The Life of Honest Carrie Gilmore.

Carrie Gilmore has been written about before by a couple of Welsh authors and she's mentioned in a few online articles. Unfortunately none of the authors have made any effort to find out who she really was. Hopefully this will rectify that. It is rare to have such a detailed life story of a woman who lived on the wrong side of 'normal' society.

This slightly blurred photograph is 28 year old Carrie Gilmore in 1906. This is the first time this photograph has been linked to her life story.

Carrie, or Caroline Evans as she was baptised, was born in 1878 to a Welsh speaking working class Llanelli family. Her mother Ann had sixteen children and her father worked in a respected position at the South Wales Tin Works. Her childhood seems to have been happy and her mother says Carrie was 'bright and intelligent' and a good scholar. She followed the traditional path of leaving school by the age of 13 and working as a domestic servant. Though she probably also helped her mother out at home looking after her siblings David, Sage, Rees, Ellen, Ethel, Sidney, Gwilym and Frederick who were all younger than she was. 

How Carrie met Patrick 'Patsy' Gilmore is unknown but it must have been on the streets of Llanelli where they both lived. Patsy's mother loved her son and she had nothing bad to say about him. Patsy's father was a hawker but Patsy was an apprentice plasterer in Llanelli. 

In July 1896 Patsy signed up to the Carmarthenshire Militia and a few months later he went out on a drinking spree with friends to the coast near Llanelli. Patsy and his mates met two other young men and at the end of the night the two groups squeezed into a cab on the way back home. The larger group, Patsy among them, kicked the shit out of the other two men, stole their money and watches and left them for dead at the side of the road. The incident was put down to drunken high jinks and Patsy and the rest were acquitted. 

Carrie and Patsy married at the end of 1898 and lived at home with her mother for almost a year. Carrie's mother said it was the happiest time of her life and that Carrie was an admirable housekeeper. They moved to Maesteg briefly and then to Merthyr to a 'very nice house' in Adam and Eve Court. Her mother said you would never see a happier pair and Patsy was the best of husbands. The house was small but as it was just the two of them it was fine and Patsy worked in Merthyr as a plasterer.

Carrie and Patsy were not settled long in Merthyr when Britain went to war with the Boers in South Africa. With Patsy being a militia man he was called up and left Merthyr in December 1899, a little over a year after marrying Carrie. 

This is Patsy Gilmore attired in his army clothes.

Carrie did not cope well in the strange town of Merthyr on her own. Whether it was loneliness, stress, boredom or bad influences from others she "went wrong" and turned to drink. Carrie was convicted four times for drunkenness and the court had very little sympathy for her. 

Husband at the Front, wife in the police court.

Patsy, thousands of miles away, had already fought in the Battle of Driefontein and been wounded in the foot. When Patsy returned from South Africa ten months later in October 1900 the tide could not be turned. Carrie continued to drink and Patsy's mother said "she was very nearly the ruination of his life". They only lasted a few more months in Merthyr before moving back to Carrie's family home in Llanelli in 1901. The couple soon split up and Patsy returned to Merthyr for a while before moving to Neath where he lived with another woman. 

Carrie didn't stay in the family home. Presumably her heavy drinking strained family life and by 1902 she was in Swansea being cautioned for begging on the streets. She lodged in Tontine Street with an old school friend from Llanelly for a short while and the 'small and slight' figure of Carrie was a regular sight in the pubs of the town. 

Carrie then ended up in Barry, a few miles to the west of Cardiff. She stayed at the lodging house of Mrs Mary Ann Fury in Cadoxton near the docks. Here she met a German seaman called Frederick Dreher. Fred was very fond of Carrie and she married him bigamously at Barry Registry Office in October 1903. Carrie Gilmore was now Fanny Dreher. 

All was not well however as Carrie was still drinking heavily. The sailor told his landlady "I would do anything for her, if she would only keep from the drink." When Fred went to work at sea Carrie would return to Cardiff to drink and sleep in lodging houses or rough on the streets. Fred "was afraid to leave her half-pay because I knew she would only spend it with other men." The lodging keeper would not have her in her house when she was on her own either because when she was in drink she was 'one of the worse I have seen.'

This is where one interesting aspect of Carrie's personality comes out. While she was drinking with men she would sometimes rob them- but Carrie seemed too honest to be any good at being a thief. Once she came back to Mrs Fury's lodging house with two large gashes on her arm saying a man had stabbed her. Carrie had robbed the sailor and then told him to his face afterwards that she had done so! (The actual phrase Mrs Fury used to describe the man was a racist term which I won't repeat, safe to say racist terminology was in frequent use amongst the white population of Welsh seaports.)

So when her husband Fred was at sea Carrie would go to Cardiff, where one of her sisters lived and possibly offered occasional support. Then when Fred returned to port he would go and fetch Carrie back down to Barry and live quietly with her, trying to reform her away from the drink. Her landlady said 'whisky was her favourite drink and I have seen her swallow a tumbler full of raw whisky many times.' 

At one point Carrie managed to stay sober for about three months while Fred stayed with her in Barry. He then foolishly bought a little whisky, which 'set her off again.' I think this drawing from a photograph is of Carrie when she was with Fred. 

Fred cared for Carrie very much and seems to have tried very hard to help her with her alcohol addiction. He said he would have taken her to his home in Germany but he was afraid she would break out and disgrace him before his family. 

Carrie and Fred eventually drifted apart. Carrie had meanwhile picked up at least 20 convictions in the Barry Police Court for drunkenness and obscene language, though interestingly not for theft. 

Carrie flitted between Barry and Cardiff in a world of drink and petty violence as this incident in 1904 attests. One of her attackers here was Annie Courtney alias Pidell, a notorious prostitute who also flitted between Barry and Cardiff. 

A year later Carrie was sentenced to three months hard labour at Cardiff for being a disorderly prostitute. When she was released she picked up more convictions for drunkennes, assaulting the police and soliciting. In the summer of 1906 she met up with a man hawking strawberries. After he sold them off they went on a drinking bout together, which ended with a quarrel. 

Carrie was in Cardiff by September 1906 and had hooked up with Elijah Priest. Elijah was a fifty year old 'rag dealer' who had a chequered history to say the least. He had been a 'horse dealer' in Newport, a pimp in Pontypridd and a drunk in Tredegar amongst other things. This is Elijah. He may have also been the strawberry hawker mentioned earlier. 

Carrie was only 28 by this time and lodged with Elijah at Little Frederick Street in Cardiff. One night she met a German sailor in the streets. Perhaps she had picked up some German from her time with Fred and she persuaded him to go home with her. Elijah asked the sailor for some drink but he refused and when they realised he had no money they both threw him out, minus his gold Geneva watch, which the sailor later realised was missing. 

Meanwhile the chimney of their house caught fire and brought a curious policeman to the house. Carrie's honesty was to be her undoing again. Carrie and Elijah were both drunk and arguing. Elijah, seeing the policeman, shouted at Carrie "This is your fault!" and Carrie, so drunk as not to be thinking, shouted back "What about the gold watch I stole from the German on Monday night and you went to Newport yesterday to pawn?" and that was that. Carrie and Elijah got six months in Cardiff gaol. 

Carrie was released in April 1907 and drifted to Mary Ann Street in Cardiff. Mary Ann Street was a poor area full of lodging houses. Carrie lodged with a Mrs Bryan and a Mrs Martin and these wonderful photographs, dated to the 1890's show what the street was like.

Here Carrie was well known and well liked. The residents described her as a 'short, good looking little piece', a 'little short woman of generous disposition,' 'as good as gold' 'not a girl for fighting and quarelling and very good hearted'. It was said if she had tuppence anybody was welcome to share it. 

One of the places Carrie went when she didn't have the sixpence to lodge at Mary Ann Street for the night was near the ice house. You can see it marked on this map as the 'Cold Stores'. 

Another place was on the opposite side of the timber pond marked on the map, a piece of waste land that included an overgrown railway siding. Here the homeless would drink and sleep rough out of the way of residential homes and off the policeman's beat, though they would often check on who was there in the early hours of the morning. 

Carrie may have been addicted to drink and often homeless but she was tidy and took good care of her appearance. A few days after being released from her latest six week stay in Cardiff gaol she went back to Mary Ann Street where she felt part of the community. On Monday 26th August 1907 she slept out near the ice house but went back to 12 Mary Ann Street early in the morning to Mrs Martin. She'd known Mrs Martin for the last eight months and affectionally called her 'Mamma'. Following a windfall she had bought herself some new clothes. She spent the summer's day inside Mrs Martin's lodging house and in the garden out back.

By the evening she had brushed her hair, plaited it, put on a white blouse, new pinafore and a new shawl. She said 'Mamma, don't I look nice in them?' then left the house and headed into town, chatting to two friends Polly Fear and Rachel Evans a couple of hours later and ending up in the Palace Music Hall. 

Carrie did not return to Mary Ann Street that night. She got drinking with some sailors and ended the night taking one of them to her rough sleeping spot. The man was mentally ill and stabbed Carrie to death. 

The events of the early hours of Wednesday morning can be read about here. I don't really want to recount the details as that is what everyone else writing about her has focused on. 

Carrie, a kind, flawed and loved woman, was buried on the Saturday afternoon in an elm coffin inscribed with her birth and death date. Her first husband Patsy was there but riding in the funeral carraige with the coffin was two of her brothers and one sister together with a 'lady friend' who may well have been Mrs Martin from the lodging house. The majority of the fairly large crowd of mourners were women from her adopted community in Mary Ann Street who, the newspaper tells us, 'from their demeanour, must have been on terms of affection with the unfortunate woman'. 

Placed on the coffin was a cross of white maple wood, a floral cross 'by which the relatives typified their sorrow and their hope' and a lovely floral wreath, the offering of the 'female friend'. She is very probably buried in the Church of England section of Cathay's Cemetary. 

References avaliable.
Carrie Gilmore and Elijah Prieset photographs are courtesy of Glamorgan Archives. Newspaper articles are courtesy of Welsh Newspapers Online, Photographs of Mary Ann Street are courtesy National Museum of Wales and date to the 1890's.