Volume Eight - Pre-Victorian to the present day - more aspects - Chains at Penarth Dock - Macey, Mules and Wallace Family History . . .

The diary begins:

'January 1906 – I am so thankful to my great Master for all the goodness of the past year. We have been kept in health and strength all through the year and I must say everything hath worked together for good. The work hath been steady all through the year. Our garden produced an abundant supply of crops, and Peace at Home.

Are we any nearer The Kingdom? Well the Master told us plainly the Kingdom of Heaven was in our Hearts and I believe our duty to ourselves and to those with whom we deal is carrying out our duty to our Master. And the better account we keep of ourselves the more we are carrying out our Masters wishes. And I must say that truly our path hath been by the side of the still waters’.

January 1906 - extracts from the first page of William's diary and also from his financial schedule.

The financial Schedule reveals that William was earning around £1.18s.5d (£1.92) a week as a tipper in the dock, rising to about £2.2s.10d (£2.14) depending on the hours and rates. Every week, there is a payment to ‘M’ of £1.10s.0d (£1.50). This was his wife Elizabeth, whom he called Mother.

There is a tantalising reference to an earlier event at the beginning of the financial Schedule. William wrote: ‘Tippers strike at the dock 31st July 1873. Coined one ton work at Penarth. 1884 under D. Edmunds’.

This is a reference to the 1873 coal miners’ strike in the South Wales Coal field. They were objecting to the ‘sliding scale’ of pay whereby wages were linked to the price of coal on the open market. The Penarth tippers must have come out in support of the miners. The coal owners defeated the miners by forming the Monmouthshire and South Wales Coal Owners Association, and forming links with the iron masters. Their Association covered some 200 mines.