Volume One - Into the Victorian Age - Rhondda coal = Cardiff gold . . .

Place this sheer opulence in context with the daily routine and lives of the miners and their families only a few miles north. Records for the South Wales coalfield show that between 1868 and 1919 a miner was killed every 6 hours and an injury occurred every 2 minutes. One such incident from the era occurred on 23rd December 1885 at 2.40 p.m. "On this day, a loud report was heard above ground at Maerdy Colliery and a column of smoke and dust was seen to issue from the upcast shaft. These signs were recognisable to everyone familiar with mining at that time as indicating another in the terrible catalogue of disasters that were the dread of everyone working, or living with someone working, underground. Indeed, tragedy had come to the close-knit community of Maerdy with an explosion underground in the 'East Rhondda' district of Maerdy Colliery. The disaster claimed the lives of eighty-one men and boys, sixty-three from suffocation and eighteen from burns and violence."

	The father of my late sister-in-law Velma, worked underground at Ferndale pit and then at the Maerdy pits which are situated at the head of Rhondda Fach. In his spare time he sang tenor with the Pendyrus Male Voice Choir and he joked with me that it took the first half hour of singing to get the coal dust out of his lungs.

Dick Davies told me stories of hardship, fatalities and injuries even in the mid 1960’s. He passed away suffering from “black lung” or pneumoconiosis, in common with many of his fellow miners. The family lived in Regent Street, Ferndale and they always made me very welcome.

Velma recorded life at home in Ferndale during the early 1970’s [040]: “Dad does not work the coal-face because he is not strong enough to cut the coal, but he has to make sure that the iron tubs, filled right to the top with coal, pass along the tracks for about half a mile underground. They use pit ponies to pull them along, and these poor animals don’t have to use their eyes much. The ponies are almost blind anyway with coal dust. The pit ponies never come to the surface – they live, eat, drink and die there underground. My Dad does not like his work at all but there is nothing else to do. His Father was a miner, as was his Grandfather before him.”

She goes on to recount that one of Dad's pleasures was a smoke!