by Jill Morgan
Walter J. Lewis (left), born in Salt Lake City, Utah, of Welsh parents, was a missionary in South Wales for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from 1877 to 1879. He kept a detailed journal of his missionary activities, including meetings attended, church members visited, and letters written and received. But he also includes reference to community and social events and conditions. This is an entry from February 1878, when he was temporarily in Merthyr. The spelling has not been changed from the original.
Merthyr, Tydfil, Feb, 5, 1878.
At two O’Clock Bro. Parry & I visited the soup kitchen in Drill Hall where two thousand children are fed once a day with soup. This is the result of a late investigation by Griffith Richards M. P. from Merthyr and other leading Gentlemen of the Town, of the circumstances of the poor and distressed of the place. They found hundreds in a very destitute and almost perishing condition owing to the extreme dullness of the times.
Releif Societies have been organized throughout the coal and Iron Districts who are solicisiting aid from every quarter for the purpose of distributing clothing and food to the most distressed of the place. Between 12 and 3 O’Clock the streets are thronged with half starved scantly clad children of both sexes from infants up to fifteen years old, with their bowls and spoons under their arms, making there way to the soup kitchen where many probably get the first meal in the day.
Then very prosaically, he returns to recording missionary activity:
We held meeting in the evenng in Bro. Owens house Pentrebach, after which we walked over the Mountain to Cwmbach, reaching it about midnight.