Population

In the second half of the 19th century there was a spectacular growth in the population of Britain as a whole, due to a declining death-rate and an increasing birth-rate. In Wales a population of 1,163,139 in 1851 more than doubled to 2,421,000 by 1911. A way of looking more closely at what was happening within Wales is to consider the census figures of population for Welsh counties.

The reason for this shift in the balance of population was of course the growth of the iron and the coal industries in South Wales. This move from rural to industrial areas and the growth of new industrial communities happened all over Britain in the 19th century as a result of what we call 'the industrial revolution'. As a result of the tremendous growth of the coal industry a whole new society came into being in the valleys of South Wales. In the case of the Rhondda its population doubled between 1871 and 18 8 1 and then trebled up to 191 1. Most of the other valleys of the coalfield matched this rate of population growth.

Migration of people into South Wales was going on throughout the period 1851 to 1911 and altogether some 366,000 people moved into Glamorgan, Monmouthshire and Carmarthenshire between these dates. The peak of this migration occurred between 1901 and 1911 when 129, 000 people moved into the area. Such was the incredible growth of South Wales at this time that it absorbed immigrants at a faster rate than anywhere in the world except the U. S. A.!

Up to the 1890s the majority of the people entering Glamorgan had come from other counties in Wales. Many of the rural counties of Wales were actually losing population at this time and although many of the people who left these counties went to other parts of Britain and even other parts of the world (particularly the United States of America), the bulk of them moved to live and work in the new industrial areas of South Wales. Why did these people leave in such numbers? One reason, perhaps, is given below by a woman who moved to the Rhondda from Cardiganshire and who on a visit back to the county of her birth spoke as follows:

The actual journey from mid and north Wales to the south Wales valleys was made much easier by the spread of the railways. Here an agricultural labourer from Merioneth who came down to work in the Tylorstown in 1906, described the experience of his railway journey and the first impression South Wales made upon him:

By the time this railway journey was being made in fact more people were moving to south Wales from outside Wales than from inside. Immigration from English counties was particularly high in Monmouthshire and the eastern part of Glamorgan, but was less high in western Glamorgan and Carmarthenshire. Why was this so? As these figures for the Rhondda show, England may well have been the main source of immigrants from outside Wales, but it was not the only one.

The valleys of South Wales at this time became a 'melting pot' of different people and cultures. After the Welsh and the English, the next largest national group to come in were the Irish. In 1861 there were already 18,000 Irish in South Wales, the largest number being in Merthyr Tydfil. Joseph Keating shows how they still clung on to their national customs:

In Dowlais and in Abercraf at the head of the Swansea Valley there were communities of Spaniards, in Merthyr there were small groups of Russians, Poles and Frenchmen. A nationality that were not large in number but which were very noticeable as most of them were involved in running cafes in the new valley towns were the Italians. They came mainly from Bardi in northern Italy and they followed the first family to come - the Bracchis - to the Rhondda and other Valleys.

For many reasons there was sometimes animosity between the different groups (anti-Irish riots were frequent evens at one time as they were accused of accepting lower wages) but in the main these different peoples and cultures got on well together in the new valley communities.