Dr Merlin Pryce

Was it Fleming or Mr & Mrs Pryce’s boy from Troedyrhiw? 

by Irene Janes

Parents, Rachel and Richard Pryce owned a tavern in Troedyrhiw. Little did they think, in 1902, when their son was born, he could save millions of lives forever, but did he?

Their lad Daniel Merlin Pryce was a bright boy. He attended Merthyr County School, Pontypridd Grammar School, and at the age of seventeen, the Welsh National School of Medicine Cardiff. However, the call of a Junior Research Scholarship to study at St Mary’s Hospital, London, with Alexander Fleming lured him away from Merthyr Tydfil.

Aged twenty-five, and now known as Merlin Pryce, he worked alongside Alexander Fleming in his Bacteriology Department and it is here this fascinating story begins.

Apart from being hard working colleagues the two men became close friends. Fleming was at times a bit untidy and did not always clear away what he had been working on. In 1928 he was experimenting with the culture Staphylococci. In his eagerness to go on holiday for the summer a number of Petri dishes were overlooked.

Several weeks later, Merlin called in to St Marys Hospital see his old friend, who was due back from holiday. Alexander was late so Merlin pottered around tidying up Fleming’s laboratory. It was then he found the Petri dish, which had held the Staphylococci culture. His attention was immediately drawn to a fungus which had grown and how it had destroyed the Staphylococci.

Merlin Pryce

So who did discover penicillin? Was it Merlin for finding the dish and showing his friend the exciting possibilities of investigating the mould? All the accolades have fallen to Fleming. In my untrained medical mind, it seems to be a matter of luck. It all hangs on who picked up the Petri dish and became aware of the destroyed Staphylococci.

Luckily for us Merlin’s sister, Mrs Hilda Jarman, lived in London when this groundbreaking discovery occurred, and had no doubt it was her brother that drew it to Alexander’s attention. He praised Fleming for his re-culturing of the mould as seminal and crucial, and felt disqualified for any glory and praise. She told how Fleming wanted to include Merlin as a significant contributor but her brother ‘would not accept the suggestion’, Merlin’s children confirmed this.

Time moves on and Merlin is a Professor and Alexander a Knight of the realm. During World War Two when Fleming’s house was bombed his whole family stayed with the Pryce family.

Merlin’s wife Molly, in her career as a nurse, encountered many unmarried mothers. They often welcomed some of the girls into their home before and after their babies were born until, they were strong enough to leave.

In 1945, The Nobel Prize for ‘Physiology or Medicine’, was collectively awarded to Alexander Fleming, Sir Howard Florey and Earnest B Chain. Foley and Chain further investigated the possibilities for penicillin. The rules state only three names can be on the Nobel Prize medal.

Merlin was a shy modest man, a co-operator more than a competitor. He was loyal, warm, sincere, and tolerant and had a great a love for his fellow men. Is this why he was more than happy for Fleming to take the praise? Did he see his role as no more than an opportune moment rather that of discovery? We will never know any more than who first set foot on the top of Mount Everest, Hillary or Norgay.

Nevertheless, we know the two men remained close friends all their lives so obviously animosity was not cultured in or over that Petri dish.

Fleming’s papers are in the British Museum Library and not available for inspection. The Pryce diaries have been lost.

Where every the tribute should be laid Professor Merlin Pryce had an unblemished reputation as a Doctor and teacher and for that alone Merthyr should be proud of him.

**I have received the following e-mail in response to this article:-

I have read the article by Irene Janes and I think you should know of Merlin Pryce’s other Merthyr connections. His father’s sister married Enoch Morrell who was Mayor of Merthyr Tydfil from 1905 to 1906. Therefore Merlin was a cousin to Will Morrell, Enoch’s son. Merlin’s sister, Hilda, told me that Will Morrell had taught her mathematics at the Merthyr County School and that he later became the headmaster there. I think he retired about 1946. His daughter became a doctor and married a Swansea surgeon, Eric Morgan.
Vivian Thomas (son-in-law of Merlin’s sister)

Merthyr: Then and Now

LOWER HEOLGERRIG

by Jason Meaker

Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

The first photo, above, from the 1970’s, is taken from underneath the Gethin Bridge looking towards Pantycelynen Houses. The remains of the old Brecon and Merthyr Railway Bridge can also be seen.

In the second photo, below, taken in 2018, the Gethin Bridge has been replaced by the new bridge carrying the A470 road, and the remains of the old railway bridge have disappeared.

Photo by Jason Meaker

Place Names in Merthyr

by Terry Jones

In 1887, Rev Thomas Morgan, the minister at Caersalem Chapel in Dowlais, published a book entitled ‘A Handbook of the Origin of Welsh Place Names’. Below are transcribed some excerpts from the book that have a bearing to some places in Merthyr.

Abercanaid
The village is situated near to the spot where the rivulet Canaid discharges itself into the Taff. Canaid means white, pure, bright.

Aberfan
Ban – High; Banau Brycheiniog, the Brecknock Beacons. Fan is a brook that falls into the River Taff at that place. Two farmhouses also bear that name. The village is also called Ynys Owen, from a farm of that name. The railway station has been designated Merthyr Vale, and henceforth, the village will, doubtless, be know by the same name.

Clwydyfagwyr
Clwyd -a hurdle, a wattled gate; y- the; fagwyr/magwyr – a wall, and enclosure.

Cyfarthfa
Cyfarthfa is the right name according to some, signifying the place of barking. It is said it was a general rendezvous for hunters. One writer thinks it is a corruption of Cyfarwydd-fa, the place of Cwta Cyfarwydd, one of the heroes of Welsh legend.

Dowlais
Some derive the name from Dwrlais, the supposed name of the brook that flows through the old ironworks, and joins the Morlais Brook at the upper part of Penydarren. ‘Clais dwfr a glan‘ the water’s edge was an old Welsh expression. Dwr might be easily changed to dow. Dowgate, London was once called Dwrgate. Llandwr, a small parish in the Vale of Glamorgan, is now called Llandow. Others think it is a corruption of Dwylais, from the confluence of the two brooks in the place. Others derive it thus: du – black; clais – a small trench or rivulet. We rather think the right wording is Dulas: du – black; glas – blue, signifying the livid water. Our forefathers were wont to name the rivulets and rivers from the respective hue of their waters. Dulas is a very common appellation in Welsh topography, and we find its cognate in Douglas, Isle of Man. And, strange to say, Morlais or Morlas is in close proximity to Dulas in several districts of Wales, and in Brittany we find its cognate in Morlaix. This coincidence inclines to think that glas, blue, is the suffix of both names. Mor-glas – sea-green colour. Du-glas – black and blue. We have five Dulas in Wales, three in Scotland, and one in Dorset; and the word appears in different forms:-Douglas – once in the Isle of Man, twice in Scotland, once in Lancashire, and twice in Ireland; Doulas in Radnor; Dowles in Salop; Dawlish in Devon and Dowlais in Glamorgan.

Gwaelodygarth
Gwaelod – bottom, base; y – the; garth – hill. The mountain that towers of the village is called Mynydd-y-Garth, and the village resting at its base is naturally called Gwaelodygarth.

Gelligaer
Gelli – grove. This name is probably derived from Caer Castell, the ruins of which still remain near the village. It was built by Iorwerth ab Owen in 1140.

Gellideg
Gelli – grove; deg/teg – fair.

Goytre
A compound of: coed – wood and tre-  dwelling place.

A Hidden Grave

Most people will have visited Zoar Chapel – either when it was still being used as a chapel, or more recently since its renovation and transformation into Canolfan Soar. How many of you knew, however, that there is a secret grave inside the building?

In 1841 the membership of Zoar Chapel had grown to such an extent that it was decided that a new, larger building was needed to accommodate the growing congregation. They decided that the new chapel should be 66 feet by 63 feet – making it one of the largest chapels in the town.

To accommodate the new building, as well as building over the graveyard, which was subsequently vaulted under the new chapel, the committee had to purchase several pieces of ground from Mr Abraham Bowen, a local businessman for £300. As the orientation of the new building was to be turned 180°, three small houses would need to be purchased from Mr John Morgan, a puddler in the Cyfarthfa Ironworks, for the entrance to the new chapel.

The grave in the cupboard at Zoar Chapel – the top can be seen just against the back wall.

John Morgan agreed to sell the houses for £200, but he stipulated that he and his family should have a vault set aside for them and they eventually be buried within the chapel. As it is set out in the agreement of 31 May 1841:-

“The said John Morgan in consideration of the sum of £200.00 to be secured in the after agreement to sell unto Benjamin Owen, a piece or parcel of ground situated at the back of Zoar Chapel for its rebuild.

John Morgan his executor’s administrators and assigns sufficient space beneath the surface of the said ground at the spot marked “A” in the said plan for a vault to be made by him or Zoar executors at his own expense in length eight feet in width, and three feet in depth, eight feet with of liberty entrance and accepts thereof and which said space at the southern side, which said space is to be arched over securely by the said Rev Benjamin Owen for the residue of 195 years by indenture of lease dated 22nd June 1802 made by Walter Walters and Henry Thomas known as Harri Blawdd (Henry the flour) for a yearly pepper corn rent.”

Indeed John Morgan and his family were eventually interred within Zoar Chapel and their grave can still be seen in small room to the left of the former pulpit.

A close up of the grave.

Photos courtesy of Canolfan Soar.

The Town that Died

Has anyone read R L Lee’s remarkable book ‘The Town that Died’? The town in question is Dowlais, and the book recounts his memories of growing up there.

Dowlais is not a bad place at all, but when you compare the town today to how it was – for a lot of people from cherished memories, for others, relying on photographs, you can see that the epithet is a just one.

Below is an excellent photograph of Dowlais taken in 1920’s from the mountain behind the Ironworks (the present day Goat Mill Road). You can see what a large and bustling it place it was. A lot of the more prominent buildings are numbered and identified beneath the photo.

1.      Gwernllwyn Chapel
2.      Hermon Chapel
3.      Shiloh Chapel
4.      Elizabeth Street Chapel
5.      Bryn Sion Chapel
6.      Dowlais Works		 7.      Temple Buildings
8.      Ivor Works
9.      Elim-Tabernacle Chapel
10.    Oddfellows Hall
11.     Bethania Chapel

Almost everything in the photograph has gone. Of the buildings numbered above, only Bethania Chapel still remains.

The Town that Died indeed.

Bryn Jones, Arsenal

Following on from the previous football post, here is a fascinating article by John Simkin about a Merthyr born footballer Bryn Jones.

Brynmor Jones was born in the mining village of Penyard, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales on 14 February 1912. On leaving school he became a miner.

Jones played football for local side, Plymouth United in the South Wales District League. An impressive inside forward he was told he was good enough to play in the Football League. After an unsuccessful trial with Southend United he joined Glenavon in the Irish League.

Bryn Jones found it difficult to settle in Ireland and in August, 1933, he returned to Wales to play for Aberaman. Reports of his football skills reached England and in December, 1933, Wolverhampton Wanderers agreed to pay £1,500 for his services.

In his first season at Wolves he scored 10 goals in 27 appearances. Although very popular with the fans, Jones was unable to immediately turn Wolves into a successful side. In the 1933-34 season they finished in 15th place in the First Division. They were 17th in 1934-35 and 15th in 1935-36.

Bryn Jones played well-enough at Wolves to win his first international cap for Wales against Northern Ireland in 1935. The following year he was in the Welsh side that defeated England 2-1. Over the next few years Jones played 17 times for his country.

The tide turned in the 1936-37 season when Wolverhampton Wanderers finished 5th in the league. This was followed by an even better performance in the 1937-38 season when Wolves finished second to Arsenal. At the time, Arsenal dominated the First Division championship, having one it four times in six years. Alex James, their creative inside-forward, had recently retired. The club was looking for a replacement and decided to buy Jones for the world record fee of £14,000 (£6.9 million in today’s money). Politicians were outraged by the money spent on Jones and the subject was debated in the House of Commons.

Jones scored on his debut against Portsmouth. He also found the net in two of his next games. However, the goals dried up and he was only to get one more before the end of the season. After Arsenal were beaten at home 2-1 by Derby County, the match reporter from the Derby Evening Telegraph wrote: “Arsenal have a big problem. Spending £14,000 on Bryn Jones has not brought the needed thrust into the attack. The little Welsh inside-left is clearly suffering from too much publicity, and is obviously worried. He is a nippy and quite useful inside-left, but his limitations are marked.”

In his first season Jones scored four goals in 30 league appearances. That year Arsenal finished 5th in the league, eight points behind Wolverhampton Wanderers who appeared to be doing very well without Jones. As Jeff Harris pointed out in Arsenal Who’s Who (1995): “To lay blame on Bryn Jones for the club’s lack of success that season was unfair, for in a nutshell, the quiet, modest, self evasive, lonely figure could not cope with the intense pressure of the media spotlight even though his good positional awareness and splendid ball control were there for everyone to behold.”

His manager, George Allison, claimed that Bryn Jones needed more time to settle into the team. Cliff Bastin disagreed and in his autobiography he commented: “I thought at the time this was a bad transfer, and subsequent events did nothing to alter my views. I had played against Bryn in club and international matches and had ample opportunity to size him up.” However, the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 brought an end to the debate about the value of Jones. Bryn Jones joined the British Army and served with the Royal Artillery in Italy and North Africa during the conflict.

Bernard Joy, who played in the Arsenal team during the 1938-39 season, later wrote: “Do we write Bryn Jones down as a gamble that failed, or would he have been a success eventually? The outbreak of war in September 1939 prevented us from ever finding the complete answer. There were signs before then that, as James had done, he was weathering the bad patch which always seems to follow a change of style from an attacking to a foraging inside-forward… My own view, however, is that Jones’s modesty was the barrier to achieving the key role Arsenal had intended for him. He could not regard the spotlight as a challenge to produce his best; all the time it irked him, making him self-conscious and uneasy.”

When the first post-war Football League season started in 1946 Jones was 34 years old. Although his form was fairly good, Arsenal finished in 13th place. Wolverhampton Wanderers finished in 3rd, 15 points in front of Arsenal. The following season Jones lost his place to Jimmy Logie. Jones only played in seven games for the team that won the First Division title.

In 1949 Arsenal went on a tour of Brazil. In a game against Vasco de Gama spectators invaded the pitch and Jones was accidentally hit on the head by a Brazilian policeman. Jones was so badly injured that on doctor’s advice he decided to retire from playing football. During his time at the club he had scored 7 goals in 74 games, whereas at Wolverhampton Wanderers it had been 52 goals in 163 games.

Jones coached Norwich City for two years (1949-51) before running a newsagents near Arsenal’s Highbury ground.

Brynmor Jones died in October, 1985.

To read more of John Simkin’s excellent essays, please visit:
http://spartacus-educational.com

Merthyr’s Footballers of the Past

In the early 1900’s, The Evening Express Newspaper ran a regular feature highlighting some of the prominent footballers on South Wales. In what I hope will be become a new regular feature of our own, I will post some of these articles about players from Merthyr.

Evening Express – 28 September 1907

If anyone has anything they would like to contribute regarding Merthyr’s footballing history, please get in touch.

Rose Mary Crawshay – part 2

by Irene Janes

The efforts of Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the suffragist movement are not denied but perhaps in this year of 2018 when women, in this country, celebrate a hundred years of having the right to vote we should raise awareness of our very own Rose Mary.

Here in our town, Rose (I feel I know her so well I can drop the Mary) was one the most vocal members of the early feminist movement. The Women’s Herald described her as ‘one of the most enlightened pioneers of women’s emancipation’. She and twenty-six other women gave Welsh addresses when they signed the first women’s suffrage petition 1866.

1870 saw Rose became the first woman appointed to the school board in the wake of the Education Act of the same year.

What confidence and conviction she must have had when she spoke at meetings in Merthyr about the rights of women, one of which was held in The Temperance Hall, (now the Scala snooker hall), John Street. She spoke of how the vote would ‘benefit women’s characters’. Perhaps not surprisingly for those days, she was taken to task for ‘disturbing the peace and leading the women of Wales astray’.

Late in 1884 there was a decision by the delegates of the Aberdare, Merthyr Tydfil and Dowlais District Mine Association to support a series of talks by Jeanette Wilkinson on the rights for women to be able to vote. This may have been the reason there was little campaigning on the subject in Wales. This is the first recorded instance of interest by Welsh working men supporting female suffrage.

‘Lady Helpers’ this is not something I had heard before. However, Rose had some. She employed  women to work  alongside the male servants waiting on the Crawshay table. She hoped her scheme would encourage others to employ females for jobs other than dirty work. Rose was delighted when her husband suggested their home was becoming a home for the destitute. I would have loved to have been a fly on their bedroom wall. (Well they did have five children together so they must have met up now and again.)

This is not a rogue paragraph – these are quotes from the  1997 winner Dame Hermione Lee ‘the prize of five hundred pound isn’t a huge amount of money but the impact it has on its winners, including myself, can be huge’. Catherine Bates of author of  ‘Masculinity and the Hunt’, the 2015 winner recently told me ‘Women are still under represented in academia’  ‘Wonderful to have a prize that goes some way towards addressing the gender imbalance’ ‘it helps to give women scholars a visibility and recognition they may not get otherwise and  ‘an encouraging and validating experience’. Their indebtedness is down to our Mrs Crawshay.

The above was because in April 1888 Rose showed her suffrage side by setting up the ‘Byron, Shelley, Keats in Memoriam Yearly Prize Fund’ -a literary prize for female scholars. Since 1914, The British Academy has taken over the administration of the prize fund. Aptly renamed The Rose Mary Crawshay Prize Fund, one hundred and thirty years later, in this year of 2018, good old Mrs Crawshay is still enabling women.

My first conclusion, Rose Mary married an autocratic, showy, and notoriously tyrannical man in an era where woman were suppressed so she must have had a strong personality. My second, I bet she hated the title Mrs Robert Crawshay attached to her good deeds perhaps today as a philanthropist she would have been credited under her own name Rose Mary Yates.

Rose Mary Crawshay in 1886

Sadly there is a but – why did she have virtually nothing to do with her own daughters, Rose Harriette and Henrietta Louise? Odd don’t you think?

Rose Mary died in 1907 at Rose Cottage, Cathedine, Breconshire, at the age of seventy-nine.

Rose Mary Crawshay – part 1

by Irene Janes

Most of my life (67 years of it) the surname Crawshay has sent shivers down my spine and an innate hatred of the dynasty of Iron Masters of Cyfarthfa.

A few years ago, I came across a woman with intelligence, foresight, determination and inspiration, Rose Mary Yates, also known to us as, Mrs Robert Crawshay. True she is not a native of Merthyr Tydfil or Wales but her efforts transcend boundaries and time.

Rose Mary Crawshay in the 1870’s

As is the case of many wealthy, bored and unemployed women, charity work is often the ‘hobby’ of choice. With Rose Mary, this may have been true in the beginning. However having completed my little bit of research I see a different woman.

It could have been one evening, sitting in her home, with its turrets and three hundred and sixty five windows, she sat in front of yellow leaping flames throwing its heat from the coal dug out from one of her husband’s mines.  Her silk dress with layers of frilly petticoats may have rustled as she turned the pages to find one of her favourite poems by Lord Byron. With daylight fading perhaps, her attention wondered beyond the parklands walls to other yellow leaping fires of her husband’s family iron works in Cyfarthfa. Her life to those women and men labourers could not have been more different. Her home fire kept her warm, the works fires killed and maimed. Rooms she had many but in the town families were squashed into windowless, two roomed cellars with damp running down the walls. Children of all and any ages sent out to work, steal or beg, it didn’t matter which as long it was to help with their families’ survival.

If she was, a charity hobbyist this soon changed to philanthropist.

She organised soup kitchens and instructed them to be open three days a week. With the bodies of the needy and poor being fed, Rose Mary turned her attention to their overall well-being. She set up classes to encourage women to make clothes and make the patterns from old newspapers.

Books were given to her husband’s workers. Nevertheless, this was not enough for this particular Mrs Crawshay who knew the importance of education. In total, she opened seven libraries.

The citadel for working class males were the Workmen’s Institutes. Apart from socialising and drinking of beer it was here, the men could access text books and newspapers for knowledge or pleasure. Quite rightly, Rose Mary saw the inequality of it all. To counterbalance this she ensured her libraries opened on a Sunday too so women had the same opportunities.

Still recalled today, Abercanaid, February 1862 forty-nine men and boys were killed either from suffocation or burns in the Gethin Pit explosion. The pit had been sunk by William Crawshay II to provide coal for the Cyfarthfa works. Rose Mary visited every family who had lost some one in the disaster. Indeed, here is a woman who knew her own mind and no Iron master was going to stop her.