Author: ian wright

On 29 October, during the 1926 miners’ lockout, eighteen-year-old Arthur Rivers, from Wales, was crushed to death while working in a small drift mine in Wet Wood, near Cannop Ponds in the Forest of Dean.  During the inquest, it was recorded that the mine’s owners were the O. and C. (Oaken and Churchway) Syndicate, Ltd., with its registered office at Talbot House, 98, St. Martin’s Lane, Westminster. The syndicate’s directors were William Sydney Stayt Taylor (Sydney Taylor) of Old Deane Hall, Speech House, Coleford, and his brother Tom Stayt Taylor of Weston-Super-Mare.   The inquest reported the description of the death by one of Rivers’ workmates, William Gibbs:

On the afternoon of Friday, October 29^th, without the slightest warning, the roof gave way, at which time he was near Rivers. About one cwt of dirt fell or rolled upon the Rivers’ feet and prevented him from getting away. He caught hold of his hand and endeavoured to extricate him, but found it impossible to do so. A second fall then occurred, and he made for safety. He then returned to Rivers, and having moved some of the dirt, felt his hand. Rivers asked him to shift the debris from around his face as he could not breathe. He encouraged him, and said they would have it off him soon. Rivers said, “It is impossible,” and then wished him “So long.”

He was then obliged to leave again on account of a third fall, several tons in weight, but none of it fell on Rivers. As soon as possible, efforts were made to release Rivers, but quite an hour elapsed from the time of the first fall before they succeeded in doing so. Artificial respiration was carried on for two hours, but without success. He said there was no lack of timber at the place. He considered that they had taken all reasonable precautions for their safety.

The jury recorded the following verdict:

That death was due to suffocation, caused by a fall of earth in the outcrop workings. We find the O. and C. Syndicate, Ltd., liable owing to their neglect (though not culpable neglect) in not complying with the rules and regulations laid down by the Coal Mines Act, 1841, and letters sent to them by Mr Forster Brown, Deputy Gaveller, drawing their attention to the infringement of these rules.[1]

Taylor made his living as a merchant, coal lease owner, and general commission broker. In April 1911, her lived in the large mansion, Cleeve Hill House, with extensive grounds, in Downed Bristol, where he employed ten servants. However, Taylor was declared bankrupt later in 1911. Despite this, he moved to the Forest in the early 1920s and embarked on a series of business ventures mainly connected with the Forest of Dean coalfield, including the mine in Wet Wood.

In early 1927, Taylor worked closely with William Morris (Lord Nuffield), the car manufacturer, on the acquisition of Howbeach colliery and a plan to buy up and develop the whole of the Forest of Dean coalfield. However, when he appealed against his bankruptcy in June 1927, the judge described him as “not in possession of that degree of moral integrity and uprightness”.[2]

What was the story behind Rivers’ death? Why were these Welshmen working in the Forest of Dean during the nine-month 1926 miners’ lockout? What is outcropping? Who were these rich men from the O. and C. Syndicate, and what were they doing in the Forest, employing men to mine coal in the middle of a major industrial dispute? What was Taylor’s relationship with Lord Nuffield?  What were the consequences for anyone who had dealings with them? This article will attempt to answer some of these questions. 

The right to mine coal in the Forest of Dean

In 1925, in the Forest of Dean, there were a total of 6,742 men working in the 10 large collieries employing more than 100 men. There were also 14 smaller and medium-sized collieries, together employing 311 men, owned by individual entrepreneurs or small mining companies. In addition, there were 34 mines owned by free miners, who operated under a system based on statutory rights unique to the Forest of Dean. In 1925, the free mines employed 243 workers, including the free miners themselves.^[2a]

Free mining rights have been claimed from ‘time immemorial’ by any miner born in the Hundred of St Briavels (which roughly covers the area occupied by the Forest of Dean) who had worked a year and a day in a Forest pit. The Dean Forest (Mines) Act of 1838 confirmed the free miners’ exclusive rights to the Forest’s minerals. This allowed any free miner to apply to the Deputy Gaveller, who represented the Crown, for a gale, which is a grant (right to mine) of a specific seam of coal or a deposit of iron ore or stone, in a specific location anywhere in the statutory Forest of Dean, provided he paid royalties to the Crown, the owner of the land. The Coal Mines Act, 1841 set out further rules and regulations for working coal mines in the Forest of Dean.

Most free miners lacked the capital to exploit the lower seams of coal, but the Act permitted a galee to sell, lease, or gift his gale to persons other than free miners. This allowed colliery companies and entrepreneurial capitalists to enter the Forest of Dean during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and exploit its minerals. In the case described above, the O. and C.  Syndicate had bought the Oaken and Churchway gale from a free miner in a series of transactions in January 1924.

Arthur Rivers

Rivers was born in Bristol in 1908 but moved with his family to South Wales a few years later, where his father found work in the mines. His brother, George, was killed in the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and his father died in 1917. His mother remarried, and the family moved to St. Brithdir, where Arthur worked at New Tredegar Colliery, owned by the Powell Duffryn Steam Coal Company.

In October 1925, the colliery laid off its workers due to a depression in the coal trade, and they were then employed on day-to-day contracts. In May 1926, colliery owners across the UK announced they would cut wages and increase hours. Miners in all districts refused to accept this and, with the backing of their trade union, the Miners Federation of Great Britain (MFGB), were locked out.

The situation was already tough for the miners and their families in Brithdir because of the layoffs at New Tredegar before the lockout. The culture against blacklegging was deeply ingrained in the South Wales mining communities and so it would have been unacceptable to return to work at New Tredegar without the agreement of the MFGB. However, in October 1926 many families struggled to get enough food to eat, so any offer of work outside the valley would have been welcome.

In October 1926, Rivers, William Gibbs, and his two sons, William, aged 18, and Ennis, aged 14, all from St. Brithdir, were recruited by Sydney Taylor to work for his company on the outcrop of his gale in Wet Wood, in Russell’s enclosure near Cannop Ponds. William Gibbs was born in Drybrook, so he had relatives there where they could get lodgings.

The Supply of Coal during the 1926 Lockout

In 1926, the government implemented stringent emergency regulations to control coal supply, distribution, and consumption. The government restricted domestic coal purchases to one hundredweight (cwt) per household per week. Local authorities later reduced this to half a cwt per week in certain districts as shortages intensified. In addition:

• Businesses and local infrastructure were strictly regulated to conserve fuel.
• Local authorities appointed emergency committees and food and coal officers to oversee regional supplies to prevent hoarding or profiteering. Government organisations and critical entities could receive British coal only with a specific permit issued by these local authorities.
• The trade unions agreed not to interfere with the supply of coal to critical public services and private homes.
• The Board of Trade and the Mines Department had the power to provide directions on the movement and distribution of existing coal stocks to prevent a collapse of the national electricity grid.
• The government directly imported foreign coal throughout the autumn months to distribute to essential services.

Outcropping

In 1926, during the nine-month miners’ lockout, groups of colliers from the Forest of Dean opened small pits on the outcrop. Their motivation was to use the coal for their own domestic purposes or sell it to raise cash to buy food for their families. They accessed the coal by digging directly into the outcrop by hand where a seam reached the surface.

This practice was called outcropping, and the pits were often called ‘strike pits’.  The work was heavy because it sometimes involved removing soil to a depth of twelve feet. The work was also very dangerous because the workings could collapse. There are numerous reports in the newspapers of miners being killed while working the outcrop during strikes. Fifty people were killed in 43 separate fatal accidents in connection with the working of surface coal outcrops during the 1926 mining lockout.^[3]

Outcropping was common during miners’ strikes. Most outcrop workings were small cooperative concerns run by locked-out miners. The MFGB was usually not too concerned if the coal, usually of poor quality, was for miners’ use or if small quantities were sold for cash to buy food. Striking miners could spend part of the day outcropping, as well as taking up picket duties, working in soup kitchens, and doing other solidarity work. Small-scale cooperative outcropping was tolerated by the mining trade unions for several reasons because it provided:

• coal to miners’ families and others in the community for domestic use such as heating, cooking and washing.

• a small income for miners’ families suffering from financial hardship.

• a means to survive a lockout and resist the temptation to return to work.

• an alternative to Poor Law Relief, which was only available to miners’ dependents and left single men with no support. (Anyone caught working the outcrop would be denied Poor Law relief.)

• a cheaper source of coal to public institutions which served the mining community such as the workhouses and the district council.

However, coal prices increased during strikes and lockouts. Consequently, in some cases, businessmen intervened and organised outcropping on an industrial scale to profiteer from the coal shortage. In commercial operations like this, miners’ unions often tried to shut them down, sometimes leading to violence.

The 1926 Lockout in the Forest of Dean

During the nine-month 1926 lockout in the Forest of Dean, an agreement between the Forest of Dean Miners Association (FDMA), the trade union representing Forest of Dean miners, and the Gloucester Electricity Committee meant supplies were guaranteed to hospitals and private homes but not factories. Cinderford gasworks had a three-week coal supply, and Lydney power station had stockpiled a three-month supply. In addition, the colliery companies had been stockpiling coal in preparation for the conflict. Coal was available at a price but was still in short supply, and outcropping allowed the local community in the Forest to access coal for their own use.

Soon after the start of the lockout, outcropping became a widespread activity in the coalfield, with several hundred men actively working the outcrop at any one time.^[4]  The sites included Woorgreen, Delving Wood, Crab Tree Hill, Cockshutt, Oaken Hill, Heywood, Mallards Pike, Wet Wood or anywhere on the outcrops.

Initially, the Forest colliery owners tolerated striking miners outcropping on their gales by accessing them from the surface. The authorities were not concerned either because they were keen to get their hands on extra supplies of coal to run local public services like the workhouses, schools, etc

In theory, the men should have gained consent from D. W. Young, H.M. Deputy Surveyor of Dean Forest, for permission to cut the surface. This permission was given on the condition that the men filled in the holes when finished, and that if they mined any coal, it was for their own use and not for sale. However, the scale of the outcropping made it difficult for the Young to monitor the activity.

It was dangerous work, and Rivers was not the only person killed while working the outcrop in the Forest in 1926. Six-year-old Joseph Blake from Steam Mills was accidentally killed by a large piece of timber which was being transported to an outcrop mine on Nofold Green. Gilbert Roberts recalled the event:

In 1926 there were some of these strike pits. There was one at Steam Mills. Oh dear, there were two brothers sorting out timber from a stack for a pit. They flung over the stack and there was a boy sitting the other side and some timber flung over killed him.

Poor Law Relief or Outcropping

In the nineteenth century, the destitute could include strikers and their dependents. However, after the Merthyr Tydfil Judgement of 1900, the law forbade relief for strikers or locked-out workers on the basis that work was available to them but allowed relief for their dependents.^[5]  Single men were left without support, and the relief provided to miners’ dependents was meagre and given only as a loan.

Consequently, and despite the dangers, men like Graham Morgan’s grandfather, Sam Morgan, now a widower with children, decided to work the outcrop rather than claim Poor Law relief.^[6] Harry Barton, who would later become a member of the FDMA Executive, remembers:

I was at Lightmoor in 1926. I had saved some money by then. I was saving up to get married. Then that knocked it on the head for a time. But I’ll tell you what we did – what was being done (I didn’t do it). It was more than for fun. Just above the Dilke Hospital there used to be an old colliery, Woorgreen they called it. Now, I got to find out they were digging for coal up there when the strike was on, and selling this coal. One of my friends, a chap called Sid Cooksey (he married my cousin Lil Young), asked me one day if I’d go up with him. I said, ‘What for?’ He said to get some coal so he could sell it for his home. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I don’t want the money. I’ve been all right.’ But he was a married man, so I said, ‘I’ll go.’ So we took another man called Stan Rogers up with us. (He was a relation; he married a cousin of mine.) We went up there and searched around and there was sure to be a hundred miners up there digging holes to get the coal out. We looked around, and well, we thought they had all got the best of the plots; we got no chance at all. There was a siding there where they used to run the heavy wagons. There was the rails still there. I went across on my own and started scraping down between the sleepers and I hit the coal – 18 inches of coal. It was all the way up the railway line. Other blokes had been digging their hearts out and they didn’t know that. I called my mates over quietly and said ‘Let’s rip this all across there.’ We got three and a half tons of coal out from there in about five hours. We sold it to Westbury Union (the Workhouse) for £3 10s.^[7]

This shows that local authority institutions were complicit in outcropping and happy to pay a lower price for coal than from official sources, and, in the process, save local ratepayers some money. One of the other large outcropping sites in 1926 was Wet Wood, near Cannop. Hylton Miles remembers:

As a lad I went up to Wet Wood off the Cannop Road with my father where he and his mates were digging coal in a strike pit. It was only a shallow seam and they went down a ladder to get the coal out. They worked night and day. The coal was taken off by the Gwynne family in a horse and cart. This started them off on their haulage business.[8]

The Gwynne family, made up of James, Ivor, Roland and Reginald, ran their haulage business from Parkend. The firm officially incorporated as a limited company, Ivor J. Gwynne (Parkend), Ltd., on 28 September 1956 with a capital of £2,000. Its registered directors were Ivor J. Gwynne and Emma E. Gwynne.

A grey area existed between those working on small-scale cooperative outcropping operations to earn money to buy food and those profiteering by selling larger quantities of coal. Eric Warren remembers that:

I remember my father [Fred Warren] dug coal in the strike pits with his mates. I was five at the time. They did it at night in secret so the pickets and the police did not know, and they slept nearby in the woods in the daytime. They dug at Mallard’s Pike and elsewhere. They cut a four to five foot hole and went down short distance, making a sort of bell pit like the old miners used to, starting in one corner and getting the coal out and then moving on, filling the corner with dirt. They went underground in a level and propped up the roof. I remember my father cutting off the root of a tree and using it as a pit prop. Rossiter & James of Parkend came to the site with a lorry and loaded the coal on it and paid the men. But they were convinced in the end by the union that they were blacklegging and gave it up.^[9]

The Cheltenham Chronicle recorded that about 250 men were working the outcrops in Wet Wood at the time of Rivers’ death.^[10]  The problem became significant for the FDMA when businessmen like Taylor became involved and large amounts of money changed hands. Harry Roberts recalls the incident:

One of the places where miners got coal during the strike was just off the road almost opposite the Fancy. There was a four foot seam of coal there only eight feet down. They’d dig a square, twelve foot by twelve foot, chuck the dirt out of the way, and there they’d have four foot of coal. They’d get that out and go in three foot on all four sides – under the dirt. By only going in three foot they didn’t need to timber-up One man ignored the rule and went in further and got killed. Then they’d start the whole process over again six feet away and chuck the dirt in the first hole, and then on again filling the previous hole.

I was only twelve then and still at school. Lew Little, he was at school with me, but he was eighteen months older and he went there to help his father and brother. He was at it for six months and never went back to school. The coal had to be guarded at night. Lew, who was on guard at one time, was found fast asleep leaning against a tree trunk next morning. A consortium of lorry drivers bought and collected the coal and paid £2 per ton, twice the pithead price.[11]

The FDMA tried to shut down large commercial operations like this, but the scale of outcropping in different parts of the coalfield made this difficult. John Williams, the FDMA agent, spent some of his time visiting outcrop workings to persuade the men working on larger operations to desist.

The police recorded that there were 35 locations where large-scale mining of the outcrop was taking place in the Forest and Williams had to spend some of his time organising the picketing of these sites as well as dealing with the small collieries.^[12]

Commercial-scale outcropping was a national problem for the MFGB. The Gloucester Citizen reported that for the first week of July, 1,200,000 tons of coal were imported, but there were also 100,000 tons from outcrops and 200,000 tons from working mines.^[13] The FDMA and MFGB became increasingly concerned about the volume of coal mined from the outcrop because they felt it was undermining the strike.

William Sydney Stayt Taylor

William Sydney Stayt Taylor (Sydney Taylor) was born in 1878 in Woodstock, Oxfordshire. His father, James Otho Taylor, worked as a butcher, grocer, meat salesman, and provision dealer, making his living selling goods, mainly meat, at market stalls. His mother was a Stayt. He married Mary Adams in February 1877, and soon after, their first child, usually called  Sydney, was born in January 1878, followed by a daughter in May 1879. The family then moved to Chipping Norton, where James worked as a butcher and baker, employing two men and had five more children. In the 1890s, the family moved to Cheltenham, where James carried on his trade in meat

James had a reputation for high living and extravagant spending in Cheltenham. He lived at Horton House (now a large Residential Care Home), renting it for £60 a year. He organised champagne parties, and his son Sydney drove around town in a brougham (a four-wheeled carriage drawn by a single horse) with a coachman wearing a cockade.[14]

James was fined for using an unjust weighing machine in Ross in July 1899 and declared bankrupt in 1900.[15] However, he continued trading and, in 1911, lived in Merthyr Tydfil, where he sold meat and employed staff. In 1921, he remarried and lived in Penalt, where he worked as a fruit merchant.

Meanwhile, Sydney Taylor, now in his early twenties, had become a businessman. In 1903, he went into partnership with Edwin Auguste Trapnell, who owned the Star Hotel in Cheltenham. Edwin sold the Star in 1903 for £12,330 to fund a new business venture. Trapnell and Taylor jointly established a company named A. Trapnell and Co., which operated as merchants, coal lease owners, and general commission brokers.  Taylor was the junior partner, having invested only £500 and serving as office manager, while Edwin invested £4000 and handled most financial decisions.[16] On 12 November 1903, they acquired the Findall Mine Level in the Forest of Dean. In 1906, they sold it to Wallsend Colliery Ltd, which subsequently sold it to Henry Crawshay Company Ltd, which developed a new colliery, Eastern United, on the site.[17]

Their first serious venture was to buy New Pleasant colliery in Cinderford and some nearby clay fields (with the potential to manufacture bricks) for £3000. They then tried to raise cash by promoting the formation of the Cinderford Coal, Brick, Tile and Fireclay Company, which they registered in May 1904, to raise £18,000 (£1 shares). The plan was for the company to buy the colliery and clayfields from them and use the remaining money for development.[18] The venture failed when newspaper reports appeared warning investors of a potential scam.[19]

The next ventures were more successful. In 1904 they bought the Union and Cannop gale from the Crawshays for £2000 and sold it to a newly formed syndicate in 1905 for £4500.  The syndicate went on to develop Cannop as one of the largest collieries in the Forest of Dean.

In 1905, Trapnell and Co invested £5000 in a new project in South Wales. The company formed a syndicate with two others and bought the leases of the Cawdor and Garnant Collieries in Carmarthen, subject to a mortgage of £ 30,000. The syndicate then promoted the formation of the Cawdor and Garnant Collieries Ltd, which was registered with a capital of £80,000. The syndicate sold the collieries to the new limited company for £56,000 plus £17,000 in shares. The company operated significant anthracite coal extraction facilities in Garnant.  In 1908, they sold their shares in the company to a French company for £5000, making a net profit of £4500.

In their next venture, they bought a sixty-year lease to the Cynheidre colliery, near Llanelly, at a peppercorn rent rising from £150 to £1500. They sold the lease for £6000 to a French Company, making a profit of £4,500.

Next, they promoted a company called the Stepney Motor Wheel Co., Ltd., making a profit of £12,500. They acquired the American rights of the company for £20,000, promoted Spare Motor Wheel America Ltd, and made a profit of £10,000, but subsequently lost £10,000 when dealing in its shares. However, they bought its Italian rights and made a profit of £5000. Next, they lost £2,418 on the purchase and sale of the Pantmawr Anthracite Colliery at Ystradgynlais to a French syndicate.[20]

Bristol

In 1908, they moved to Bristol and continued as partners in the same business, acquiring and selling shares in collieries and other companies, with the intention of floating a bank. The firm was successful at this point and in March 1908 had a credit balance at the bank of £10,570 and capital in stocks and property of £20,000, with liabilities of £5,000. The agreement between the two men was that Trapnell would get two-thirds of the profits and Taylor, who was now directly involved in financial management, one-third.

Taylor rented Cleeve Hill House, Downend, with 40 acres of land, for £250 per year and employed ten servants.[21] The Cave family, who were Bristol merchants, bankers and the largest landowners in the district, owned the house. The Cave family made a fortune from their plantations in the West Indies using enslaved African labour.

In the 1911 census, Taylor was still living at Cleeve Hall and was described as a coal master.  He shared the mansion with his sister, described as a lady; his brother Edgar, an estate agent and another brother, Tom, a trainee stockbroker, with five live-in servants. One of the live-in servants was Ernest Edgar Poole, the son of the head gardener who had worked for the Cave family in London as one of their servants.

At the same time, Trapnell bought Clevedon Court in Clevedon, a large mansion with 17 acres of land for about £12,000. The furniture and effects there were valued at £19,000 for insurance. [22] They both continued to live extravagantly, claiming large personal expenditures as business expenses, particularly on buying furniture for their houses and entertaining business guests from France.

However, the attempted floating of the bank proved to be a disaster, as it depended on the financial stability of a Mr Vanderbilt, who proved to be an adventurer and the scheme was abandoned. They sold premises acquired for the project in Bedminster and Stokes Croft at a loss.

They sustained further losses on the purchase of Summerhill Park, Bath, and in ruinous transactions in France, where they had to appear before the French courts. Further losses came from the failure of the Spare Wheel Company of America, the depreciation of freehold properties, and heavy interest to moneylenders.

Their creditors filed a bankruptcy petition, and consequently Trapnell and Taylor had to appear before a public examination held at court at Bristol. The court heard that they had joint liabilities of £53,270, with £22,604 to 39 unsecured creditors. The assets were expected to produce £747.

Trapnell had separate liabilities of £15,602, including £10,975 to unsecured creditors and assets of £11,307.

Taylor had gross liabilities of £15,175, including £13,074 to unsecured creditors, with no assets. He had already carefully transferred ownership of his furniture, car, and other belongings to his brother.[23]

The court declared Taylor and Trapnell bankrupt in September 1911. Their debts were wiped out, but they were no longer permitted to run a business or serve as a company director.

It has been difficult to track Taylor’s movement over the next decade. However, an article in the Welshman, 24 January 1913, described him as a consulting engineer working in Pembrey. Otherwise, he may have lived off the wealth of his brothers and sisters in Cheltenham and London. Edwin Trapnell died in December 1916.

Taylor was now confident enough to embark on a series of business transactions on his own, claiming to act on behalf of one or more of his five brothers to avoid the bankruptcy rules. For example, in 1927, during an appeal for discharge of his bankruptcy, he said he was acting on behalf of his brother when, in 1918, he claimed to have negotiated share dealings involving millions of pounds related to the death of Lord Rhondda and received £20,000 in payment..[24]

The 1921 census lists Taylor as living at 72 Park Mansions, Knightbridge, London, with a live-in housekeeper and described him as a retired farmer. The census lists a visitor, Earnest Edgar Poole, also described as a retired farmer, but he was actually working for Taylor as a servant in 1911.

Back in the Forest

Sometime in 1923, Taylor moved back to the Forest. He initially stayed at Speech House Hotel, then at the Coombs, a large mansion on the edge of Coleford, now a residential care home. The Coombs was built by the wealthy industrialist and businessman Isaiah Trotter in the mid-nineteenth century. Taylor lived at the Coombs with his brother, and claimed he bought it on his brother’s behalf.[25] A bankruptcy court hearing in 1927 heard that:

He admitted purchasing the place, but not for himself. The purchase was in his name, but on behalf of his brother. The money was found by his brother, and the amount was paid partly in cash and the rest by mortgage. He found none of the money himself. The mortgagee was aware that he was an insolvent bankrupt. His brother also furnished the house. He admitted that he was sued for part of the purchase money, and the balance was paid as a result, but not by him but by his brother.[26]

In January 1924, Taylor and a free miner, George Jones, bought the Oaken and Churchway Gale from a free miner, John Martin. Then, in a series of transactions, the gale was conveyed to Taylor and Gerald Thompson from Sloane Street in London, and then to the Oaken & Churchway Syndicate Ltd, whose members were Sydney and Tom Taylor. Taylor likely used the names and bank accounts of Jones, Thompson, and his brother in these transactions, acting as their nominees to avoid contravening the bankruptcy rules.[27]

Taylor’s next money-making venture was a plan to exploit the iron ore reserves in the Forest. Production had been significant in the past, but it had more or less ceased since World War One.  Cyril Hart quotes a source from the time:

Negotiations are in progress which, if they can be brought to a successful issue, will result in the iron ore mines of the eastern side of Dean being reopened and developed. Should the proposed syndicate be formed, the mines will be worked on a very extensive scale. Sydney Taylor, of Coombs Park, Coleford, who for the past few years has been connected with various coal-mining enterprises in the Forest, is interested in these matters, and G. Brocklehurst Taylor, of Coleford, is the solicitor acting for the vendors.[28]

The iron industry had declined for several reasons:

• Competition from imported Spanish ore,
• The exhaustion of deposits above water level,
• the variable character of the ore and the small quantities won, which made it difficult to keep consignments satisfactorily uniform in quality.

Not surprisingly, the requisite finance was not forthcoming.

In 1925 the Whitecliff stone quarries were sold to a group of London financiers, the sale apparently being negotiated by Sydney Taylor of Coombs Park.[29] In 1927, the quarry and adjoining land were sold to the Portland Cement and Limestone Products Limited.

In November 1925, Taylor was elected President of the newly formed Town and District Club in Coleford. [30] He then moved into Old Deane Hall, near Speech House and furnished it lavishly. The Heart of the Forest Community School now uses Old Dean Hall to educate children with special needs.

Taylor’s Outcropping Operation

The 1926 lockout gave Taylor another opportunity to make money. In the summer of 1926, he entered into an arrangement with four Welshmen to work the outcrop on his Oaken & Churchway gale, in Wet Wood, which led to the death of Arthur Rivers. The inquest into Rivers’ death reported the events as follows:

At the end of July or beginning of August, men who were out on strike applied to Mr. D. W Young H.M. Deputy Surveyor of Dean Forest, for permission to cut the surface. This permission was given on condition that the men filled up the holes when done with, and that if they worked any coal it was to be for their own use and not for the purpose of sale.

For some time, no royalty was charged, but when the O. and C. Syndicate took the matter up and entered into an arrangement with the men to purchase all the coal from them at either 20s. 18s. per ton, then royalty was charged.

The O. and C. Syndicate rendered accounts of the coal thus got to the Gaveller’s Office. Eventually Mr. Forster Brown, H.M. Deputy Gaveller, wrote to the Syndicate pointing out that the gale was not being worked in accordance with Rule 9 of the Award of 1841, and he gave the Company notice to stop the working, fill up the holes, and put the roadways into proper state of repair.

The stipulation was made that the men working the outcrop of the Oaken and Churchway Gale should be the servants of the Syndicate and that they should be responsible for them under the Mines Act. A reply was sent by the Syndicate that they were doing everything that was possible to comply with the Deputy Gaveller’s requirements and those of the Mines Act. On October 15th permission was given for the surface working to continue until October 31st.

The Syndicate caused notices to be published calling upon the ” croppers” to come into Company’s service, but they refused to do so and continued working at the outcrop. They were then given notice to cease working, and this expired on the 30th October, the day after the deceased was killed.[31]

This was not a normal strike pit. The syndicate employed men to work their gale and was therefore responsible for how the coal was mined, the payment of the workers, and health and safety. They were also required to pay royalties to the Crown. Rule 9 of the 1841 Mines Act states:

All persons now or at any time hereafter holding any mine or mines of coal by virtue of a gale or gales, shall work and carry on the same in a fair, orderly, and workmanlike manner, and according to the best and most improved system for the time being of working coal mines, and shall not desist from working the same for a space exceeding 5 years at any one time after the vein of coal ore has been gained.[32]

The syndicate was not managing the day-to-day operation of the mine or ensuring the mine was worked “in a fair, orderly, and workmanlike manner, and according to the best and most improved system for the time being of working coal mines”. They not only failed to comply with the rules and regulations laid down by the Coal Mines Act, 1841, but also ignored letters sent to them by Mr Forster Brown, Deputy Gaveller, which drew their attention to these infringements.

Just before the death of Rivers, Taylor was busy setting up a new company, Forest Industries Limited, with nominal capital of £100 in £1 shares, to buy the rights to mine coal at the Oaken and Churchway gale from the O&C Syndicate Limited, and “to carry on the business of mine owners, coal merchants and factors, makers and vendors of coal and other briquettes, timber and wood merchants, etc”. The new company’s directors were Sydney Taylor of Old Deane Hall and Tom Taylor of Weston-Super-Mare.[33] As an undischarged bankrupt, Taylor was not allowed to serve as a company director, but claimed he was acting as his brother’s nominee.

Taylor openly advertised his coal for sale at 45s a ton in the middle of one of the most significant industrial disputes of the twentieth century, in an environment where many families in nearby dwellings were struggling to get by with no income.  He paid his men 20s a ton for mining the coal.

End of Outcropping

In August 1926, the Westbury Board of Guardians cut off all relief to destitute families of locked-out miners in East Dean, and in September 1926 the Monmouth Board of Guardians cut off all relief to destitute miners’ dependents. Consequently, some families were unable to buy food, and so some striking miners were forced to return to work. The large colliery companies began to raise coal and were keen to sell it at a high price and prevent outcrop coal from flooding the market. Consequently, they changed their policy and prohibited men from working their outcrops.^[34]

Various public bodies had been buying outcrop coal for the past six months. Coal was now readily available from working pits, and public bodies could buy coal mined by the colliery companies. Now that coal was available from the main collieries, the authorities made it clear with public statements that it was an offence to acquire or deliver any coal, coke or patent fuels for industrial purposes without a permit. This applied to imported and English coals and included outcrop coal from any source whatsoever.

In a desperate attempt to prevent men from returning to work on 7 October, an MFGB delegate conference passed a resolution to end all types of outcropping by its members.^[35]  The Executive of the FDMA gave a commitment to the MFGB to attempt to implement its new policy.

It was clear that at least some of the above measures had an impact because by October 1926, the Gloucester newspapers reported that the working of the outcrops in the Forest of Dean had practically ceased.^[36]

Meanwhile, in November, Taylor was busy persuading Joseph Ward and C. E. Parker from Sheffield to invest in a company to acquire the Hawthorn Limestone Quarries, at Drvbrook, and “to carry on the business of quarry masters, stone merchants, manufacturers of and dealers in tarred limestone, stone, granite, slag and macadam, and any other stone materials for the making of roads and pavements”. The company was formed with a capital of £25,000 (in shares of £1 each). Taylor negotiated the acquisition, served as a director, and held 2,500 shares in his brother’s name as his nominee.[37]

At the beginning of November, the number of miners working in the Forest, excluding safetymen, was 3,833, compared with 6,520 miners employed on 1 May at the beginning of the lockout. By the end of December, the remaining miners in the Forest and the rest of the country returned to work, defeated and forced to accept longer hours and reduced pay.

Howbeach Colliery

In February 1927, Taylor contacted William Morris, later Lord Nuffield, who by the early 1920s was Britain’s most successful motor manufacturer. He wrote a letter to Morris’s solicitor in which he stated that:

ever since he was 21 he had made £10,000 a year, and spoke of his connection with several big companies, and that he was a man of vast and valuable and highly successful experience in the colliery business; that he had dealt with millions of pounds, and had been associated with the richest and the best brains in the land.[38]

Taylor persuaded Morris to buy Howbeach Colliery and invest in a scheme to unify all the collieries in the Forest of Dean coalfield.[39] Howbeach Colliery, situated near Moseley Green, had a long but largely unsuccessful history. It was worked intermittently during the nineteenth century. After producing around 40,000 tons in 1893, it closed in 1895 because of water problems and poor coal prices.

In December 1919, a conglomerate of local colliery owners acquired Howbeach colliery. These included Lord Bledisloe of Norchard colliery, Arthur Morgan of Henry Crawshay & Co. Ltd.,  Percy Moore of Princess Royal colliery and Richard Thomas, owner of Lydney and Lydbrook tin works. Their first task was to lay off most of the men, amounting to 200 miners, with a view to developing the colliery and re-employment at a later date.[40] However, after the depression in the coal trade led to the 1921 lockout and the increasing cost of pumping water, they decided to close the colliery.

Morris followed Taylor’s advice that it was a good investment and formed a company called Morris Collieries Ltd, buying the colliery on 26 April 1927, for £20,000 with the view of mining 1000 tons a day and employing 1000 men. Taylor persuaded Morris to make him the managing director of the new company and to operate the sales agency. He also suggested that Morris should buy all the large collieries in the Forest of Dean, arguing that:

All the collieries would be electrified on the most up-to-date modern principles. A centralised sales agency would be set up for the whole output. Further, a central pumping house would be constructed to deal with water under one heading (this will be a great saving, as up till recently this has been one of the most difficult and costly problems of the coalfields). A great saving will also be effected in the purchase of stores, general equipment, and the pooling of railway wagons, while under the scheme of amalgamation it will be possible to utilise the valuable barriers of coal now existing between the various companies’ property which otherwise would be lost for all time.[41]

There was little chance that the existing colliery owners would sell up to Morris. When Morris found out that Taylor was an undischarged bankrupt, he cut off all contact with him. The acquisition of Howbeach was a disaster; no coal was raised, and Morris lost nearly all his money. In June 1928, Morris Collieries Ltd applied for voluntary liquidation.[42] Some of Taylor’s ideas were implemented when the mines were nationalised in 1947, but only after the colliery owners were forced to hand over their mines to the government and pay a fortune in compensation.

On 23 June 1927, Taylor applied for discharge from bankruptcy. The judge dismissed his application, saying that out of the original £50,000 owing to creditors in 1911, not a penny had been paid back and that:

the applicant’s transactions before the bankruptcy were of a somewhat lively nature, but these paled into insignificance beside the debtor’s own commercial adventures since the bankruptcy. The most curious feature of him was that the debtor had never acted on his own behalf or in his own name. But always on behalf of his brother or brothers. They found him acting as director of several companies but always on behalf of his brother. Did he own a motor car? No, it belonged to someone else. He had been living in a degree of comfort in the country and a large flat in Town, and one wonders how he had been keeping these places up and we find he is there as the guest of his brother. He had given no explanation of certain passages in letters he had written, but having heard them and his explanation in court, he had come to the conclusion that the applicant was a person who was not possessed of such a degree of integrity and righteousness as should be allowed to continue his career on his own account. He believed that he would be able to live in the future in comfort and even luxury as a guest of his brother. and therefore, he flatly refused to grant an order for his discharge.[43]

It appears that Taylor left the Forest of Dean in September 1927 and sold all his furniture and belongings. Meanwhile, Taylor’s  brother Tom went on to have a very lucrative career as a merchant banker.

In May 1928, Taylor sold his Oaken and Churchway gale to a free miner, Amos Brown. It has been difficult to trace Taylor’s movements after he left the Forest. In 1939, he is listed as living in Magnolia Cottage on the banks of the Thames near Henley with his ex- servant, Ernest Edgar Poole, described as a retired General Commission agent. They now employed their own servant. Taylor used the alias John Gardner and was described as a retired business negotiator.  Magnolia Cottage is a historic, Grade II-listed 17th-century timber-framed property.

Back in South Wales, at New Tredegar, after the 1926 Lockout, most of the men returned to work defeated, while others were laid off or blacklisted. In 1929, a massive mountain slip sent tons of earth crashing into the Tredegar colliery complex, crushing two of the primary shafts and rendering them completely unusable. The structural damage to the shafts was severe, and the surrounding mountain remained unstable, so the pit had to close permanently. This dealt a massive economic blow to the local mining community. The Rivers family and Gibbs family faced long-term unemployment and poverty.

Taylor was not the first person to come to the Forest of Dean seeking to make money out of its rich natural resources and its people and he was not the last. Some have tried in the past, and some have tried in recent years. Some have succeeded, some have failed and some have been driven out.

Sydney Taylor died while living in Worthing in October 1956, aged 79.

[1] Gloucester Citizen 9 November 1926.

[2] Western Daily Press 24 June 1927.

[2a] See Appendix Three and The Mines Department, List of Mines in Great Britain and the Isle of Man, 1925.

[3] Hansard, Volume 200, 25 November 1926.

[4] Gloucestershire Echo 21 August 1926.

[5] Andy Croll, Strikers and the Right to Poor Relief in Late Victorian Britain: The Making of the Merthyr Tydfil Judgment of 1900, The North American Conference on British Studies, 2013.

[6] Interview with Graham Morgan with Ian Wright at his house in November 2017.

[7] Harry Barton interviewed by Elsie Olivey on 7 June 1984, Gage Library.

[8] Humphrey Phelps, Forest Voices (Chalford: Amberley, 2008) 67.

[9] Anstis, Blood on the Coal, 113-115.

[10] Cheltenham Chronicle 6 November

[11] Anstis, Blood on the Coal, 113.

[12] Gloucestershire Chronicle 22 October 1926.

[13] Gloucester Citizen 26 August 1926.

[14] Cheltenham Chronicle 27 January 1900

[15] Hereford Times 15 July 1899 and Cheltenham Chronicle 27 January 1900.

[16] Cheltenham Chronicle 16 September 1911.

[17] https://lightmoor.co.uk/forestcoal/CoalFindall.html

[18] Gloucestershire Echo 5 May 1904.

[19] Financial News 18 July 1904.

[20] Cheltenham Chronicle 16 September 1911.

[22] Cheltenham Chronicle 16 September 1911.

[23] Cheltenham Chronicle 16 September 1911.

[24] Gloucestershire Echo 24 June 1927.

[25] Gloucestershire Echo 24 June 1927.

[26] Ibid.

[27] https://lightmoor.co.uk/forestcoal/CoalOakenLevel.html

[28] Cyril Hart, The Industrial History of Dean (Newton Abbott: David and Charles, 1971), 235.

[29] Ibid., 308.

[30] Dean Forest Mercury 27 November 1925.

[31] Gloucester Citizen 9 November 1926.

[32] James Wood, The Laws of the Dean Forest and Hundred of St Briavels, in the County of Gloucestershire. (London: H Sweet, 1878) 265.

[33] Gloucester Journal 30 October 1926.

[34] Gloucester Citizen 18 September 1926.

[35] Gloucester Citizen 8 October 1926.

[36] Gloucestershire Chronicle 22 October 1926.

[37] Gloucester Journal 13 November 1926 and Western Mail 30 November 1926 and

[38] Gloucestershire Echo 24 June 1927.

[39] Gloucester Journal 21 May 1927

[40] Gloucester Journal  20 December 1919.

[41] Western Mail

[42] Gloucester Journal 2 June 1928.

[43] Gloucestershire Echo 24 June 1927.

 

In 1911, James Richard Sayes was sacked from his job at Wimberry Slade drift for his trade union activities and, for a while, was blacklisted from working in the Forest of Dean. As a result, he migrated to South Wales and gained work at Cwmcarn Colliery in Abercarn. Twenty six years later, his son, James Loris Sayes, volunteered to go to Spain to fight for the Spanish Republic and its democratically elected government against a fascist coup led by General Franco. This article examines some of the events that impacted the Sayes family between these two events.

James Richard Sayes was born in 1876 in Ellwood in the Forest of Dean. His father, Elijah Sayes (born 1853), worked as a collier and was married to Emily Powell.  James had three sisters: Emily (born 1878), Sarah (born 1888), and Elsie (born 1893) and four brothers: Edwin (born 1881), Samual (born 1883), Leslie (born 1886), and John (born 1891). However, one other sister and two other brothers died in childbirth or at a very young age. From 1891, the family lived in Rose Cottage (now Oakland House), Ellwood, just down the road from the Christadelphian chapel.

In 1903, James married Mary Garbett, the daughter of Charlotte Morse and John Garbett, a collier, and was brought up in Whitecroft. Mary already had a son, James Loris, who was born on 20 April 1899 to an unknown father. The family spent a couple of years in Normanton, Yorkshire, between 1905 and 1907, where James worked in a colliery, before returning to the Forest.

The family settled in a cottage on Palmers Flat close to Ellwood. James Loris had four siblings, Felix (born 1904), Mary Elijah (born 1905), Elijah (born 1907) and Maisey (born 1908).  In November 1912, James Loris was baptised, with James Richard listed as his father.  Sadly, in 1909, Mary Garbett’s brother Edward was killed in a colliery accident in South Wales, leaving his wife to bring up four children without a father.

James Richard was an active member of the Forest of Dean Miners Association (FDMA), the trade union representing the Forest of Dean miners, who made up the largest proportion of the workforce in the Forest. From 1886 to 1918, George Rowlinson served as the FDMA’s full-time agent and advocated moderation and conciliation in his dealings with the Forest of Dean colliery owners.

In 1911, James Richard was working as a checkweighman at Wimberry Slade drift mine, which was owned by the Cannop Colliery company and employed about 300 workers. Coal miners elected the checkweighman to check the findings of the mine owner’s weighman, when hewers were paid by the weight of coal mined. Therefore, a checkweighman had to be someone whom the men trusted.  As a result, James became the men’s FDMA representative at the pit.

In October 1911, over 300 miners at Wimberry Slade were involved in an unofficial strike over the employment of 17 non-union men by the management of the colliery. Rowlinson did not intervene on the men’s behalf because they had not given notice as required by the trade union agreement with the owners. After three weeks with no strike pay, the men reluctantly returned to work.^[1] The management took James to court for breaking the terms of his contract and impeding the working of the mine. The court decided that James should be sacked as checkweighman, and the magistrates ordered him to pay costs.[2]

At about this time, James became an active member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP). Established in 1893, the ILP was an attempt to create a working-class organisation politically independent of the Liberal Party and to campaign for working-class representation in the democratic process.

The Labour Party did not exist then. However, in 1900, the ILP helped found the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) with other affiliated organisations, including some trade unions. Its main function was to support a distinct group of MPs in Parliament to represent working-class interests, who had their own whips, and agreed upon policy, and recommended candidates to stand in elections.

In the 1906 general election, the LRC won 29 seats and afterwards, the MPs decided to adopt the name ‘The Labour Party’. In the party’s early years, the ILP provided much of its activist base as the party did not have individual membership until 1918 but operated as a conglomerate of affiliated bodies. The Miners Federation of Great Britain (MFGB), which represented the local miners’ associations nationally, did not affiliate to the LRC until 1909.

The conflict between liberalism and socialism manifested itself amongst Forest of Dean miners. Rowlinson was a member of the Liberal Party and opposed attempts by James and other miners to affiliate the FDMA to the Labour Party. There was a split between those miners, mainly from the Cinderford area, who supported Rowlinson and the Liberals, and those miners, mainly from West Dean, who supported Smith and the ILP.

The MP for the Forest of Dean from 1892-1911 was Sir Charles Dilke, a popular Liberal MP and an independent thinker, ready to defy the party whip on labour issues, especially in support of the Forest miners. After his death on 26 January 1911, an election was called for the following month.

The National Executive of the Labour Party decided that, given the large working-class population in the Forest, it should select a Labour candidate.4 The Executive proposed that Robert Smillie, the Vice President of the MFGB, should stand in the next election. Smillie visited the Forest in early February to discuss his nomination, followed by a meeting of representatives from all the trade unions in the Forest of Dean. Rowlinson and some of his supporters on the FDMA Executive argued against backing a Labour candidate, insisting on the continued support for the Liberals. So the attempt to select a Labour candidate failed.

The Liberals selected Sir Henry Webb from Hereford, a member of the gentry who was fond of fishing and shooting. He also held considerable financial interests in the coal industry, including a directorship of the Ocean Coal Company in South Wales. He was also a shareholder of the Norchard Colliery in Lydney. Webb won the election against the Conservative Party candidate.

In response, the Forest ILP launched a campaign within the mining community to sponsor a Labour candidate in any future general election. James Richard was instrumental in the first steps to establish the Dean Forest Labour Party at a meeting held at Speech House at the end of April 1912, attended by over 600 people. Smith chaired the meeting and explained that the meeting’s purpose was to consider putting forward a candidate to contest the parliamentary election in May 1912.  James put the following resolution to the meeting.

In the opinion of the meeting, it was necessary that the workmen of the Forest should be represented in Parliament by a member who was independent of the Liberal or Tory parties, and that they call on the Executive Committee of the Forest of Dean Miners’ Association to take immediate steps to open negotiations with the Miners’ Federation to recommend a Labour candidate to contest the pending election.[3]

The resolution was passed unanimously. However, a letter from Rowlinson was read out to the meeting in which he argued that the gathering had no connection with the FDMA and so could not commit the union to support a Labour candidate. Rowlinson continued to campaign within the FDMA against the idea of a Labour Party candidate. After a bitter dispute with Rowlinson and his supporters, the Labour Party failed to obtain the support of the FDMA Executive Committee and could not raise the finances to contest the election.

One consequence of James’s involvement in the strike at Wimberry was that he was blacklisted and found it difficult to get work in the Forest. Subsequently, he moved to South Wales with his family, settled in Rogerstone in Newport, and found work at the Abercarn and Cwmcarn Collieries belonging to the Ebbw Vale Company further up the valley, which employed about 2500 men and boys.

Many of the families who lived in Abercarn were still recovering from the worst mining disaster in the UK up to that date when, in 1878, 268 men and boys were killed in an explosion of methane gas at Abercarn Colliery.

https://nmrs.org.uk/mines-map/coal-mining-in-the-british-isles/swales/abercarn/cwmcarn-colliery/

Sayes Sisters

In February 1901, Emily Sayes married Stephen Adams from Gorsty Knoll. Stephen’s father had died of the injuries he received in 1903 while rescuing another miner trapped under debris from a roof fall. Emily and Stephen moved to Ynysbul, in South Wales, where Stephen could get better-paid colliery work than in the Forest. Migration between the Forest of Dean coalfield and South Wales and Yorkshire was common.

Elsie Sayes married Walter Fricker, an engineer, in October 1913 and moved to Leamington in Warwickshire.

Meanwhile, Sarah Sayes had moved to Bristol to work as a servant for a director of a large printing company in Southey House, Westbury-on-Trym. It was normal for young Forest women to leave home and go to work in domestic service for the wealthy, where they often had to work long hours for little pay and sometimes were the subject of abuse. In 1914, Sarah moved back to the Forest and married Richard Dowler, who worked at Cannop Colliery.

Sayes Brothers

By the summer of 1914, any dream of a better world was shattered by war. The policy of the MFGB was to coordinate action with all sections of the international working class to prevent war at any cost and to intervene with all means at its disposal to bring any war to an end. Sadly, trade unions and social democratic leaders failed to use the power of the trade union movement and their international organisations to achieve this. Soon, military recruitment began in an atmosphere of jingoism and peer pressure that celebrated nationhood and empire. For many young men working in mines, the prospect of adventure and quick victory seemed a better option than working underground.

In 1909, Lesley Sayes joined the Grenadier Guards Reserve 2^nd Battalion and consequently attended training sessions which gave him a break from mining. He was the first member of the family to move to South Wales to work at the Cwmcarn Colliery in Abercarn.  In January 1914, he married Alice Barnes, whose brothers worked at the Cwmcarn colliery.

Lesley was called up in August 1914 and was sent to France with the Grenadier Guards at the start of the war. He was wounded on Christmas Eve in 1914 at La Bassée. He returned to duty but was discharged in October 1916 because of his wounds. After he recovered, he moved back to Abercarn to work at Cwmcarn Colliery.

Before the war, Samuel Sayes moved to Yorkshire to obtain better-paid work in the Yorkshire coalfield. He joined the Royal Navy Nelson Battalion during World War One, where he served in the Gallipoli campaign. Although composed largely of naval reservists and sailors, the battalion fought primarily as infantry on land. The battalion suffered heavy casualties from combat and disease during the campaign. When the Allied evacuation of Gallipoli took place in late 1915 and early 1916, most of the surviving members were withdrawn. However, Samuel died while on a hospital ship on the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece of the disease Enteric fever on 27 June 1916.

John Sayes trained as a teacher before the war. Before he enlisted, John was teaching in Kent, having previously been an assistant at St. John’s School, Coleford. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) and was later promoted to 2^nd Lieutenant in the Devonshire Regiment. He was killed in France on 31 October 1918, days before the armistice.

Edwin Sayes emigrated to New Zealand before the war and served in the New Zealand military.

James Loris joined the South Wales Borderers 14th Welsh Regiment, probably sometime after his eighteenth birthday in April 1917. It is unclear how much time he spent in action abroad. He was discharged in April 1919, moved back to Rogerstone, and took work with his father at Cwmcarn Colliery.

Meanwhile back in the Forest of Dean, in the Spring of 1918 Rowlinson was voted out of office, and a group of younger and more militant miners were elected to lead the FDMA and a new agent was appointed. In December 1918, a Labour MP was elected to represent the Forest of Dean in parliament.

Lockouts

By 1921, James Loris and Felix joined their father working at the colliery. After the threat of industrial action, the miners’ working conditions, wages, and hours improved. However, in 1921, in response to a depression in the coal trade,  wages were radically cut by the owners. The miners across the country refused to accept this and were locked out. After three months, they returned to work defeated

After the 1921 lockout, Lesley and Alice and Emily and Stephen returned to Ellwood. Stephen was seriously injured in a pit accident in December 1924 and did not fully recover.[4]

After the 1921 lockout, James Richard and James Loris remained in South Wales working at Cwmcarn Colliery. Sadly, in June 1924, one of James Richards’ other sons, Felix, who also worked at Cwmcarn Colliery, was killed in an accident. James Loris returned to the Forest for a while in 1925 when he was temporarily laid off due to lack of demand for coal.

This was followed by the dramatic events surrounding the 1926 General Strike and miners’ lockout, which resulted in rioting in Cwmcarn. After nine months, the miners returned to work defeated again, and facing a decade of economic depression, poverty and unemployment. Sarah and Richard decided there was no future for them in the Forest and emigrated to New Zealand.  Elsie and Walter followed later.

James Richard’s wife, Mary, died in April 1927, and so he moved back to Ellwood while his son James Loris remained in Wales. Elijah died in December 1927.

Meanwhile, both of James Richards’ daughters married a collier; one worked in the Forest and the other at Cwmcarn. The other son Elijah (born 1907), worked at Cwmcarn before returning to the Forest to work at Princess Royal colliery.

The Trial of Beatrice Pace

On the morning of 10 January 1928, Harry Pace, a quarryman, died after a long, painful and mysterious illness at Rose Cottage, the house he shared with his wife Beatrice and their five children in Fetter Hill between Milkwall and Ellwood. Harry and Beatrice were close friends with Alice and Lesley Sayes, who lived nearby.

Although Harry’s doctor at first certified a natural death, a post-mortem conducted at the behest of the dead man’s suspicious family revealed that he had died from a large dose of arsenic. Just like many Foresters, Harry kept a few sheep and ran them on Forest waste, claiming the right to common on Crown land. Every year he used arsenic to dip the sheep to prevent disease.  Although it could not conclusively determine how the arsenic had found its way into his body, the inquest jury, in a controversial decision, charged Beatrice with Harry’s murder.

Harry had become ill over the summer of 1927 and was eventually admitted to Gloucestershire Infirmary, where the doctors suspected he was suffering from arsenic poisoning. During the trial of Beatrice for murder, it became apparent that she was a victim of domestic abuse and this gave her a motive for the killing of her husband. In addition, and to add to the drama, accusations were levelled against Lesley for having an affair with Beatrice, and further suspicions were raised when it became apparent that Harry Pace had lent Lesley Sayes some money to buy his house.

In a sensational verdict, Beatrice was found not guilty. Soon after Beatrice left the district and Lesley and Alice returned to Abercan. In the 1930s Lesley joined the communist party,

Rose Cottage was sold in 1933 by James Richard Sayes and Leslie Sayes to John William Nash, who was the husband of Maisey, James Richard’s daughter. James Richard died in 1936 in the Forest of Dean. Lesley remained in South Wales and died in 1966.

Spain

At some stage, James Loris Sayes joined the Communist Party and in 1937 volunteered to join the International Brigades fighting in Spain. More than 2,300 volunteers, many of whom were miners, travelled from Britain to fight on the Republican side against the Fascists. Five hundred of these volunteers were killed in the civil war, which led to the massacre of Republican sympathisers and thousands of deaths. Coming from valleys across South Wales, the 200-odd Welsh miners made up one of the largest contingents in the British Battalion.

These men had over a decade of bitter industrial and political experience, including the 1921 and 1926 lockouts, which were followed by stay-in strikes, hunger marches, mass demonstrations against means test regulations and halting fascist incursions into the valleys. Consequently, they brought with them a political tradition unique in Britain, with its combination of trade union militancy, radical extra-parliamentary activity and international political and humanitarian solidarity. Their story is described Hywel Francis’s excellent book Miners Against Fascism, Wales and the Spanish Civil War.

James Loris arrived in Spain on 15 July 1937 and was sent to work at the Auto Park in Albacete, whose main function was maintaining and repairing vehicles and transporting troops, ammunition, food, medical supplies, and equipment between Albacete and the front lines. He left Spain on 9th December 1937 and returned to live in lodgings at Abercarn and to work at the colliery. He married Margaret Holland in 1941 and moved to Bedwellty, where he died on 22nd April 1949.

Appendix

Gloucester Citizen 2 October 1911

Nearly a fortnight ago, because certain workmen—less than 20 in number—employed at Wimberry Slade, belonging to the Cannop Colliery Company, refused to join the workmen’s association, the general body of the employees struck work without notice given. Negotiations were opened, and it resulted—as the men were held to have been in the wrong in leaving without notice —in the management consenting to the men returning to work on the old terms, provided they apologised and paid half-a-crown fine each, besides choosing for themselves a fresh checkweighman. The men have agreed to the two first conditions, but decline to part with their representative. They have now all joined the association. On Monday morning, the men were locked out; all the pit horses over 20 in number—have been withdrawn, and the drift, which employed some 400 men and boys, is for the present standstill.

Gloucester Citizen – Wednesday 11 October 1911

At Coleford Police Court Tuesday—there being a full bench of magistrates, presided over by Mr C. T. Palmer—much interest was centred in a case having relation to the prevailing labour dispute at Drift Colliery. A charge was made against James R. Sayes, Palmer’s Flat, for on the 18th and 19th September last, being checkweighman appointed for the weighing coal from the Colliery, did impede and interrupt the working of the mine, did interfere with some of the workmen, and with the management of the mine to the detriment of the owners, agents, and manager of the mine. The summons was issued at the instance of Mr John J. Joynes, the manager, who applied for the removal of Sayes as checkweighman.

Mr Abel Thomas. K.C., M.P., instructed by Mr Harold W. Berthon, Lydney, prosecuted, and the defendant was represented by Mr F. E. Wetherley (Bristol), instructed by Messrs. Gilmour and Lloyd, on behalf of the Forest of Dean Miners Association.

The Court was crowded with colliery workmen. and a large crowd stood outside the building during the whole of the sitting.

In opening the case, Mr Abel Thomas said in June last the workmen in question went to the manager and asked them to get rid of all the non-union men employed in the mine. That matter was amicably settled.

September 18th and 19th last the acts complained of were committed by the defendant. Practically all the workmen were members of the Union, hut few were not in compliance—were behind with their payments. On September 18th, Saves, the men’s checkweighman, was at the weighing office when some of the Workmen’s Association Committee men had a conversation with him. They made arrangements for a meeting of the workmen on Tuesday, 19th September, to decide certain procedure. They decided that if the Company did not immediately get rid of the 17 non-complying members of that Association, they would at once cease working without giving notice. The notice calling the men together was written by Sayes and attached at the head of the drift. Sayes also presided at the meeting, and directed the course |of the business, told the men what the position was, and requested someone to propose a resolution that if the non-Union men were not turned back, the general body of the men would forthwith down tools. That resolution was put and carried.

Mr Joynes, manager, told the men immediately after the meeting that the drift was open for them, and if they did not down, they would be breaking contracts, and liable to be proceeded against. The men did not go down, and when the next shift came, Sayes told them what had been decided. Those men also turned back. That happened on the 19th September, and the men were still out. The number affected was about 300. Mr Thomas added that in the opinion of the management it would be disastrous to continue this deplorable struggle, and if the prosecution showed they had a prima facie case against Sayes then he would have to show cause why the application that he be removed from his position should not be granted. The case was taken under Section 13 of the Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1887.

Evidence was then called.

Mr Harry Jones, Sunnyside, Yorkley, official weighman; George Watson, of Berry Hill, day foreman; Edwin Aston, of Berry Hill, night deputy overman; William Vorke, Cannop. general overman; and Mr J. J. Joynes all gave evidence at considerable length.

The allegations against defendant were that he said it was no good playing with the non-unionists, the thing was to stop the wheels until the non-unionists were stopped, and that he directed the men to pass the resolution referred to. and generally incited them to the course which had been followed.

Defendant, in evidence, denied saying much of that which had been imputed to him. He admitted, however, that he wrote out the pit’s head notice, that he presided over the meeting, and generally had conduct of the business. He denied directing anyone to move the resolution question, and said all he did was ask them to propose a resolution with reference to the matter.

In cross-examination, the defendant said there were three questions in dispute between the management and the men, and one not settled was whether or not he should continue as checkweighman. The proprietors desired that he should be discharged.

The Bench retired to consider their decision, and on returning into Court, after comparatively short absence, the Chairman said the magistrates considered the case proved, and their order was that Saves should forthwith be removed from the office of checkweighman at the colliery. He also had to pay the costs amounting £1 14s.

Western Mail 9 May 1934

The condition of houses in two streets at Cwmcarn was the subject upon which a deputation from the Cwmcarn Communist party interviewed the Abercarn Council housing committee on Tuesday. Mr. Leslie Sayes. a member of the deputation. stated that some windows would not shut and some would not open. Doors were the same. In some houses the roofs leaked to such an extent that baths had to be put to catch the rain. The pavements were also in a deplorable condition, and tons of earth and stones were washed down from the mountain sides during the rainy periods. Mr. Sayes added that complaints had been made by women that the heels of their shoes had been torn off. It was decided that the sanitary inspector should prepare a schedule of the work needed with a view to the owners being approached if necessary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

^[1] Gloucester Journal 14 October 1911.

[2] See appendix

[3] Gloucester Journal 27 April 1912.

[4] Gloucester Citizen 5 December 1924

 

The story of David John Williams was brought to public attention in the Forest of Dean by local historian Steve Cooper, following his research into the local newspaper archives. During his investigations, Cooper uncovered a report of a military funeral held at All Saints’ Church, Viney Hill, in 1921. Further research by Cooper and fellow historians Eric Nicholls, Roger Deeks and Andrew Gardiner revealed a story of a forgotten soldier, who they believed to have died while trying to return to the Forest to see his newborn child. The story was reported in the Forester newspaper by journalist Nial Anderson.

Roger Deeks investigated further and wrote up details of the life and death of David Williams in an article in the Journal, Bugle and Sabre, Military History in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, called A Forgotten Soldier: Private David Williams, in 2010.[1] Thanks to the work of these historians, Williams received a Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone located in the All Saints Church.

The following is a summary of David Williams’s life, which draws on Deek’s article and Williams’s army records, birth and marriage certificates, census forms, etc., on Ancestry and other sources listed in the footnotes.

Early Life

David Williams was born on 25 June 1887 in Joys Green near Lydbrook, the son of a colliery carpenter. After leaving school, he obtained work as a collier and also qualified as a colliery carpenter.[2] However, since childhood, he suffered from severe asthma and working in the damp and dusty environment of a colliery would have made his condition much worse.[3]

On 25 July 1905, Williams chose the other main option for young working-class Foresters at the time and enlisted in the Gloucestershire Regiment (Glosters). He was just 18 years old and was 5 ft 4 in height and weighed less than 9 stone.[4]

India Colonies

In February 1908, Williams was posted to India, serving with the 1st Battalion Glosters, whose role was to maintain imperial commitments and uphold the British presence in key strategic locations. [5] The 1st Battalion was stationed primarily at Trimulgherry from 1903 until 1911, where it conducted standard infantry training amid the subcontinent’s garrisons. The death penalty was used to maintain military discipline, particularly against British soldiers of Indian heritage. Military prisoners were held in Trimulgherry’s notorious military prison.

The prison was built in 1858, soon after the attack on British seats of power across the subcontinent. Primarily designed to punish British-Indian soldiers, but also holding soldiers of British heritage, its gothic architecture, solitary cells, and gruesome gallows reveal how the British Empire kept a grip on dissent and punishment. Records show that nearly 500 people were executed at the prison.[6]

British soldiers were forced to watch the executions and so Williams probably would have been a witness to the barbaric spectacles. The execution of British soldiers in public in India was causing concern at home and was raised in parliament by Hugh Lea, the MP for St Pancras East, on 16 July 1906:

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he is aware that a public execution of a private in the 1st Lincolns took place between the prison and the cemetery at Trimulgherry on September 1st last; that the station orders issued by Brigadier General E. O. F. Hamilton, C.B., commanding Secunderabad and Bolarum, on that occasion required the attendance of detachments of every corps, British and native, in the station; that the scaffold was erected a few hundred yards from a public roadway and in view of the windows of the cell in which the man was lodged prior to his execution, and that in the walk from the prison to the scaffold he had to pass through crowds of natives and white women and children assembled to see the execution; and will he say what action he proposes taking in the matter.[7]

The soldier they hung was called Walter Smith. On 28 May, he got drunk and shot his sergeant major, proclaiming, “I shot the rascal. I meant it. He won’t get on to me anymore.”^[8]

Malta

In October 1910, Williams was posted to Malta with the 2nd Battalion Glosters, focusing on fortifications and colonial security.[9] Britain was naturally aware of Malta’s strategic value as a military base, and had gained full sovereignty of the island through the 1814 Treaty of Paris.

On three separate occasions, during this period, Williams was promoted to Lance Corporal, but on each occasion, he was later reverted to the role of private as a result of misconduct.[10]

In April 1913, Williams was posted back to the UK, and on 25 April 1913, he was transferred to the Reserve. His army record describes his conduct as very good with no instances of drunkenness in his nearly eight years of service.[11]  In April 1914, he married Fanny Hughes in Viney Hill and settled in nearby Yorkley.[12]

War

The British declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, ostensibly because Germany refused to remove troops from neutral Belgium. The next day, Williams was mobilised and posted to the 3^rd Battalion Glosters in Horfield, Bristol. This Battalion was a Special Reserve battalion and one of its main tasks was training and supplying reinforcements to front-line battalions.

Williams landed in France on 27 August 1914 with other reinforcements to join the 1st Battalion Glosters at Marne on 5 September, when the Battalion was made up of 26 officers and 970 other ranks. Williams was to suffer frequent asthma attacks while in the trenches, a problem which repeated itself throughout his active service during the First World War.

The First Battle of Ypres

On 16 October 1914, the Battalion was moved to join the first battle of Ypres. On 19 October 1914, the Battalion played a pivotal role in the defence of Langemarck, and was called upon several times to counter-attack against enemy breakthroughs. On 23 October, the Glosters, exposed on one flank, were attacked again and again, but beat off every fresh attempt, often in involved fighting at very close quarters.[13]

On 24 October, over 1500 bodies of German troops were counted in front of Langemarck. It is estimated that the German total loss in that sector for the previous three days of fighting was around 10,000 killed, wounded or taken prisoner, some of them child soldiers.[14] The battle continued and on 29 October, the Glosters Battalion, massively outnumbered, had 167 men killed, wounded or taken prisoner.[15]

On 29 October 1914, Williams was injured with a wound to the left hand. On 9th November 1914, he was evacuated back to England for treatment.[16]  Meanwhile, by 15 November, his battalion had been reduced to about 100 men. At the end of November, no side achieved significant breakthroughs at Ypres. The BEF suffered about 58,000 killed, wounded, and missing at the first Battle of Ypres between 14 October and 30 November with roughly 8000 deaths. The French had 30,000 casualties, the Belgians 20,000 and the Germans 130,000. Both sides settled into the trench warfare that would characterise the remainder of the war on the Western Front.[17]

Court Martial

On 26 December 1914, while Williams was posted to Horfield Barracks, his daughter, Esther, was born. She suffered from spina bifida and hydrocephalus and was very unwell. On 25 December 1914, Williams’s mother died.[18]

On 12 January 1915, Williams deserted, possibly because he wanted to see his baby daughter or attend his mother’s funeral or grave. He rejoined on 15 June 1915 and appeared before a court martial on 9 July, where he was sentenced to 112 days in a military prison with hard labour. However, the military was desperately short of men, and so his sentence was remitted and he was returned to duty on 21 August 1915.[19]

On 11 October 1915, his records show that he was given 28 days of detention, but no reason was given.[20] This may have been because he was about to be posted abroad and so may have attempted to desert again to see his daughter, who was still very ill.

Gallipoli

On 16 October 1915, Williams was sent to join the 7th Battalion Glosters at Gallipoli, where it had recently suffered terrible casualties, leaving 180 unwounded men from a Battalion strength of over 1,000 men.  Among the casualties were a small number of men from the Forest of Dean, including the following soldiers from the 7th Battalion Glosters:

Frederick Brinkworth (Private) from Lydney was killed in action on 7 August 1915.

William George Davis (Private) from Lydney was killed in action on 8 August 1915.

James Emmanuel Shott (Private) from Littledean, died of his wounds on 11 August 1915.

Samuel Sayes from Ellwood was a member of the Royal Navy Nelson Battalion, an infantry battalion that fought on land at Gallipoli.  He died of Enteric fever on 27 June 1915 while on a hospital ship on the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece.

Also:

Thomas Cooper (Private) from Coleford and the 4th Battalion South Wales Borderers, died of his wounds on 10 August 1915.

The conditions at Gallipoli were appalling, with many soldiers suffering from dysentery and other bowel complaints. In the end, a total of 355 men from the 7th Battalion died at Gallipoli, with 180 of these being killed on 8 August alone.  After the disastrous campaign, the Battalion was withdrawn to Suvla Bay to join newly arrived reinforcements, which included Williams. The conditions at Sulva Bay were very bad, with freezing cold nights. Consequently, on 2 December 1915, William suffered frostbite. He was not the only one because Harold Boughton remembers:

freezing weather made an already difficult situation worse – troops huddled together for warmth, but it was not enough. Some died and many suffered frostbite. I saw men crawling on their hands and knees and grown men crying like babies. They had to crawl down the beach and the only medical attention down there was a large marquee with a red cross on it.[21]

On 3 January 1916, Williams was sent back to the UK for treatment and was posted to 3^rd Glosters on 21 January 1916.[22] He discovered that while he was at Sulva Bay, on 7 November 1915, his daughter, Gladys, died. It is not known if he was given time to travel from Horfield to visit his wife and his daughter’s grave.

Executions

During the Gallipoli campaign, 101 men were sentenced to die under the British Army Act, but in only four cases was the punishment confirmed and carried out. In two of the cases, the victims claimed to have been very ill. This was quite likely to be true because sickness among the troops was common due to the conditions.

Private Thomas Davis from the 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers was executed on 2 July 1915 for leaving his guard post at Cape Helles in June. During his trial, he claimed that a bowel complaint had meant he had to visit the latrines.

Private Harry Salter from the 6th Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment, was executed on 11 December 1915 for deserting at Suvla Bay in November while waiting in reserve.

Private Patrick Downey from the 10^th Irish Division was executed on 27 December for disobeying an order.

Sergeant John Robbins from the 5^th Wiltshire Regiment was executed on 2 January 1916 after refusing to attend a night patrol on the basis that he was too sick.[23]

Battle of The Somme

On 11 March 1916, Williams was posted back to France to join the 10th Battalion, Glosters.[24] It would not be long before he would be in action at the Battle of the Somme. The Glosters were fortunate not to have been in action on the first day of the Battle on 1 July, when the British Army lost over 19,000 men killed and another 40,000 wounded. However, on 4th July, the Battalion joined the Battle. On the 9th of July 1916, Williams’s battalion was fighting in and around Albert and the following day they were in battle north of Fricourt.

On 12 July 1916, Williams received a severe gunshot wound to the face, hand and shoulder. He was returned to the UK and arrived on 16 July 1916 for hospital treatment in Cardiff.

In July 1916, Williams’s father died, but it is not known if he was well enough to attend the funeral.[25] Williams remained in hospital for two months before returning to Horfield Barracks.

The Battle of the Somme lasted until November 1916 and resulted in over one million total casualties (killed, wounded, or captured) across all sides, with roughly 300,000 to over 400,000 estimated deaths.[26] Seventy-nine men were executed by the British army during the Battle of the Somme, the majority for desertion.[27] These men were viewed as expendable by the military commanders and the main function of their executions was to serve as a warning to others.

Back in Britain

However, desertions continued, particularly on the home front. Back in Horfield, on 25 September 1916, Williams deserted again but rejoined on 11 October 1916. However, there is no record of any disciplinary action. Despite his desertions, his character is described as sober and good in his records.[28]

On 8 January 1917, Williams was transferred to the Reserve and classified as no longer physically fit for service, mainly due to his asthma. He had served for over 11 years in the military.[29] He returned home to Yorkley and at last could spend some time with his wife. On 28 Feb 1917, the couple had a son, Stanley David Williams.[30]

In 1918 and 1919, coal was still in short supply and there was a shortage of skilled labour to work in the pits.  Williams may have been able to return to work at his old colliery if he wished, but he suffered badly from asthma and so probably did not want to return to the pits, where his recovery and health would have been at risk. Other employment may have been difficult to obtain, as returning soldiers competed for jobs

Ireland

Consequently, on 4 December 1919, Williams re-enlisted and joined the 1st Battalion Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, which was then serving in Ireland.[31] In the early months of 1920, the 1st and 2nd Battalions, Oxford & Bucks, were stationed at Limerick and Cork respectively. They garrisoned the towns and sent out patrols to outlying towns and villages. As the year went on, Williams was thrown into the centre of a bitter and brutal conflict with revenge killings, assassinations, and reprisals on both sides.

In December 1920, the British authorities declared martial law in much of southern Ireland, and the centre of Cork city was burnt out by British forces in reprisal for an ambush. Violence continued to escalate over the next seven months; 1,000 people were killed and 4,500 republicans were interned. The British army committed atrocities against Irish civilians, and there were reprisals by the IRA.

Executions

On February 22, 1921, the bodies of three British soldiers were discovered by a farmer on the Woodford to Cahir Road near the shores of Lough Attorick. The three soldiers had all been shot in the head. One of them had a label hung around his neck which read “Spies. Tried by court-martial and found guilty. All others beware.”  All three were members of ‘B’ Company, 1st Battalion of the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, stationed at the Strand Barracks in Limerick City. One of these men was David Williams. The other two were William Walker and H. Morgan (his real name was Thomas Mullett). They were all dressed in civilian clothing. The British army assumed they had been executed by the IRA’s East Clare Brigade. The British immediately retaliated by murdering an Irish civilian and burning houses

However, there is some controversy about the circumstances of their deaths. Padraig OgÓ Ruairc says that the three men were arrested by the IRA on February 19th and that their bodies were discovered three days later.[32]

O’Halpin and Ó Corráin say that they went missing from Limerick on February 13th and that their bodies were discovered on February 22^nd.  However, they say that no IRA sources for these deaths have been traced.[33]

Tomás Mac Conmara quotes local sources and one BMH statement, which indicates that the killing of these three British Army soldiers may have been in revenge for the killings on Killaloe Bridge.[34] The killings on Killaloe Bridge refer to the execution of four young Irishmen by British Crown Forces on 16 November 1920. The victims who became known as the Scariff Martyrs were IRA Volunteers Alfred Rodgers, Michael ‘Brud’ McMahon, Martin Gildea, and civilian caretaker Michael Egan. The circumstances surrounding the killings on Killaloe Bridge were as follows.

On 16 November 16, 1920, British forces surrounded a house in Williamstown, County Clare, capturing the three IRA volunteers and Egan. The men were taken by boat to the Lakeside Hotel in Killaloe for questioning and were then marched toward the police barracks. At midnight on Killaloe Bridge (which spans the River Shannon between counties Clare and Tipperary), the men were beaten, tied together, and shot. The Crown forces claimed the men were shot while attempting to escape, but witnesses and subsequent investigations proved this was a fabricated cover-up for a deliberate execution.

Julian Putkowski agrees with Tomás Mac Conmara and argues that the killing of the three British soldiers may have been an act of revenge. He points out:

There’s no indication about exactly when they were shot (Coroner guesses 19 February) but the British Army was not informed about the whereabouts of their corpses for at least two or possibly three days.

Spies, deserters or kidnap victims

There are several theories about what these men were up to before they were captured by the IRA. There are three possibilities.

• They were involved in an intelligence operation
• They were deserters.
• They were kidnapped.

Spies

Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc argues that the men were engaged on an intelligence gathering mission for the British Army in North East Clare and captured and executed as spies by members of the IRA’s East Clare Brigade. This was not an unusual occurrence. There were other cases in which British spies dressed as deserters were captured and executed by the IRA. However, the British tended to use members of their officer class for such operations.

Ó Ruairc argues that it is difficult to regard the men as deserters. He points out that had they been deserters, they would have tried to return to England. He adds that the three soldiers could easily have walked to Limerick railway station, taken a train to Dublin, and then boarded a boat to England. Instead, they headed into the hostile and remote territory of Clare, widely known as an IRA stronghold, which seems illogical. The journey was more than 40 miles, and they would also have needed to evade army and RIC patrols along the way.

He points out that British army records show that the three soldiers were paid up to February 22, 1921, the day their bodies were discovered. This would have been standard practice for serving soldiers killed on duty, but deserters would have been paid only till 13 Feb, when they deserted.

He adds that Lieutenant John Basil Jarvis, who served as an intelligence officer with the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry at the Strand Barracks, had a reputation for being reckless and may have taken the risk of sending these men on a very dangerous intelligence mission on the basis that they were experienced soldiers.

He presents this case in his online article, which should be read to follow the narrative presented here. The article provides background information about desertion by British army soldiers during the Irish War of Independence.

https://www.theirishstory.com/2011/02/18/deserters-or-spies-british-soldiers-executed-at-lough-attorick/

Deserters

Roger Deeks disagrees with Ó Ruairc, pointing out that these men were ordinary privates and unlikely to be chosen to carry out intelligence operations. In addition, Deeks argues that there is more compelling circumstantial evidence for believing that the men had deserted. He reports that Steve Cooper discovered that Williams had a son, Keith, who was born on 19 May 1920. The birth of his son may well have provided a motive to desert and return to Britain, as he may have deserted before for a similar reason.

Julian Putkowski has pointed out that both Williams and Morgan (Mullett) had a history of desertion. This fact further supports Deeks’s theory. Mullett’s war records reveal that he appeared before a district court martial at Woodbridge, Suffolk, on 9 March 1915 for being absent without leave. He was sentenced to 56 days in military detention but only served 14 days. On 23 October 1915, this report appeared in the Windsor, Eton & Slough Express:

Henry Morgan alias Thomas Mullett, 26, of the 3/4th Suffolk Regiment, was brought up on remand charged with being an absentee from the 3/4th Suffolk Regiment from October 4th. He was also charged with being a deserter from the 1/1st Essex R.H.A. since July 23rd. Inspector Hammond said a reply had been received from the Commanding Officer of the Suffolk Regiment asking that the prisoner be handed over to an escort, and the Inspector added that the escort was in attendance. Prisoner was ordered to be handed over to the escort.

No record of his punishment exists. However, there is a Henry Morgan from the Labour Company, based at Le Havre, who went absent without leave from 2 November 1917 and was sentenced to 56 days, but served 14 days.  Given Williams’s and Mullett’s history of desertions, it is unlikely they would have been entrusted with an intelligence operation in such difficult circumstances.

William Walker also had a motive to desert. He had only recently married in August 1919 to Margaret Jessett and, at the time of his death,  had a nine-month-old baby daughter, Doris.

Kidnap Victims

Putkowski suggests an alternative possibility for the three men’s disappearance:

They were reported missing on a Sunday, and may very well have been nabbed on Saturday night – when it’s quite plausible that the three could have gone out together for a drink and been captured by the IRA.  Even for a dumb-arse Intelligence Officer like Jarvis, it would have been mega-stupid to dispatch three British squaddies (certainly not “of the officer class”) in civilian clothes to reconnoitre, let alone spy on local inhabitants or kid himself they’d not be killed off by the IRA.

Viney Hill

David John Wiiliams was buried at All Saints Church, Viney Hill, on 28 February 1921. Recent research has not been able to find the grave, but thanks to the Forest historians, he now has a Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone in the graveyard.

In January 1924, Fanny married a miner from Yorkey, Thomas Parry, and they had a child, Joseph, in July 1924.[35] Sadly, Fanny had to endure another tragedy because in the same month that Joseph was born, Thomas was killed in a colliery accident. The following report appeared in the Western Daily Press on 14 July 1924:

A verdict of accidental death was returned by Mr M. F. Carter, Dean Forest Coroner, in the case of Thomas Parry (36), collier, who was killed at the coal face at Oldcroft Colliery, a small slant, on Tuesday. Parry, was clearing the floor of coal in order to erect a prop when two tons of stone fell on him, death being instantaneous. 

In January 1929, Fanny married Edgar Hughes, a miner from Newport. The family, including Stanley, Keith and Joseph, moved to Abecan where Edgar worked as a colliery onsetter. Fanny died in October 1963.[36]

[1] Roger Deeks, Bugle and Sabre, Military History in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire: Lightmoor Press, 2010, 31-33.

[2] Ancestry

[3] His asthma is highlighted in his army records on Ancestry

[4] Williams’s Army Records

[5] Ibid.

[6] Deccan Chronicle 4 September 2021.

[7] Hansard, Executions of British soldiers in India, 16 July 1906

[8] Walter Smith was born in Swadlincote, a mining town in South Derbyshire. On leaving school at 13, he left home and worked as a collier. He joined the 4th Derby Reserve Regiment on 7 January 1899, when he was 19 but only 5 ft 3 in tall. He deserted on 29 January 1899, but was back on duty several weeks later.  By 1901, he was working as a farm labourer. He then enlisted with the Lincolnshires in October 1902. He spent a period in South Africa, where he was convicted at a court martial of assaulting a sergeant and sentenced to 6 months in a military prison doing hard labour. He was transferred with the Regiment to India. Thanks to Julian Putkowski

[9] Williams’s Army Records

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ancestry

[13]

[14] https://www.malvernremembers.org.uk/war-diary-entry/1st-gloucestershire-regiment-20th-23rd-october-1914

[15]

[16] Williams’s Army Records

[17]

[18] Ancestry

[19] Williams’s Army Records

[20] Ibid.

[21] https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/first-world-war/gallipoli/harold-boughton

[22] Williams’s Army Records

[23] Julian Pukowski and Julian Sykes, Shot and Dawn,(London, Leo Cooper, 1992) 56-59

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ancestry

[26]

[27] Pukowski and Julian Sykes, Shot and Dawn,

[28] Williams’s Army Records

[29] Ibid

[30] Ancestry

[31] Ibid.

[32] Padraig Og O Ruairc, Blood on the Banner: The Republican Struggle in Clare, 2009, 230-231.

[33] Eunan O’Halpin and Daithi O Corrain, The Dead of the Irish Revolution, Yale University Press, 2020, 311.

[34] Tomás Mac Conmara, The Scariff Martyrs: War, Murder and Memory in East Clare 187-188.

[35] Ancestry.

[36] Ibid.

Charles Jeffrey was born in 1894 in Pillowell, the son of a collier. He worked in the mines after leaving school.

He enlisted in the 3^rd Glosters, probably after the start of the war.  The 3rd. Glosters remained in the UK throughout the war, providing drafts to other battalions. In August 1914, the Glosters left Bristol for Abbey Wood, near Woolwich. Besides training, the work of the battalion was the defence of the arsenal and to guard the huge supplies of explosives which were distributed over the Abbey Wood marshes. From September 1914 onwards, the 3rd Glosters continually supplied drafts of officers and men to the 1st Battalion and other corps, while there was always a steadily increasing flow of drafts of new officers and men for training.

In January 1915, Jeffrey deserted from Abbey Wood. It is not possible to say what motivated him, but he would have had a reason. He was listed as missing in the Police Gazette, which implies he was gone for more than 21 days. There are no enlistment and service records for him, so it is not possible to say if and when he voluntarily returned to the regiment or if he was captured and if he was punished.

However, his military pension record shows he was discharged on 22 May 1916. Pensions were only provided for those who were injured or killed fighting in the First World War. Pensions were provided for the injured soldiers themselves as well as widows and other dependents. So, it is likely he was involved in combat with another battalion abroad and was subsequently wounded.

After the war, Jeffrey returned to work at New Fancy colliery near Parkend. He married Florence Thomas in 1934 and continued to work as a collier. He died in 1971.

William John Burris was born in 1892 in St Briavels. His father, also William, worked as a wagoner with horses on a farm. On leaving school, he obtained work as a collier.

He had a minor brush with the law in 1913, at the age of 20. On 8 July 1913, he was sentenced to 14 days in prison for stealing two pieces of timber.

Burris signed up for the 3^rd South Wales Borderers Special Reserve 24th Battalion on 6 May 1914 in Newport. At the time, he claimed to be 18 years old, but his age was probably 22. He was only 5 ft 3 ins in height and weighed just 7 stone. He was sent for training to Brecon, but almost immediately ran into conflict with the military authorities.

Location	Date	Offence	Punishment	Date
Brecon	15 May	Nor complying with an order and drunk	Admonished	18 May
Brecon	2 July	Absent from parade	3 days confined to barracks	3 July
Brecon	9 July	Neglecting to obey an order	4 days confined to barracks.	9 July
Brecon	10 July	Neglecting to obey an order	7 days confined to barracks.	11 July
Brecon	11 July	Breaking out of barracks. Apprehended by civil police in Newport on 13 July. Loss of kit	96 hours detention and required to pay for the kit. Forfeit 3 days’ pay,	17 July
Brecon	18 July	Stubbornness at drill whilst under detention. Improper conduct. Threw his equipment at a wall	48 hours on a punishment diet	18 July
Brecon	26 August	Shirking his work while on fatigue	4 days confined to a cell.	28 August

Burris was mobilised on 8 August 1914. He deserted on 17 October 1914. His army records appear to end here, so it is unclear what he did next.

However, a William John Burris, the son of William Burris, a farm labourer, married Ellen Reeson on 5 November 1918 in Wimbledon. He is listed as a soldier based at Bramshott military camp in Hampshire. The couple had a daughter born in 1920. The family subsequently migrated to British Columbia in 1920, where they had five sons and where he worked as a general labourer doing odd jobs. Ellen died in 1942. Burris married again to Catherine Ritoul in 1951 and had two more sons. He died in 1962.

Follow this link for full details:

https://www.deanheritagecentre.org/event-details-registration/remembering-the-1926-miners-strike-talk-and-presentation

William Howells was born in Coleford in October 1890. On leaving school, he worked as a trammer, possibly for his father, who was a buttyman at Hopewell colliery. He joined the 2^nd Monmouth Territorials.

He signed up in Lydney with the 11th Gloucestershire Regiment on 4 August 1915 and was sent to Belhus Park, Essex. However, he was absent from 18 November 1915 until 17 December 1915, when he was apprehended and confined to a guard room. He appeared before a district court martial at Seaford on 1 January 1916 and was sentenced to six months detention for desertion while on active duty and sent to Chelmsford Barracks.

He was transferred to the Machine Gun Regiment on 10 August 1916.  He deserted again and made his way home. He was officially declared a deserter on 28 August 1916.

He was arrested after being found sleeping rough in the woods near Coleford on 11 October 1916.[1] He was handed over to the military and appeared before a district court martial at Chelmsford on 23 October 1916. He was convicted of desertion and losing by neglect his clothing, equipment and regimental necessities. He was sentenced to one year’s detention and put under stoppages of pay.

However, he was released on 3 March 1917 and sent to the front in France. He was wounded in the thigh on 8 April 1917 and was in hospital up to 15 April 1917. He was sent home in a hospital ship on 26 April 1917.

He deserted again on 7 August 1917 until he gave himself up in Coleford on 1 April 1919. He was handed over to a military escort on 8 April 1919 and held in a guard room until 1 May 1919. He faced a court-martial on 1 May 1919 and was tried for “deserting his majesty’s service”. He pleaded not guilty but was found guilty as charged and sentenced:

to be imprisoned with hard labour for one year and to be discharged with ignominy from his majesty’s service.

He was sent to Lincoln prison.  He was discharged on 21 October 1919. He returned to the Forest to live with his family and started work at Princess Royal colliery as a trammer. He remained single and lived with his mother after his father died in 1941. He died in January 1953.

[1] Dean Forest Mercury 20 October 1916.

This story was originally covered in much more detail by Roger Deeks in the New Regard.

Roger Deeks, Private Reginald Thomas Packer, Grenadier Guards, and the Memorial, New Regard, Journal of the Forst of Dean History Society, No. 25, pp. 15-20.

Reginald Packer was born in Southrop, Gloucestershire, in July 1895, the son of a policeman called William Packer. The family moved to Cinderford, where William Packer was appointed Police Inspector in January 1909. The family worshipped at St. Stephen’s Church, Cinderford, where Reginald sang in the choir.

Reginald Packer was a strong young man and over six feet tall. In August 1911, this enabled him to leave his job as a brewer’s clerk and enlist in one of the elite army regiments, the Grenadier Guards. At the time of his enlistment, he was only 16 years and one month old. However, his physique enabled him to falsely claim that he was 18 years of age, which was a requirement for enlistment at the time. He served his time at the Grenadier Guards barracks in Warley, London, until the outbreak of war in August 1914.

His service records show that on Saturday 26 September 1914, he became absent without leave from the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards while they were still stationed in England. He returned to Cinderford walking with a limp, using a stick with bandages on his head. He claimed he had been wounded at the Battle of Aisne and attended a church service at St Stephens on Sunday 27 September. He reported to the Dean Forest Mercury that he had left England for France on 15 September and had been involved in several desperate battles.  He said he was:

keen to be back again with his mates doing what he can in the struggle in which they are so nobly doing their duty.

However, he was arrested and by 15 October 1914 was held in confinement awaiting trial. On 27 October, he was convicted of desertion by a district court martial and sentenced to 42 days’ detention in a military prison with all former service forfeited. This meant he would lose his pension rights for his service up to that point and have a seriously blemished record.

The authorities were keen to keep his desertion a secret as they wanted to use the example of his ‘heroism’ as a propaganda tool in the local press to illustrate the bravery of the British forces in France and to encourage recruitment and support for the war effort. Also, the authorities might have been keen to avoid embarrassing Inspector William Packer, who was a highly respected member of the Forest establishment.

Meanwhile, on 7 October, Packer’s battalion had been sent to France and was involved in heavy fighting. The army was in desperate need of trained soldiers and so on 9 November, after serving only part of his sentence, he was sent to rejoin his battalion. He was immediately involved in fierce fighting around the town of Fromelles and was killed on 20 December 1914 at just 19 years of age. A letter was sent to the family by one of Reginald’s comrades, William Blake, which said:

You have the satisfaction of knowing that Reg was every inch a British soldier, well liked by his comrades, and a credit to the Regiment.

Reginald Packer’s death was first reported in the Dean Forest Mercury on 8 January 1915 and further reported the following week under the headline ‘Roll for Heroes’. The story reminded the readers of his return to Cinderford in September 1914 with wounds to his head and leg, and his quick return to France to fight alongside his fellow soldiers.

Reginald Packer is buried at Ration Farm Cemetery, La Chapelle Armentieres. It is possible that only his family members and the military authorities knew of the true story of his desertion. Reginald Packers’ younger brother, Ernest, was killed in France on 3 July 1916. They are both commemorated on the Cinderford Town War memorial and on a memorial at their school, Double View, in Cinderford. In addition, the wrought iron gates at St Stephens church, Cinderford, commemorate the death of a single soldier, Reginald Packer, killed in action on 20 December 1914. There is no known explanation for his return to Cinderford and his elaborate deception.

 

Horace Tom Beard was the son of Alice Beard and was born in Mitcheldean in May 1890, where Alice‘s parents lived. At the time, Alice was working as a parlour maid in a hotel in Newnham. Alice married Charles Hooper in 1892. Charles worked as a postman in Newnham.

After leaving School, Horace served an apprenticeship as a blacksmith and joined the 4^th Glosters Militia. He applied to join the professional army or navy but was rejected because of his stammering. He obtained work as a seaman and claims he was shipwrecked on several occasions. He joined the Worcestershire Regiment on 5 September 1914 and was sent for training at Worcester.

On 3 May 1915, Horace married Emma George in Newnham. On 15 May 1915, the following report appeared in the Gloucester Journal, where Horace is described as a soldier in the Gloucestershire Regiment. 

At the Police Station, Thursday before Mr. Spencer Shelley, Horace T. Beard, of Church Road, Newnham, was charged with being an absentee without leave from the Gloucestershire Regiment and was remanded to await an escort.

There can be little doubt that these two events are connected. There is no record available about his punishment.

Horace was then sent to join the British Expeditionary Force in France on 9 December 1915 and joined the 57th Field Ambulance. He was immediately thrust into action on the front line, where he was a victim of an exploding shell, which rendered him unconscious. His speech became worse, and then he lost it completely.

He remained in France until 21 February 1916. and returned home on 22 February 1916 because of gastritis. A Medical Report on 17 May 1916 provided the following statement:

Unconscious from a shell exploding. Speech became affected, eventually losing it completely. Worries a great deal. Voice is still bad.  A fortnight ago, he suddenly lost it completely for 6 days for no obvious reason. The patient has been shipwrecked four times. On every occasion, he lost his voice. Memory for past events is unreliable.

On 2 June 1916, Horace was discharged from the army because he was no longer “physically fit for service”. The reason given was neurasthenia and shell shock.

Medical Reports

Bristol 13 November 1916

Complains of a pain in the head and giddiness. Has lost his voice. Talks in a whispering manner. Stutters a great deal. Generally, in a weak condition. 50%

Newport, 23 July 1917.

As before 40%

Gloucester 15 June 1918

Much the same condition. 40%

Gloucester 24 August 1920

Complains of a choking feeling in his throat.  Can only tolerate bread and milk.   Cannot speak above a whisper. Pharyngitis present. Presence of internal tensions of cords. Larynx otherwise normal. Condition functional 40%

Gloucester 29 September 1920

Speech difficulty – husky voice. Hesitancy in speech. Difficulty with food. Vomits various times after food. Weakness in arm. Very slight tremor in hands and eyelids.  No muscle wastage in arm. Some loss of sensation.  Abnormal Larynx as before. Strength improved (functional). 30%

Some comments in these transcriptions of medical reports have not been included because the words are difficult to decipher.

After the war, Horace and Emma moved to Stroud.  Emma died on 18 November 1919. Soon after Emma’s death, Horace married Ada Fry. Horace obtained work in various roles as a driver, doorman, caretaker and builder’s labourer. Horace Beard died in November 1957.