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A story of migration and resettlement
Graves A31, A32 & A35
in St Mary's Churchyard
William SING married Sally BLIGHT on 26th March 1836 in the Buckland, Devon. And they baptised their first son, James, in the same parish that year.
That was the same year that work began on CRM Talbot’s floating dock here. And I doubt either of them had the remotest inkling then that they would spend the rest of their married lives living and working adjacent to that dock that would change the face of shipping and transport in South Wales in the 19th century.
I can’t be 100% sure about what brought the Sings to Aberafan but it’s pretty safe to assume they moved here for work. William was a labourer in rural Devon and work on the new docks would have offered a better wage. We know for a fact, from Talbot’s correspondence, that he was paying more money to the dockworkers than the agricultural labourers on his Margam estate.
And we do know that the SINGS arrived here sometime prior to January 20th, 1839, because that was the date they baptised their second son, William, at St Mary’s Church in Aberafan.
The docks were built between 1836 and 1841, and by that latter date a row of houses had been built on site for dockworkers. The 1841 census listed 18 different households living at ‘Port Talbot’ - just over 100 people. Including William working as a Porter, and Sally, his wife and William jnr.
BUT there’s no mention of their first son, James, born in Devon. I found an article in The Cambrian of 19th December 1840, that explained why.
‘a distressing case of a child being burnt to death … at Port Talbot’, they reported. James Sing was only four and half years old when he stepped too close to a fire while his mother was collecting water from a well, a couple of hundred yards away from their cottage at the docks.
He was buried at Aberafan on 16th December. In this plot, which has its own stone. Although his name was also later engraved onto the family gravestone I showed you earlier.
Sadly, there was more tragedy ahead for the Sings. A baby girl, Sarah Ann only lived for two weeks in November 1841. While her brother, Thomas, survived until he was three months old in November 1843.
The death of babies and young children was so common in the mid-19th century. I found out that in 1851, in the registration district of Neath, 134 out of 1,000 babies died before their first birthday. Imagine: the SINGS lost three children in the space of four years. What a weight of grief to carry.
By 1851, William and Sally had three more children. William was still labouring at the dock and that year was embroiled in a dispute with a Swansea mariner by the name of Charles Keast that was reported in the Swansea & Glamorgan Herald.
William was drinking at The Walnut Tree Hotel in Aberafan, where Keast was also drinking. Keast was later thrown out for being intoxicated. William then accused Keast of snatching a pair of boots from a basket he had with him, boots that were, ‘valued at four shillings and sixpence’. Probably a week’s worth of wages in those days so he couldn’t afford to overlook it! The local policeman tracked down Keast who had the boots with him but he seemed to think they were his own. And because Keast had been very, very drunk, and as William got his boots back, he was let off the charge.
By 1861, William was working as a Wharf Porter. And the experience of, and proximity to, the docks had a significant effect on his wider family.
Their eldest son, William Jnr, would go on to become a Marine Engineer aboard the Augusta steamship, built by Henry Bath in Swansea in 1849. Their second son, Frederick would become a shipwright at the docks. And in 1868, their eldest daughter, Mary Ann, married Caleb Short, another Devon man who came to Port Talbot docks and who was employed as a Lock Gateman.
Sadly, William and Sally buried two more of their children at St Mary’s: their son Frederick in 1866 and their daughter, Sarah, in 1873. They were 35 and 25 respectively. And they both died from Tuberculosis.
Anyone working on family histories will be familiar with Tuberculosis on death certificates. I hadn’t realised how deadly it had been until I became more involved with local history. Here are some figures:
Between 1851 and 1910, around four million people died from TB in England and Wales. It was particularly lethal among young people too: it became known as ‘the robber of youth’. I was quite surprised to find out that it wasn’t until the 1940s that effective medications started to be used. It makes me feel very grateful for today’s antibiotics.
n 1881 William and Sally were living alone at their docks’ home. He was 68 and still working as a Weighman on the docks but married life would come to an end two years later when Sally passed away at the age of 73.
She was buried at Aberafan with her children and William carried on living at the docks past his retirement until 1901, when at the grand old age of 88, William was boarding with the Redmore family at Margam Terrace, Port Talbot.
William died a couple of years later at the home of his son, William Jnr, in Swansea. He was 90 years old when he joined his wife and children in the earth at St Mary’s on October 20th 1903.
He’d spent more than two thirds of his life in Port Talbot. His and Sally’s children, apart from their first-born son, were Port Talbot and Aberafan people. Their grandchildren too. Their history runs parallel to the history of the town: a story of migration, resettlement, and industrialisation.
We remember you, William and Sally, and your family. This is your home.
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