B143 ~ Thomas THOMAS
This weekend, Sunday 10th March, marks the 134th anniversary of the largest disaster at Morfa Colliery in 1890. 87 miners were killed, 68 of whom were married. 178 children were left fatherless.
Before this date, explosions in 1858, 1863 and 1870 also led to multiple losses of lives. And around those dates, from the colliery’s opening in 1849 to its closure in 1913, the lives of individual men and boys were extinguished by accidents, falls and small explosions, on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis.
After Allen Blethyn and I published Remembering Morfa, Coal, Catastrophe & Courage, in September 2020, we carried on searching for further deaths at Morfa and discovered the names of 27 more people who lost their lives there. We collated them into an addendum and now enclose that with every copy of the book sold.
One of those men was Thomas THOMAS.
Thomas THOMAS of Margam married Elizabeth HOPKIN of Aberafan at St Mary’s on 16th July 1831. Their first child, Sarah, was born in 1832, followed by three sons, Thomas, William & Joseph by 1839.
In 1841 the family were living at Pant y Moch and Thomas was working as a collier. Elizabeth had three more children between 1841 and 1846 – Elizabeth, David and Evan – but only a year after Evan’s baptism at Margam, her son Joseph was killed in September 1847, aged just eight.
Joseph’s death certificate confirms that he was accidentally killed by a coal wagon on 10th September at St Michaelstone Lower (Cwmafan), some distance from where he was living at Pant y Moch, between Taibach and Goytre.
He was too young to have been working underground but is it possible that Thomas was working there and Joseph had gone to work with him and somehow got in the way of the wagon? We will never know for sure. Joseph was buried at St Mary’s, in his mother’s parish of Aberafan, on 13th September.
Elizabeth gave birth to another son at the end of 1848 and named him Joseph, after his deceased brother. Unlike all her other children who were baptised at Aberafan and Margam, I have been unable to find a baptism record for this baby Joseph.
The family continued living at Pant y Moch. The 1851 census, taken on 30th March, lists Thomas and Elizabeth along with their seven children, aged between 18 and two.
I can’t be sure when Thomas started working at Morfa Colliery as the census only lists his occupation as ‘Collier’ and makes no mention of an employer. But Morfa opened in 1849 and it would have been easier for him to travel there from Pant y Moch than to any coalmines in the Cwmafan area.
At the end of 1851, on 11th December, Thomas was accompanying the train carrying coal from Morfa to the Copperworks around 5pm. It appears that he lost his grip as he was climbing up onto one of the waggons, after the engine had started to move, and he fell beneath the wheels. His work colleagues took him home but he had been so badly crushed that he died there at 11pm.
Thomas was buried at St Mary’s, in the same plot as young Joseph, on 14th December.
Elizabeth was left with seven children, four of them under ten. But she was around 42 years old and her older children could have supported her financially and helped look after the younger ones, so there probably wasn’t a great need for her to remarry.
But the fact that there is no later mention of her on the gravestone for her son and husband at St Mary’s made me wonder why? Perhaps she did remarry, and/or moved away?
But I did find her two youngest sons on the 1861 census. Evan and Joseph, 14 and 12, were working as hauliers and living with Thomas and Sarah DAVIES, and their baby son, Thomas, at Ynys y Gwas Cottages, in the parish of Margam.
I worked out that Sarah was their older sister who married Thomas DAVIES at St Mary’s in 1860. And the fact that they weren’t living with their mother, at that age, even if she had remarried, made me think again.
I found an entry in the Aberafan burial register for an Elizabeth THOMAS of around the right age in May 1860 but with the abode listed as ‘Aberavon’. Common Welsh names always make things tricky … but I decided to take a chance and order the ‘instant’ digital image of her death certificate from the GRO. And I’m so very glad I did.
Elizabeth THOMAS, 52, widow of Thomas THOMAS, coal miner died from TB on 9th May 1860 in Lower Town, Aberavon. Her son, William, was with her when she died, just a month before her first born daughter, Sarah’s marriage.
I don’t know why her name wasn’t added to the gravestone. Perhaps the family didn’t have the funds. Perhaps there were more pressing concerns: the upcoming marriage, and who could look after the two youngest boys. But the next time I’m at St Mary’s I’ll check the back of the stone in case it was added there. But I feel pretty confident she would have been buried with them.
We remember you Thomas, Elizabeth, and little Joseph. And a family who paid the price for coal.
B143
In memory of JOSEPH, son of THOMAS THOMAS and ELIZABETH/ his wife of Pant-y-Moch, in the parish of Margam, who/ died Sept 10. 1847, aged 8 years./ Also of the above THO’S THOMAS, who died Dec 11. 1851/ aged 49 YEARS./ Am hynny byddwch chwithau barod canys yn yr awr/ ni thibioch, y daw Mab y Dyn./
[King James Bible, Matthew 24:44 - Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.]
Copies of Remembering Morfa can be bought from Allen Blethyn in Port Talbot or, if you are not local, from Ebay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175164522646
If you already have the book and would like a copy of the 'free' addendum this can be emailed to you. Please message me with your email address.
#story #Morfa