Welsh Journals

A HEALTHY PLACE TO BE? THE WREXHAM COALFIELD IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD1 David Lee Williams Poverty was arguably the greatest social evil of the interwar years in Britain. The dominant factors contributing to the decay of society during the period of depression were large- scale unemployment and meagre wages, and this was particularly apparent in those areas which were heavily specialized and dependent on basic industries such as coal mining. In the 1920s and 1930s the miners' predicament was exacerbated by the fact that their inad- equate wages consistently lagged behind the cost of living, and this in turn had a dramat- ic effect on the conditions of housing, diet and the health of the population in general.2 There is substantial evidence to suggest that the low-wage structure of the coal industry had a damaging impact on the health of the population in the Wrexham Rural District. In the early 1930s children were being kept from school simply because they had no shoes to wear. On one occasion it was reported that seventeen children were sent home due to their feet showing through the soles of their shoes, while on another a headmaster provid- ed a number of his pupils with boots out of money from his own pocket. Deductions from wages meant that there was little leeway for renewing boots and clothes, as shown by the recollections of Wrexham miners themselves. According to a Hafod collier from the parish of Cefn, 'many workmen lived in colliery houses; the rent of 7s 6d, plus water 8d, and light- ing was deducted from the pay packet, in addition to the statutory stoppages of health, insurance and doctor. All these stoppages were taken from the pay before the packet was handed over. There was much poverty'.4 The acute unemployment and low wages in the 1930s had a devastating effect upon stan- dards of diet and nutrition. As John Stevenson has written, 'many of the unemployed reduced themselves to a stodgy, ill-balanced diet that was lacking in protein and essential vitamins'. He also claims that in the depressed areas 'people actually looked thin and ill- nourished'.5 A similar point was made by the findings of a Ministry of Health Report in 1939, which stated that, 'when considering the problem of the nutrition of a nation as a whole, economic questions necessarily arise, and the relative cost of various food con- stituents may affect the proper balance of the diet'.6 The report also found that on the whole nutrition was inadequate in the industrial areas of north Wales. Indeed, it was claimed that there was a tendency to spend a greater proportion of income on clothes rather than food. However, that the poor of Wrexham in the 1930s were starving yet fully-clothed was not This article derives from my 'The Social Effects of the Decline of the Coal Industry in the Wrexham District between 1927 and 1935' (University of Wales, unpublished M. A. thesis, 1994). Much of the data discussed here is presented diagramatically in the thesis. John Stevenson, Social Conditions in Britain between the Wars (London, 1977) pp. 283-4. 3 Wrexham Leader, (WrL) 15 January 1952. Recollections of North Wales Miners (Clwyd Record Office, Hawarden). P.Bailey, interviewed, 15 May 1986. 5 Stevenson, Social Conditions, pp. 283-284. Ministry of Health Report on the Committee of Inquiry into the Anti-Tuberculosis Service in Wales and Monmouthshire (1934) p.207