Story
Mary Rees alias Blackstone and Elizabeth Morgan's 1800-1881 Story of Protest
The Mapping Merthyr Through Women’s Histories workshop brought together staff from across the Libraries and Museum service and partner sectors to uncover, honour, and amplify the stories of women who shaped Merthyr. Informed by insights from the valley‑wide Heritage and Herstories community drop‑ins, participants each chose and reflected on a woman’s story that deserves recognition, creating a collective map of Merthyr’s past through diverse female perspectives. This project marks only the beginning — with hopes to continue these workshops and collaborate with more communities across the valley, further enriching and expanding the narrative of local women’s history.
Written by Marion Löffler, Head of History at Cardiff University, a leading scholar of Welsh cultural and political history, and a trustee of the Cyfarthfa Foundation:
Merthyr Tydfil is as famous for its riots as for its iron production. For nineteenth-century historian Dafydd Morganwg, the ‘three important riots’ of 1800, 1816 and 1831 climaxed in ‘the Great Strike, 1873’. Reading the histories of protest in Merthyr, I have always missed the women, though they are depicted on posters of the 1873 strike, though they tended to the wounded in 1831, and though at least one mother stood between the fronts to calm feelings in 1816. Accessing their contribution is difficult, but one court record has provided me with a glimpse of the actions of two mothers at a time of crisis, the hunger year of 1800.
The harvest having failed, at least 2,000 starving people assembled at Merthyr Tydfil market ‘for the purpose of reducing and fixing the prices of provisions’ on 22 and 23 September 1800. When their negotiations were unsuccessful, they resorted to taking food by force and in the process destroyed the shop of Morgan Lewis. The Enniskillen Dragons and Cowbridge Volunteers marched in and over twenty people spent the winter in Cardiff Gaol. They were tried at the Court of Great Sessions of April 1801, when three young men – James Luke, Samuel Hill and Aaron William – were sentenced to death. Among those arrested and tried were two Merthyr Tydfil women: Mary Rees alias Blackstone, who was 39 at the time, and Elizabeth Morgan, who was 46. Both had been ‘committed’ by iron master Samuel Homfrey and R. T. Deere esquire, on 25 September 1800 for ‘having together with divers other persons, unlawfully, riotously, and routously assembled together … to the terror of the people, and against the peace of our Lord the King’. Mary was ‘discharged’, but Elizabeth was found ‘guilty but the sentence postponed’.
This is the only record we have of those two working-class women. The first census of 1801 is incomplete and newspaper reports on the riot did not mention women. Reading the names or Mary and Elizabeth raised many questions for me: At their age, they would have been mothers or even grandmothers, desperate to secure food for their families. Were they starving themselves to feed their families? What did conditions in Cardiff Gaol – apparently it was so ramshackle that even the judge complained – do to their health? What happened to their families up in Merthyr while they languished in gaol over a long winter? What happened to Elizabeth after sentencing? Did she have to stay on in gaol after April 1801? The trail runs cold and neither are mentioned in further court records, forgotten by history, their voices muted. They deserve to be put them on the map of Merthyr Tydfil.