British Schools and National Schools

T HE British and Foreign School Society was formed in 1808 by Mr. Joseph Lancaster and others to “extend education to all classes, especially to the poor, irrespective of all political and religious differences—an education, which was based upon the Bible, which recognised the use of the Bible in schools, and, while forbidding the introduction of anything which was likely to cause disputes, gave practical instruction out of it. They held that no catechism, creed, or other formula ought to be introduced which would give predominance to any one section of the church or of the people.” The children attending these schools were expected to attend the same places of worship on Sundays as their parents. The subscribers were drawn from all kinds of denominations—Church and Nonconformist.

In opposition to this, there was formed in 1811, “The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church,” by Dr Andrew Bell, and members of the Church of England. In “National Schools,” the Church Catechism and the Creeds were taught, and the children were expected to attend the services of the Church of England on Sundays. Both these founders, Lancaster and Bell, claimed to have discovered a very cheap way of educating the children of the poor, by the “Monitorial System,” by which a master could teach as many as 500 children at the same time, by employing youths as young monitors.

The National Schools at Aberdare were established about twenty years before the Park School, the first British School in the Aberdare Valley, was opened. Why was this? The National Society eagerly accepted the assistance of Government grants from 1833 onwards, while the British and Foreign School Society, being made up largely of Nonconformists, who objected to the interference of the State in religion and education, made very slow progress. This was especially so in Wales, the stronghold of Dissent. The Congregationalists and the Baptists thought that schools and colleges should be erected by voluntary effort without the help of the Government, while the Calvinistic Methodists and the Wesleyan Methodists were not so opposed to the acceptance of Government grants. The Nonconformists struggled to maintain a Normal Training College, first at Brecon and then at Swansea, by voluntary means, while the National Society received a Government grant of £3,000 to build a Normal College at Carmarthen. In the same way, Church schools were being erected in all parts of Wales where the population was composed preponderantly of Nonconformists.

While in 1838, the diocese of Bangor alone had 72 National Schools, there were only two British Schools in the whole of North Wales in 1843, and only a few more in South Wales. During this year, Hugh Owen, a London Welsh civil servant, later Sir Hugh Owen, issued an appeal to the Welsh people through the Welsh and English papers of the time, urging them to take advantage of the assistance of the British School Society, and of the Government grants, to supplement what they could raise by voluntary contributions from the hard-working and low-paid people of Wales.

BRAD Y LLYFRAU GLEISION

Still very little was done in South Wales until the Welsh Nation was thoroughly roused by the Government’s publication in 1847, of “The Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales.” These became better known as “Brad y Llyfrau Gleision,” or “The Treachery of the Blue Books.” “The three Commissioners who had been appointed in 1846 to inquire into the condition of education in Wales had all been educated in English public schools and at either Oxford or Cambridge. They were able men, but they were hardly the most suitable persons to undertake an inquiry of this sort. They knew very little about even the English working classes and still less about the peasants of Wales.

“Still more important, they knew no Welsh, and had strange ideas about the language and its literature. They and their assistants consulted chiefly the local squire and the local clergymen.”. “ Were not the best qualified to give a true picture of conditions in Wales.”

No doubt there was a terrible amount of ignorance in Wales at this time on account of the lack of proper schools, and far too much drunkenness caused by the lack of housing, long hours of work in the mines and at the blazing furnaces, etc. The Commissioners accused the Welsh people of ignorance, immorality and deceit, and attributed this ignorance and sin to two main reasons: one was the Welsh language, and the other was Welsh Nonconformity. The Welsh people, they said, in effect, were ignorant and immoral “because they spoke Welsh and attended chapel rather than church.”. . “The Commissioners had misunderstood and libelled a whole nation, and the result was fierce indignation. Welshmen of all creeds and parties, Whigs and Tories, Churchmen and Dissenters, joined in the fight to clear the good name of their native land.”

Meetings of protest were held throughout Wales. Articles appeared in defence of the Welsh nation in newspapers and magazines, in English and Welsh, in England and Wales, written by “English Churchmen like Bishop Thirlwall, of St. David’s, and Dean Cotton of Bangor,” and by Sir Thomas Phillips, a Welsh Churchman, by Principal Lewis Edwards, of the Bala Calvinistic Methodist College, by the Rev. Henry Richard, Congregational minister in London, who that year was appointed Secretary of the Peace Society, and later became M.P. for Merthyr and Aberdare, etc. But the greatest defender of the character of the Welsh people was a young Congregational minister at Tredegar, the Rev. Evan Jones, better known as “Ieuan Gwynedd.” He was an able writer in Welsh and English, and for a time was the editor of the “Principality,” a weekly newspaper which appeared soon after the publication of the Blue Books. In addition, he was an eloquent speaker in both languages, a well-known poet and adjudicator, and a leader of the Temperance movement, which was then taking a strong hold of the Welsh people. The Rev. Dr. Thos. Price, M.A., Ph.D., of Calfaria, Aberdare, referred to him as the “immortal Ieuan Gwynedd (“yr anfarwol Ieuan Gwynedd”).

PUBLIC OPINION AGAINST VICAR’S REPORT

When there was “fierce indignation throughout Wales,” words can hardly describe the state of public opinion in Aberdare. Here it was at boiling point. Why? The vicar of Aberdare was the Rev. John Griffith, who had been educated at Cambridge, and then became a private chaplain at Hawarden. Knowing nothing of the working condition of the industrial masses of South Wales, he was appointed at the age of 26, vicar of Aberdare, then rapidly growing through the sinking of collieries at Abernant, Cwmbach, Blaengwawr, and especially through the activities of Crawshay Bailey in erecting the Aberaman Iron Works and sinking pits, and the construction of the Aberdare Railway (T.V.R.), etc. With the influx of people from all parts of Wales and the adjoining English Counties, there was an acute housing shortage, though there were 80 masons and 50 carpenters at work in Aberaman alone. The cottages were small, with no bath-rooms for the miners, colliers, puddlers, etc., to wash after their arduous toil, or for the women folk on their return home from the pit-head, the iron-ore patches, brick-works, etc. There were no water-taps in the houses, or conveniences.

Within a few months of his arrival here, the Vicar reported to the Commissioners that :

(1) “There is little sobriety. The men drink in beer-shops, and are occasionally joined by the women: but on the whole, the women drink at home. Saturday night and Sunday night, and also Monday morning, are always spent in drinking, etc.”

(2) “Nothing can be more improvident than the Welsh miners and colliers.”

(3) Re their religion, “they go to a meeting at six, come out at eight, and spend the remainder of the evening in the beer-shops. Properly speaking, there is no religion whatever in my parish; at least I nave not yet found it.”

(4) As for their moral character, “nothing can be lower, I would say more degrading, than the character in which the women stand relative to the men. . . . The men do not hesitate to wash themselves naked before the women, etc.”

And very much more in the same strain. Not content with this damaging charge against the moral and religious character of our grandparents and great-grandparents, which were published in the Blue Books and scattered throughout England and abroad, he continued to vilify the moral character of the people of the Aberdare Valley by anonymous letters in the columns of the “Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian” and in “John Bull,” in which he declared all women above the age of 16 were unchaste and insensible to female virtue, etc.

How different were the testimonies from others to the Commissioners. English employers and others at the Dowlais, Melingriffith and Pentyrch Ironworks, etc., wrote that while there was too much drunkenness, it was not worse than elsewhere, with the people being industrious and frugal. . . “The Welsh workmen as a class are both provident and economical.” . . “Religion is very marked in this Welsh country. Witness the almost universal orderly observance of the Sabbath, the large attendances at weekly prayer and other meetings, the careful maintenance of their churches and chapels, and the sacred reverence for the churchyards and depositories of the dead.”

A NONCONFORMIST VIEWPOINT

The Rev. William Williams, of Nebo Congregational Chapel, Hirwaun, in reply to the queries of the Commissioners, stated:

Re sobriety: “Not worse than the other towns and villages about the ironworks.” Re providence and economy: “Ordinary, some being industrious and frugal, and others prodigal and careless.”

Re religion: “This place is certainly better in that respect than the neighbouring places, a large proportion of the community being decidedly religious. There are four commodious Dissenting places of worship very well attended, erected through the exertions of the almost unassisted poor, and the people are strongly attached to the voluntary system. The Established Church has no means of religious instruction within two miles.” (Penderyn Church, outside the Parish of Aberdare, in Breconshire).

Re position, character and influence of females: “Not so high as we would wish, many, while unmarried, being obliged to do manual labour out of doors to obtain a subsistence: but after marrying, their state is much better, more comfortable; and the duties of wives and mothers are well understood and fulfilled, considering the disadvantages under which they labour.”

Thomas W. Booker Esq., the proprietor of the Melingriffith Ironworks, etc. in reply to the question on “the character of females, etc.,” said, “Kindly, tenderly, and respectfully regarded.” “Character”: chaste, but confiding, honest and industrious. “Influence”: great, and on great emergencies, powerfully exerted. “The duties of wife and mother:” naturally and well understood and fulfilled. What a different character is given by the Welsh minister and the English ironworks proprietor to that of the Welsh Vicar, who had only just come to the place.

Can we be surprised at the outburst of resentment of the Welsh Chapel-loving, industrious, and, on the whole, moral people of Aberdare when they got to know what the Vicar thought of them?

THE VICAR CHALLENGED

A meeting was called at Siloa Congregational Chapel in the centre of Aberdare, to which the Vicar was especially invited, to prove his accusations. The chapel was overcrowded on Wednesday, February 23rd, 1848, when Mr. David Williams, Ynyscynon, better known as “Alaw Goch,” presided. He was one of the most popular men in Aberdare at the time, an enthusiastic and patriotic Welsh poet and patron of the local eisteddfodau, and one of the founders of the National Eisteddfod. He brought the first National Eisteddfod to Aberdare in 1861, sank collieries at Cwmdare and Aberaman (Williams’s Pit). His grave in Aberdare Cemetery, near the chapels, is marked by the most massive memorial stone in the cemetery. He was the father of the genial Judge Gwilym Williams, and the grandfather of Lt. Col. Sir Rhys Williams, Bart., K.C., D.S.O.

The chairman was supported by all the leaders of Nonconformity in the Valley, one of the chief being the born-fighter, the Rev. Thomas Price, M.A., Ph.D., the pastor of Calfaria Baptist Chapel, Monk Street. He was better known as Price, Penpound, because there used to be a pound for straying animals in front of the Black Lion, just a little above the site of Caradog’s monument. And his first chapel, Carmel, was a little “above the ‘Pound,” viz., “Pen-y-pound.” He was a great patron of the numerous Friendly Societies which sought to relieve distress from sickness and death when there was no compensation for accidents and the frequent loss of life and injuries from explosions, etc. Dr. Price read out the Vicar’s replies from the “Blue Books,” and then one by one translated these into Welsh for the people to better understand their purport. At this time, there was no Sunday Closing Act for Wales, but Dr. Price claimed, though there had been such an influx of strangers into the town that no more than one in 800 visited public houses on Sundays; that there were 45 benefit societies, Oddfellows, Ivorites, Loyal Order of Alfreds, of Ancient Britons, of Shepherds, etc; that the thrifty workmen had erected 1,500 to 1,800 houses in the last few years, and that it was a standing rule in all the Nonconformist places of worship to expel any member who visited a public house after the communion service. He went on to state that where they had only one chapel 46 years previously, they now had 16 (but the Established Church had still only one small edifice, seating about 200, which had been built about 650 years previously, for the whole of the Aberdare Valley, from Rhigos through Hirwaun, Aberdare, Mountain Ash, down to Pontypridd, except for the out-of-the-way old Parish Church of Llanwynno, up in the mountains between the Cynon and Rhondda Valleys). Whereas forty years previously, they had only one Sunday School, they now had 20 to 25, while the Established Church did not have a single Sunday School until the Inquiry was held.

What a crushing reply to the Vicar’s accusations!

But if the immediate result of this meeting was to call the serious attention of Nonconformists to their woeful neglect in providing for the elementary education of their own children, and to impel them to take immediate steps to secure land and funds to erect their voluntary and undenominational school, it also proved of incalculable advantage to the Established Church. It helped the Vicar to arouse his members from their age-long slumber, and to set about erecting churches and schools in the outlying districts which had been so long utterly neglected. He could now point out the reproof which had been administered to the church, and appeal to the rich proprietors of the ironworks, the landed classes, the Butes, Plymouths, Gwynn-Holfords, etc., all of whom were church-people.

Within two years, the beautiful church of St. Elvan’s, with its spire pointing heavenwards, and the Vicarage on Abernant Road were built, and steps set on foot to erect church and school at St. Fagan’s Trecynon, and Cwmbach, and also at Mountain Ash and Hirwaun. Soon there was a transformation in the position of the Established Church in the Aberdare Valley.