area and the extent to which housing development could be controlled all
played a part in determining the proximity of housing to the collieries.
An examination of the Rhondda Urban District provides many insights into
the meaning of air pollution in coalmining communities.123 Throughout the interwar
period the council received complaints from residents about coal dust being blown
from collieries, aerial ropeways, railway sidings and tips, and by the grit produced by
mechanical stokers at colliery pit-heads.124 It was found that clothes could not be
dried outside when the wind blew in a certain direction for fear of being immediately
sullied and rooms rapidly covered in a film of fine coal dust if windows were left
open. Indeed, coal dust was forcing itself into houses through the gaps in windowand door-frames. Complaints by residents were usually put to the council through
ward committees, local Labour Party councillors, trades and labour councils and
ministers of religion and it is clear that these were the means by which working-class
119
Valley and Vale, In Our Own Words, In Our Own Pictures (Barry, 1989), p.32, testimony of
Leonard Davies.
120
Ministry of Health, Report of the South Wales Regional Survey Committee, p.64.
121
Ibid.
122
Maesteg UD, RMOH (1930), p.9.
123
The following is obtained from Glam RO, Rhondda UDC, Correspondence and papers relating to air
pollution.
124
See for example Rhondda UD, RMOH (1932), pp.93-94.
215
Chapter 5: Environment
people communicated and interacted with officialdom.125 Shopkeepers, such as
butchers, bakers and grocers, concerned that dust and grit was tainting their stock,
were more likely to complain personally to the council. In response to such
complaints the medical officer monitored the nuisance and attempted to remedy the
problem through negotiation. This rather conciliatory approach meant that pollution
continued for some time even while under the observation of the public health
authorities and abatement only came about on the whim of colliery managers or a
change in working practice. Some colliery managers played on economic worries to
avoid incurring the expense of lessening pollution. Numerous complaints regarding
the dumping of small coal behind Volunteer Street, Pentre by the Cory Brothers
Company led the medical officer to inquire into the problem. The general manager
informed him that it was inevitable that small coal be dumped in this way or else the
company’s collieries would be stopped, throwing a large number out of work. The
manager wrote:
We would say that at times such as these when there are a large number of
men unemployed, the dumping of smalls is providing employment in the
neighbourhood, and consequently we would have thought it would have had
general support in spite of the inconvenience that may or may not be caused to
a few of the local inhabitants.126
Coal fires within the home produced dust and grit both within the home
environment and in the wider community. Nearly every town, iron and steel works
and many collieries possessed gasworks or coke ovens from which a wide variety of
by-products were obtained but which also released dust and sulphurous fumes into the
atmosphere.127 But it was perhaps the metallurgical industries of the region that had
the most detrimental effect on the air quality. Swansea had long been infamous for
the scale and nature of air pollution produced by its various metal industries128 and H.
V. Morton was horrified by the town upon his visit there:
125
Cliff Prothero, Recount (Ormskirk, 1982), p.39; Prothero was a Labour councillor on the Neath
Rural District Council and commented that ‘In those days a local councillor was expected to be more
than a representative: he was looked upon, and made use of, as an advisor on all kinds of subjects, and
also an advocate, a letter writer, and an information bureau without the aid of any office facilities.’
Although, in one case a petition was signed by about 50 inhabitants of Aberhondda Road, Porth urging
the council to ‘remedy the evil’ caused by the generating station of the Rhondda Tramways Company
Ltd.
126
Glam RO, Correspondence from General Manager, Cory Brothers & Co. Ltd., to Dr. J. D. Jenkins,
MOH, Rhondda UDC, 12 May 1931.
127
E. M. Bridges, Healing the Scars: Derelict Land in Wales (Llandysul, 1988), p.18.
128
See Clapp, An Environmental History of Britain since the Industrial Revolution, p.27; Clapp states
that copper smelting and other industrial processes had made the lower Swansea valley ‘one of the
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The town of Swansea would never win a beauty competition . . . a grim and
terrible valley. A century, or a century and a half ago, it was, like all South
Wales, a pretty, peaceful spot. Then the Industrial Revolution changed it. The
most hideous creation of man, the foundry, with its bleak chimney-stack, took
possession of it. They now stand the length of it, frightful and ogreish. The
smoke drifts before the wind. In works and factories Fire and Force are
torturing the intractable, transforming it and sending it out into the world in a
thousand shapes. That is the drama of Swansea.129
That this rather fanciful description was not without some element of truth is borne
out by the many complaints received by the Swansea County Borough from the
residents of the Llansamlet Ward. Investigation by the medical officer of health
found that crops on nearby farms were left withered by the fumes of the spelter (zinc)
works situated at Landore.130 Many people, including the medical officer himself,
believed that the fumes were a predisposing cause of respiratory diseases:
Even if it could not be proved that such is the case, there is no question but
that the fumes are a source of chronic discomfort and annoyance to the
residents. Any person passing through this district at times when the smoke
trouble is prevalent can but experience the discomfort. One can understand
also that the fact that the people have to live with their windows closed to keep
out the fumes will add indirectly to the possibilities of increased incidence of
respiratory troubles.’131
In an investigation into the problem just before the First World War a fellow medical
officer, examining a horse that was alleged to have died as a result of poisoning by
fumes, found that the internal organs of the horse showed presence of lead, arsenic
and zinc. No such post-mortem examination could be carried out on the people of the
area although the medical officer felt that he could not rule out the possibility of
similar metallic poisoning of local people.132
Further up the Swansea valley, the medical officer of Pontardawe noted in
1932 how the infant mortality rate in Pontardawe and Clydach, previously lower than
the mining villages of Ystalyfera and Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, had increased in recent
years so that they now experienced greater mortality rates than the mining villages.
most polluted landscapes of the world’ during the nineteenth century; see also R. Rees, ‘The South
Wales Copper-Smoke Dispute, 1833-95’, Welsh History Review, 10, 4, (1981), pp.480-496.
129
H. V Morton, In Search of Wales (London, 1945), p.223.
130
These spelter works calcined, or roasted, zinc concentrates using sulphuric acid. Condensation
plants were sometimes used to obviate the emission of sulphurous fumes but these were neither
compulsory nor always effective. Further, during the process of distillation fumes of zinc oxide and
other metallic oxides were emitted from the distillation furnaces.
131
Swansea CB, RMOH (1924), p.56.
132
Ibid., pp.53-56.
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What is common to Pontardawe and Clydach is that both places suffer with
industrial smoke, dust and fumes and a dusty atmosphere must detract from
full health and capacity of every kind, and it may well be that these conditions
may act injuriously on expectant mothers and their unborn infants . . .
Sometimes a cloud falls down like a blanket over these places.133
The medical officer continued, stating that complaints had been received from
Clydach where fumes from the Mond Nickel works were destroying lead paint,
tarnishing brasses, killing vegetation and poisoning garden produce. Furthermore, it
was suggested that there was a greater incidence of cancer of the respiratory tract, but
the medical officer doubted this, arguing that the statistics did not support such a
conclusion.134 Nevertheless, by 1934 the medical officer noted how the making of
copper sulphate at the Mond works had ended, with the result that the emissions of
acid fumes had been reduced by half and how subsequently, in 1935, ‘the fields and
gardens are rejoicing in their quick recovery from poison gas.’135 People living near
the works were in no doubt that the noxious fumes were adversely affecting their
health. Kathleen Healy, who grew up in nearby Trebanos, remembered how:
Not a flower grew anywhere around this area, due to the fumes which left the
chimney stacks continually. The doctor thought that this might be the reason
for my mother’s ill health too, and he suggested we try and find a house on a
hillside away from the works. At that time, there were many complaints
regarding people’s health due to these fumes.136
The Healy family took the doctor’s advice and moved to a house on the hillside above
Trebanos but found that the Mond company, after constant complaints, had been
ordered to heighten the chimney stacks, thereby spreading the fumes further and
polluting the air quality around the Healy’s new home.137
Further evidence of the nuisance caused by these works in the Swansea valley
is provided by a rather unlikely source. From 1932 the Western Mail held an annual
St. David’s Day essay writing competition for school children. Each year, essays had
to be submitted on a suitably patriotic topic and in 1938 the chosen subject was ‘Sut
yr harddwn fy nhref (neu bentref)’ – ‘How I would beautify my town (or village)’. A
sixteen-year old schoolboy from Clydach wrote:
133
Pontardawe RD, RMOH (1932), p.7.
Ibid., pp.7-8.
135
Ibid., RMOH (1934), p.6; Ibid., (1935), p.3.
136
K. Healy, Growing Up in a Welsh Valley (Devon, 1999), p.12.
137
Ibid., p.13.
134
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My first step in beautifying my village, would be to find some means of
filtering the poisonous smoke which belches from the stacks of the Mond
Nickel Refinery. This smoke spreads its layer of soot over the surrounding
countryside and together with the soot are poisons, which kill the plants, so
marring the beauty of nature’s scenery.138
The underlined passages were crossed out by the Western Mail marker of the essays
and not printed in the newspaper, presumably because such statements could not be
published without fear of legal action by the Mond company. The following passage
of another essay from Clydach was also crossed out by the Western Mail marker and
also serves to show the extent to which people living in the vicinity of the works were
concerned by the fumes emitted:
Y mae gwaith “nickel” yn agos iawn i’r pentref ac y mae’r mwg a rydd allan
yn effeithio tyfiant yr ardal. Peth da fyddai symud y gwaith beth ffordd o’r
pentref.139
[The “nickel” works are very close to the village and the smoke that it releases
affects the vegetation of the area. It would be a good thing to move the works
a short way from the village.]
Many of the winning essays submitted by the entrants described how the
improvement of the air quality in their communities would greatly improve the quality
of life of their residents. Children from the coal-mining communities were emphatic
in their assertion that life would be better were it not for the constant blight of coaldust in the atmosphere and the destruction of the environment by the coal industry
more generally.
Further evidence of air pollution in south Wales is provided in the annual
reports of the Cardiff medical officer of health. The report of 1926 commented that
the city suffered little atmospheric pollution and that this was due to a variety of
causes. These included ‘the relatively low density of population, the existence of only
a few large industrial concerns, the comparatively smokeless quality of the coal used
in the area, the extensive adoption of gas and electricity for domestic purposes, the
presence of a sparsely populated and non-industrialised belt immediately surrounding
the city, and its proximity to the open channel, from which the prevailing winds
blow.’140 While the problem of atmospheric pollution in Cardiff was not as serious as
it was in other towns and cities in Britain, the city was not completely free from the
NLW, Western Mail St. David’s Day Essay Competition, 1938, Fifty-three winning essays.
Ibid.
140
Cardiff CB, RMOH (1926), p.7.
138
139
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effects of pollution. A special investigation by a Dr. W. Panes found that in the year
1929-30 smoke pollution in Cardiff caused damage amounting to £207,000 or
approximately 18/- per head of population.141 Furthermore, testimonies of people
who grew up in the Splott area of the city bear witness to the effect that the steelworks
had on that particular part of Cardiff:
There is something else I clearly remember as unique to Splott. That
was the smell of Splott . . . An acrid smell with a fume that caught at the back
of the throat and it hung about in the air for hours on damp days. They said it
was caused when they opened the furnaces in the works, and with the smell
was a dust that lingered. My mother would put washing out to dry and have to
take it in again after twenty minutes or so. The washing would be speckled
with a fine red dust, it was a common occurrence. The women cursed, but
everyone accepted it as inevitable. It was from the ‘Dowlais’, as we called the
works, and the ‘Dowlais’ meant work for people so no one complained, there
were no demonstrations outside the work gates with placards demanding a
shut-down.142
Allegations about the impurity of the atmosphere in Splott provoked the county
borough council into setting up an air quality monitoring apparatus in 1935, the
findings of which showed that the level of pollution was ‘not abnormally high.’ The
findings, stated the medical officer, ‘deserve wide publicity amongst those applicants
for Council houses who, because of the reputation of Splott (now shown to be
undeserved) for unhealthy atmospheric conditions, are apt to refuse the offer of
houses on the Council’s estates in that locality.’143
Therefore, although the coal industry was responsible for a great deal of
atmospheric pollution it was probably the metallurgical industries that were
responsible for a greater amount of damage to people’s health. Situated mainly in
western Glamorgan and in the Eastern valley of Monmouthshire the various metal
industries blighted people’s lives and seems to have grieved them more than any other
environmental problem.
That the priority of employment led people to acquiesce in atmospheric
pollution was recognised by T. Evans, the medical officer of Swansea. After
commenting on the attitude of indifference and resignation that so characterised
responses to air pollution, he quoted the Departmental Committee on Smoke and
141
Ibid., (1929), pp.98-102; based on calculation of the amount deposited and the theoretical amount of
damage it would cause.
142
Testimony of Bob Turner, in Anne Eyles and Con O’Sullivan, In the Shadow of the Steelworks II
(Cardiff, 1995), p.3.
143
Cardiff CB, RMOH (1935), p.xxiv.
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Chapter 5: Environment
Noxious Vapours to the effect that ‘there still exists unfortunately a wide-spread
delusion that the presence of smoke implies prosperity, and that the blacker and
grimier a district, the more flourishing are its circumstances.’144 This idea must have
been even more apposite in the economic climate of the interwar period. As a
sixteen-year-old Glanmor Williams, describing Dowlais, in his entry in the Western
Mail competition of 1937 wrote:
Er na welir y mwg a’r bryntni fel yn y dyddiau gynt, mi hoffwn innau weld y
gweithfeydd, er brynted ac hacred oeddynt, yn gweithio eto, pe baent yn
gwneud yr hendre yn “Dirty Dowlais”.
[Though the smoke and the filth of the early days is not seen, I would like to
see the works, dirty and ugly as they were, working again, even if they made
the old town “Dirty Dowlais”.]145
The especially dire economic situation of Merthyr during the interwar period meant
that a clean environment was considered a secondary consideration. In a column that
juxtaposed ideas about health and air quality in a rather novel way Polonius, the
editorialist of the Merthyr Express, dismissed the idea that efforts should be made to
improve the air quality of the town. He wrote:
I would be interpreting the feelings of every citizen in saying that smoke is the
very breath of the town’s nostrils and that nothing is more vitally essential to
the well-being and prosperity of its inhabitants. Wouldn’t it be a day of great
rejoicing and thanksgiving if by some magic power an unlimited quantity of
smoke could be emitted from the tall, spectral chimneys of Cyfarthfa Works?
We could all do with less rain, but more smoke is what we want in Merthyr
Tydfil.146
Even a sixteen-year-old schoolchild could ask ‘Beth yw gwerth tai ardderchog a thref
lanwaith a’i thrigolion mewn angen?’ (What is the worth of excellent houses and a
clean town with the people in need?) and conclude that it was hypocrisy to make
cosmetic improvements when the people were so obviously without hope.147 It must
also be stated, however, that poor air quality was the cause of many complaints
received by the various local authorities.
Although air quality could at times be very poor in south Wales it also seems
likely that it was improving to some extent in some localities during the interwar
T. Evans, ‘Smoke Abatement’, The Welsh Housing and Development Association Yearbook (1925),
p.117.
145
WM, 1 March 1937, p.12, Glanmor Williams, 16, Dosbarth A (Secondary Schools), Ail Wobr
(Second prize); the essays for the 1937 competition were on the subject ‘The place I live in’.
146
ME, 14 June 1924, p.13.
147
WM, 1 March 1938, p.6, winning essay by John Elwyn Williams, Merthyr.
144
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period. Certainly the standard of air quality improved as mines and works shut down
during the depression. Port Talbot Municipal Borough Council had received no
complaints during 1926, for the first time, and the town had been free from its usual
‘pall of smoke’ due to its various furnaces having been partly or wholly closed down
during the year.148 If the valleys of south Wales ‘slipped back to [their] primal calm’
during the long lock-out of 1926 then the absence of coal dust in the atmosphere
partly helped this transformation.149 Descriptions of the lockout of 1926 constantly
reiterate the crystal clear weather of that year. Similarly, it was noted in 1922 that the
‘clear atmosphere of our mining valleys last summer when work had ceased for a little
time is what it should be in times of full work.’150
The recording of atmospheric pollution in Cardiff suggests that the amount of
soluble and insoluble matter in the atmosphere was declining in the years 1926 to
1938.151 Furthermore, the Smoke Abatement bye-law of 1926 encouraged medical
officers to investigate polluting nuisances and to take measures to abate them,
although the effectiveness of this bye-law was mitigated by the weak powers it had at
its disposal and its permissive nature. Also, of course, air quality improved as many
of the older industries shut down. This makes understandable the otherwise ludicrous
assertion made in 1936 by J. J. Crowe, the medical officer of Blaenavon, that the
council should consider the possibility of advertising their district as a health resort
because of ‘the bracing and invigorating air of its mountains.’152 Nevertheless,
although there were improvements in some areas in the quality of air that people
breathed, it seems likely that there was still much room for improvement by the
outbreak of the Second World War.153
The daily lives of ordinary people brought them into contact with a number of
148
Port Talbot MB, RMOH (1926), p.45.
Gwyn Thomas, A Welsh Eye, (London, 1964), p.16.
150
Glamorgan CC, RMOH (1921), p.27.
151
Cardiff CB, RMOH (1926), p.72; Ibid., (1938), p.121; the tables in these reports seem to suggest
that solids in the air were reduced by about half while chemicals (such as sulphates, chlorine and
ammonia) increased. It seems to suggest that obvious pollution by ash and tar was reduced by
screening emissions, while the less visible pollution continued to be emitted.
152
Blaenavon UD, RMOH (1936), p.4.
153
N. L. Tranter, British Population in the Twentieth Century (London, 1996), p.80; Tranter asserts that
‘Of all the principal determinants of environmental quality only the quality of the urban air supply
failed to improve in the course of the interwar period.’
149
222