Cardiff Scandal: The Life of Honora Shaughnessy.

To pre-warn you this is a shocking and upsetting life history that includes rape, institutionalised sexual abuse, and domestic violence.

In 1901 16 year old Honora Shaughnessy shared a dormitory at Nazareth House in Cardiff with 17 year old Elizabeth Keogh. Both were orphans. On the census Honora is listed as 'Deaf and Dumb since childhood' Elizabeth Keogh is listed as 'feeble-minded'.

At the time the nun was writing this information into the census return Elizabeth was already pregnant after being raped and Honora was three years off sharing a similar fate in another institution meant to care for her. This is Honora Shaughnessy's life story.

First let's rewind fifty years and meet Honora Shaughnessy's father.

John Shaughnessy was a total bastard.

Born in Cardiff in 1857 he grew up in the Cardiff slums, living in the notorious Stanley Street cheek by jowl with hundreds of other Welsh, Irish and English poor. His parents were Irish and over the years the O dropped from their O'Shaughnessy name as they had several children in Cardiff. One young daughter was arrested for stealing coal down the docks, indicating the poverty levels of the family at the time. 

However poverty did not excuse the behaviour of their second eldest son John Shaughnessy.

In 1874 John was 17. He was also up in court charged with gang-raping a 17 year old girl with six of his friends, all aged 15-19. Catherine Smart had recently arrived in Cardiff without her parents and had taken up domestic work on Mary Ann Street. They dragged her down a lane on a Sunday evening and at least four took turns raping her while the others held her down. One of the definite rapists was John Shaughnessy. There were witnesses to the attack- a couple who lived behind the lane saw her being held by the young men, she was crying and asking them repeatedly to let her go. 

The list of the seven rapists.

Catherine Smart didn't stand a chance in court. She had already had an illegitimate child, which was bad enough in those days, but she was also working in a poor area, didn't scream enough and was not bruised enough afterwards. The jury acquitted all of the boys. The judge addressed them saying 'Although the jury had acquitted them, there had been enough to show that their conduct had been most scandalous, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves for the rest of their lives.'

John did not live in shame for the rest of his life. Aged 19 he was beating up women and got two months hard labour.

Aged 21 John was himself living on Mary Ann Street when he broke several windows of one of his nieghbours then fled town. On his return a few months later he was arguing with a man on Bute Street and when a landlady in her late forties told someone to go fetch a policeman he punched her in the face. He then followed her into the beerhouse and when her 60 year old husband interfered he took off his belt, tried to hit him with it then kicked and punched his head. He got five weeks in prison for this little spree of violence.

Not long after coming out of prison John got drunk again. He smashed a window and when the owner, a heavily pregnant Mrs White, came out of the house and remonstrated with him he threw her to the gound, fell on top of her and punched her in the face. John got four months hard labour. 

Aged 22 John was first sent to prison for three months for stealing money from a woman in the Temple Bar Inn on Bute Street. After his release he was then implicated in the assault on a 'coloured seaman' coming out of a brothel on Charlotte Street in Cardiff. This implies he was mixed up in the Cardiff sex trade at the time. 

Aged 23 John popped home to see his mother Honora. He asked her for money for drink. When she refused her son he picked up a bucket and swung it at her head, putting a two inch gash in her skull that went down to the bone. John got six months for that and spent 1881 census night in Cardiff Gaol.

Age 26 John was associating with thieves and was arrested on the docks for loitering for the purpose of committing a felony. He got a month in gaol for this. 

Sometime before 1885, I don't know when, John Shaughnessy met Ellen Casey from Newtown in Cardiff. Ellen was a bit of a hothead too and had been in trouble with the law for theft, assaults and incidents involving knives and axes. She was not long out of prison for a theft when they married in 1885. Ellen already had a six year old daughter from a previous relationship and a few months after the marraige Honora Shaughnessy, named after John's mother, was born. 

Honora was later described as 'feeble minded' and she had speech and possible hearing problems, also being described as 'deaf and dumb since childhood'. Considering Ellen and John's lifestyles it is probably a safe bet that either some sort of foetal alcohol syndrome was involved or Honora had been damaged in the womb by domestic violence. 

They went to live on Bute Terrace but a bad batchelor makes for a bad husband. John was arrested in August for being one of the fighters in an illegal prize fight on the Cardiff Road in Newport and was picked up drunk and incapable on Stow Hill Newport. 

John then seems to have calmed down for a couple of years, or at least he wasn't caught by the law. His next arrest was in February 1887 for fighting and assaulting a police constable. By this time he was also working as a merchant seaman. John was a fireman- one of the men who shovelled coal non-stop into the steam ship's hungry boilers. At least he was using his strength for something positive other than fighting and beating on women. 

At the end of February 1891 John Shaughnessy stepped off the steam ship Bala into Cardiff. He had been on board for just over two months returning from Port Said in Egypt. He picked up his pay from the shipping office and went drinking with a friend. They were found a few hours later literally rolling around Bute Street pissed out of their minds. It was John's 27th appearance before the court but they surprisingly let them go, putting the behaviour down to 'two jolly sailor boys' drunken shennanigans. 

John was lucky to have collected his wages from the steam ship as the the Cardiff Board of Guardians had already put in motion plans to serve notice on the ship to retain his wages. They had just missed their chance but John's freedom did not last long.
While John was stoking the fires of the ships and getting drunk on shore his wife Ellen and her two children were literally starving at home. John had left his wife to fend for herself with Mary aged 12 and Honora aged 5. Ellen was also dying from consumption.
The three were removed to the workhouse where Ellen also admitted that as she was dying John had been beating her. Proceedings were taken out on John Shaughnessy by the Board of Guardian's and he was picked up and went to prison for three months. He's found, just like a decade earlier, incarcerated on the night of the 1891 census. 

Honora and Mary would have been seperated from their mother when they entered the workhouse. It didn't really matter that much as their mother died a couple of months later from her consumption. The girls were now effectively orphans. 

The eldest daughter Mary Shaughnessy would have left the workhouse two years later when she was 14. She may have got a position as a domestic servant but Mary ended up in prostitution. She was arrested for running a brothel in Cardiff in 1897 aged just 20 and her 18 year old pimp was arrested in 1899. She died young in 1907. 

Father John probably had nothing to do with his children after the death of his wife and their mother. He was living on Helen Street Roath in 1893, another poor slum area, inbetween working on merchant ships. This lovely photo is from the year before in 1892 but the children playing here were not John's, they were still in the workhouse.  

On the 10th July 1894 the steam ship Ranzani, registered in Constantinople, left the East Bute Dock in Cardiff. Stoking the boilers down below was John Shaughnessy. Off the coast of Beachy Head the boilers and combustion chambers, which had not been well maintained, exploded: 

John Shaughnessy was terribly burnt and suffered in immense pain over the next two days as the ship sailed on. He died on the 6th September off Dunkirk. He was 38. 

At some point after 1891 young Honora Shaughnessy was taken out of the workhouse and sent to St John's Institute for Deaf and Dumb children in Boston Spa, Yorkshire. This home was set up in 1870 and took private students as well as children, like Honora, who were sent by Workhouse authorities. Students had to be 'of sound mind and capable of instruction' and free of epilepsy so Honora's special needs could not have been that pronounced.

Here, though surrounded by strangers initially, she would have been taught literacy and numeracy 'under the oral system' which meant all instruction was verbal, there is no evidence that she learnt braille. The troupe of nuns there also taught her housework, laundry work and needlework. Students typically stayed for around 6 years from the age of 7 onwards so Honora was probably sent there in 1892. Amazingly the school is still open today, though it did suffer from an abuse scandal in 2005 based on the appointment of a known paedophile priest who serially abused pupils in the 1970's.

At the end of June 1898 the Board of Guardians received a letter from the deaf and dumb school 'suggesting that Honora should return to Cardiff for a holiday' but, as she had no-one to holiday with, the suggestion was declined.

Honora would have left this school shortly after this letter and aged 15 was sent to live with the nuns at Nazareth House. Nazareth House is a forbidding stone building surrounded with a high wall just north of Cardiff city centre. Inside the nuns looked after many orphaned, destitute and 'feeble-minded' children. The Board of Guardians paid the Roman Catholic organisation to take children out of the workhouse.

It was here in Nazareth House that Honora Shaughnessy shared a dormitory with Elizabeth Keogh. They are listed next to each other in the 1901 census. Honora is listed as 'Deaf and Dumb since childhood' which is not the case, as we will see later. Elizabeth Keogh is listed as 'feeble-minded'.

17 year old 'feeble-minded' Elizabeth Keogh when this census was taken was in fact pregnant. She had been raped at Nazareth House over Christmas and, when her pregnancy was noticed, she was quickly bundled off to the Glamorgan County Asylum. I will expand on this story further in a book I am writing on the child patients of the Asylum. 

Honora was also moved out of Nazareth House shortly after Elizabeth was shifted to the asylum. She was probably moved because she had reached the age of 16. On 13th July 1901 Nazareth House wrote to the Board of Guardians asking for Honora to be removed from their care and, unable to take care of herself and with no family to look after her, she was sent back to the workhouse. 

The headline that appeared three years later in the Evening Express of 16th July 1904 is particularly chilling:

19 year old Honora Shaughnessy, 'a female inmate of the workhouse of unsound mind' was pregnant. She was brought before the chairman, the vice-chairman and two other board members to the Board room of the Cardiff Workhouse to explain herself:

'The girl, whose mental feebleness and indistinct speech greatly detracted from the value of her evidence, said that a workman employed at the workhouse was the person who had taken advantage of her. After hearing the statements of the attendants, of another inmate of unsound mind named Norah Pearson, and of the accused, who denied in toto the charge against him, the committee felt that there was no evidence which justified their recommending a prosecution, or even enabling them to express a definite opinion as to the truth of the girl's statement.'

The Chairman did admit that the rapist 'must be one who was within the walls of the workhouse'. The Chairman was also eager to point out that the man under suspicion did not work directly for the workhouse:

'He would like to say the man was not an official. He was merely employed from time to time to do certain repairs, and perhaps it was desirable that the master should be empowered to engage someone else to do such work in future.'

The other members of the board agreed. But read this exchange:

Mr Enoch: Will he be allowed to remain on; he is employed from week to week?
Mrs Mullin: Is he still employed in the building?
The Chairman: He is employed on a job which is partly finished.
Mrs Mullin: I don't think he should be kept any longer here.
The Chairman: It is open to you to say he should not be employed to finish the job.
Mr S Mildon: Which will run out another three weeks.
The report was adopted and so was the recommendation of Mr  J. J. Ames, in express terms, that 'when the individual had finished the job he be no longer employed'.

That's right readers, they kept him on working for another three weeks while he finished the job...

He is also not identified in the newspapers at all. He is however identified in the Board's minutes as R. Harris but this name is too common to make any identification of the workman. The only member of the board who seemed incredulous that the man was allowed to work out his three weeks is Annie Mullin who had been on the Board of Guardians for almost ten years. 

Honora's baby was born two months after the inquest on the 25th September and was named John Shaughnessy. The workhouse authorities must have checked Honora's admission records and thought her father's name would be a good choice. They may have asked Honora what she wanted to call the baby, though I doubt it.

John Shaughnessy died at 20 days old from 'tuberculosis exhaustion'. The workhouse environment was not conducive to good health and many, many newborns died young at this time. I hope they took her to a funeral but they may very well not have, considering the whole episode was highly embarrassing to them.

Honora Shaughnessy and her witness Nora Pearson (I like to think they were both friends and looked after each other) were kept in the main workhouse for another decade until September 28th 1914. They were then both moved on the same day to Ely Hospital.

Ely Hospital was first built as an Industrial School for poor and errant children but by 1903 it was re-used by the Board of Guardians as part of the workhouse system to house 'mentally ill, mentally defective and chronic aged and infirm patients.' The site is now occupied by the Aldi store on Cowbridge Road, the fancy stonework on the pedestrian entrance hinting at the site's former use.

Honora, now 29 years old, was an ideal candidate to be housed in Ely Hospital, it was where the Board of Guardians sent people who could be forgotten. The Warrant Officer at Cardiff Workhouse described Honora 'The patient has been an inmate since 1903 of Cardiff Workhouse. She has always been feebleminded, dull and depressed.' She was assessed by two doctors at Ely. The first said 'The patient is very worried and depressed, feels very miserable, refuses to answer most questions put to her.' The second, the Medical Officer at Ely, described her as 'emotional and depressed, bursts into tears on being questioned. It is impossible to extract a rational answer.' 

With the formalities over Honora, now known officially as 'Nora', was admitted under the Lunacy Act of 1890 as 'a person of unsound mind.' As she had been 'assessed' at Ely itself she didn't have to travel far to be admitted. 

Honora spent 17 years at Ely Hospital until, aged just 46, she was moved over to the 'infirm ward' on September 9th 1931 (Nora Pearson had been moved there six years earlier).

The next evidence for Honora, still officially listed as 'Nora', is from the 1939 census. Sadly it is clear that the authorities at Ely Hospital did not even know her birthday, and they got the year of her birth wrong too, it is 1885 not 1886.

54 year old Honora can't have been too infirm on the infirm ward as she is listed as an 'unpaid domestic' worker, which meant she would have helped on the ward, in the laundry or the kitchens. (a co-incidence here but Charlotte Chorley- also listed above- is one of the Glamorgan Asylum children I am researching - I have two photographs of her and her life story will come out in the upcoming book.)

Honora lived here for another 21 years until she died aged 74 on the 22nd May 1960 from cardiac failure and lymphatic leukemia. Nora Pearson had only died two years earlier in 1958.

The staff at Ely Hospital listed Honora on her death certificate as 'Of no occupation. Spinster daughter of ------- Shaughnessy A Seaman.

As they did not even know Honora's birthdate it is unsurprising that they had also lost the names of her parents. This lack of information is common in death certificates of the long stay patients of Ely Hospital. 

We do not know what Honora's later decades were like at Ely Hospital but in 1967 allegations were made by a whistle blower to the News of the World of ill-treatment, abuse and theft from the patients at Ely Hospital. This resulted in a fuller, equally damning report in 1969.

It is highly likely that Honora experienced some abuse and ill-treatment first hand at Ely Hospital. If she did complain, there was no-one to complain to. Even if there was someone who would listen she would not have been believed. Even the 1967 whistleblower, who was a care worker at Ely Hospital, had his character and motives initially questioned in the official report by the medical authorities. Patients like Honora and Nora would not have had a chance. Little had changed since 1904.

Acknowledgments:
References can be supplied for all of the above information.
Board of Guardians information is from Glamorgan Record Office UC 2/25 and UC 2/39.
The newspaper images are courtesy of the wonderful National Library of Wales Wales Newspapers Online and can be accessed here: https://newspapers.library.wales/
The photo of Helen Street is copyright National Museum of Wales and prints can be ordered here:
https://museum.wales/shop/item/2291/Helen-Street-Cardiff-1892/
Ely Hospital records are scarce but the admissions register is at Glamorgan Archives DHE 4/15/1. Her admittance papers survive in DHE/4/8/1
The report into Ely Hospital can be seen here https://www.sochealth.co.uk/national-health-service/democracy-involvement-and-accountability-in-health/complaints-regulation-and-enquries/report-of-the-committee-of-inquiry-into-allegations-of-ill-treatment-of-patients-and-other-irregularities-at-the-ely-hospital-cardiff-1969/

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. 

The Short Life of Dolly Kelly

This is Dorothy Kelly, known to her friends as Dolly. She is 23 in this photograph. It is in the same style as small passport sized photographs that were popular in the Edwardian era. Note the lovely heart dangling from a choker. 

We start Dolly's story at the very start of the 20th century when she's 18. She was working as a waitress in The Philharmonic Restaurant on St Mary Street, Cardiff. 

Dorothy worked there alongside 9 other young waitresses and barmaids and a male cook and porter. 

The Philharmonic was, and still is, a large public house on one of Cardiff's main streets. It served food, held boxing matches, ping pong competitions, luncheons and also had a shooting range. The staff would have lived either in the top rooms seen in this 1890 photo, or probably rooms on the opposite side at the back. 

Copyright Cardiff Public Libraries.

We don't know if Dolly enjoyed or hated her job. It must have been something of an adventure living in the centre of a bustling Cardiff with a host of young women of the same age. 

Dorothy's life took her away from waiting on customers. Four years later, for reasons we will never know, she had 6 convictions to her name, was a 'well-known character' and was trashing her mother's house. 

After breaking one of her mother's chairs on a policeman Dotty picked up her seventh conviction.

Two months after this Dolly was working in a brothel on Cowbridge Road in Cardiff and using an alias of 'Mrs Munro' as she 'rented a room' from a Mr and Mrs Cheen.

Brothels in Edwardian Cardiff that were away from the dock area were often 'pop ups'. Someone would rent a house, take in some women, and when the neighbours complained or the police got suspicious it would shut down and move somewhere else. Dolly seemed to work here with another girl called Dotty Evans. 

When Dolly became ill she went to Cardiff infirmary for a few weeks to recover. On her return to the brothel Dolly found that not only had the owners been jailed for brothel keeping but the woman they had left in charge- Dotty- had also got herself jailed. 

Dolly blagged a neighbour who let her into the empty house. She found the keys on the kitchen table and another young prostitute called Rose Saunders joined her. They lived there for a fortnight until bailiffs came knocking about rent arrears and took some of the furniture to pay for it.
Dolly and Rose soon left in a cab and took a train to London Paddington. With her was a large trunk that she had stolen from the brothel. It contained the Gibby's possessions and when Dolly got to London she seemed to forget about it and it stayed gathering dust in a cloak room at the station. 

In January the next year the trunk and then Dorothy were tracked down and she was taken back to Cardiff by the police. The photograph at the start of this article was taken and the newspapers reported the strange headline 'Story of a Trunk'

Story of a Trunk, Remarkable charge at Cardiff, Case against Paddington Girl Breaks Down.

The Gibby's didn't get much sympathy in the court. Their brothel had been robbed while they were in prison for keeping it in the first place and Dorothy was set free. 

Not all of Dolly's court appearances appear in the newspapers. By the early 1900's they had stopped reporting every court case, choosing only to cherry pick the most interesting, so we don't know the full history of what Dolly was being arrested for. What is clear is that to her contemporaries she was notorious.

Proof of this comes in a paternity court case held a month after the trunk incident. A young woman called Isabelle was suing a young man called Sam claiming he was the father of their child (they had had sex in a cave in Penarth and on Llandaff Fields). As the young man's solicitor tried to fling as much mud as possible at Isabelle, one of his questions to her was 

'Were some of your friends woman of ill-fame? Dorothy Kelly?' 

In court Dolly's very reputation was used as a slander.  

Dolly Kelly returned to London in the months after her court case. She didn't live to see out the end of the year.

Written in the margin of the police photographic register of 1906 is the horrible note:

'Found drowned at foreshore of River Thames at Lambeth on 22nd November 1906.'

I ordered her death certificate, which is listed under 'Dolly Kelly' but it did not give much more information. 

There was an inquest on the 26th November but I have found no reports of this in the newspapers. Her address is given as unknown and she is of 'no occupation'. The only other piece of information on the certificate is the exact location that Dolly's body was found- Nelson's Wharf, Lambeth. 

I think her body was either identified by someone with only a fleeting acquaintance with her, someone who only knew her as 'Dolly Kelly', or she had something on her body that identified her name, like a letter from her mother. 

The Lambeth police must have spread the name around other police departments to find out who she was and of course the Cardiff police were well aware of Dolly's existence. 

Her drowning could be an accident, a suicide or a murder. The only thing we are certain of is the sad ending of a young woman.

As a postscript Dotty Evans, the young woman who had shared the brothel with Dolly, attempted suicide in the Canton Police Station in July of the same year. She had been arrested for being very drunk and disorderly and assaulting a policeman. In the cells she tied a garter around her neck and fell unconscious. She was only revived 20 minutes after she was discovered and in court the next day said 'Yes, I'll do it again if I get the chance, I am tired of my life.'

Dolly's Prisoner Details can be found at Glamorgan Record Office DCONC/3/2/1
Newpaper images are from Welsh Newspapers Online from National Library of Wales.
Image of Philharmonic Restaurant is copyright Cardiff Libraries. 

The Origin of 'Tiger Bay' in Cardiff.

Following on from my blog post that uncovered the reason why the red light district of Merthyr Tydfil was nicknamed 'China' (found here) in the 1840's I thought I'd do a post on 'Tiger Bay' in Cardiff. 

Although I'm not claiming to have uncovered anything particularly original I think the 'Tiger' part of the Tiger Bay name has been obscured over the years and I'll like to speak up on behalf of the Tigers.  

My main area of expertise is the first 'red-light' area of Cardiff on Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane, which was active from the 1830's until the 1870's. Bute Street took over this mantle from the 1870's onwards and this street was at the centre of Tiger Bay. See this description from 1870: 

The 'debased women' referred to were sex workers and Bute Street, where the sailors would invariably walk along when they got to Cardiff, was where the women would look for trade. 

London's Tiger Bay

There's a few dodgy explanations of the origin of Cardiff's 'Tiger Bay' floating round on the internet including references to dangerous tides and waves that looked like tigers. None of these have any evidence behind them and thankfully the Wikipedia article on Cardiff's Tiger Bay explains the origin of the name:

'The name "Tiger Bay" was applied in popular literature and slang (especially that of sailors) to any dock or seaside neighbourhood which shared a similar notoriety for danger.'

This is the origin of the term and if we go to London in the 1860's we find that 'Tiger Bay' was used as another name for Bluegate Fields, a slum area that existed just north of the old east London docks. It's the place where Dorian Gray goes to smoke opium in the famous novel and was part of St George's-in-the-East parish. 

This description from 1865 deserves to be read in full: 

TIGER BAY

This portion of thief-London, which has lately been made somewhat prominent by newspaper allusions and descriptive articles respecting a few of its inhabitants, is generally associated in the public mind with dangerous ruffianism and unscrupulous crime. This is, in a sense, true enough; but he who goes to Tiger Bay in the expectation of meeting with roaring, riotous vice, or in fear of sudden and desperate robbery, would altogether mistake the place. It is true that the unsuspecting wayfarer going through some of these dark alleys might be suddenly pounced upon by a couple of ruffians and be robbed and half stifled, but it is not this sort of crime which gives its name to Tiger Bay. 
The tigers are, for the most part, quiet in their lairs; slinking, watchful, crouching, cruel beasts, who wait there, sharpening their claws, and looking with hungry eyes for the prey that their treacherous she-cats bring down. Jack (the sailor) is their prey chiefly; they half live on him, and he knows it, and so upon these shallows, where he is lured to his destruction, he has bestowed the name of Tiger Bay; for to him the tiger, - as a land animal, to cope with which he is unequal, is more expressive than the shark who meets him on a more congenial element, and therefore, - "Tiger Bay."

The dwelling-place of the ruffian and the thief- Tiger Bay is not named after these, but takes its name from the brothels and those who keep them - the harpies and harlots who deal with drugged liquor, and the slinking bullies who come, like foul beasts, about the prey.

The man who wrote this spent time in the area (he even tried to get out of his head in one of the opium dens there) so he knew the community first hand.

So the 'treacherous she-cats' or the Tigers of London's Tiger Bay were the sex workers who, occasionally, robbed unwary sailors. 

Cardiff's Tiger Bay

Back to Cardiff. As the dock traffic increased and more and more sailors came to the town throughout the 1860's and 1870's, the area around Bute Street served their thirst for drink and women. It became even more prominent when the brothels of Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane were bought up or shut down by 1869. There were many drinking houses, brothels and prostitutes active on and around Bute Street. Here's a letter to the Western Mail in 1878:

The sailors, many of whom would have been familiar with London docks, brought the 'Tiger Bay' slang name with them to this part of Wales to describe exactly the same thing as in London. 

As far as I can make out 'Tiger Bay' was first used to describe Cardiff's docks in the 1880's. The first reference I can find in Welsh Newspapers online from the National Library of Wales is a tongue in cheek letter from 1882 in which the writer, who is clearly living in Cardiff, signs himself off as:

"John Snob, Captain, Salvation Army.

The Barracks, Tiger Bay."

But it takes another three years to 1885 to find a proper use of the phrase in an article entitled "The New Criminal Law at Cardiff" which describes how the Head Constable of Cardiff had evicted all the sex workers from the brothels. Here the newspaper has to explain the phrase "Tiger Bay" to its readers:

'The houses formerly occupied by the girls are spread over a number of streets running off Bute Road (Bute Street), the district being locally known as "Tiger Bay." The "bay" is not a nice place to look at, and its inhabitants are not the most refined people on the face of the earth. They consist principally of dock labourers, members of the seafaring community, boarding-house keepers, and females of uncertain virtue. Squalor reigns everywhere, rows are frequent, and on the whole it may be said that the "bay" is a very desirable place- to live out of it.'

So begins the use of 'Tiger Bay'. After 1885 "Tiger Bay" is used to describe the area around Bute Street, usually when the article is about crime. 

An article on a murder in 1887 re-enforces the idea that Tiger Bay was a name given by the sailors. The 'rough locality, known amongst seafaring men as "Tiger Bay"':

Because the press love a good nickname 'Tiger Bay' was used with increasing frequency: 

This from 1886:

And this from 1888 at the height of the Ripper craze in London: 

The 1890's saw a marked increase in references to Tiger Bay, especially when the articles were about drunkenness, prostitution and crime, and also especially crime committed by black and ethnic minorities, such as this 'zulu' case: 

The 'Tiger Bay' name stuck, although I doubt in the beginning whether the locals used it to describe where they lived- they would more likely use Butetown or Cardiff Docks. It was more of an derogatory 'outsider' term to be savoured by newspaper readers sat in their suburbs.

Now, and rightly so, Tiger Bay is synonymous with it's multi-cultural history but the original Tigers of Cardiff's Tiger Bay were the Victorian sex-workers who earned their living in the streets around Bute Street and the name is derived from a previous use in London's East End.   

This post is dedicated to Neil Sinclair who recently passed away. His contribution to the history of Tiger Bay is immense. See his 2013 book The Tiger Bay Story for more information about this unique place and community. 

References:

'Women Tearing each others hair' and 'A By Street by Night' are from an article on the Salvation Army in Tiger Bay from Evening Express October 13th 1893 p.3.
Wikipedia entry for Tiger Bay. Here.
Bluegate Fields wikipedia page is here.
Tiger Bay 1865 description from The Pauper, The Thief and the Convict by Thomas Archer from the wonderful Victorian London website link here. A description of a visit to the London Tiger Bay can be found here.
1882 description of area off Radcliffe Highway link here.
Bute Street Nuisance Western Mail 1878 August 13th p.4.
1882 John Snob letter is in Western Mail 8th December 1882. p.4.
1885 first description Cardiff Times November 7th 1885. Interestingly a counter was included in an editorial of the same week, it reads thus:

'In connection with the subject, I may mention that I have had some more letters as to the character of Tiger Bay. I presume they are from sensitive residents, and for their satisfaction I have great pleasure in saying to them that there is really no need for them to be under a misapprehension as to the general belief of the respectability of many of the inhabitants of the district. It is hardly the Belgravia (a posh area of London) of Cardiff perhaps, but neither is it all bad. Everybody is quite aware of this, and there is no need for the respectable part of the inhabitants to think that they have been classed with the disreputable.' South Wales Daily News 6th November 1885 p.2.

Rough Locality South Wales Echo 18th August 1887 p.2.
Peeps Behind the Scenes: Western Mail 15th May 1886 p.4.
Jack: South Wales Daily News 8th October 1888.
Zulu: Weekly Mail 3rd April 1897 p.2.