MERTHYR TYDFIL IRON METROPOLIS

Life in a Welsh Industrial Town

by Keith Strange

Given its pre-eminence, much has already been written about the town and in particular the rise of the iron industry, the appalling housing and public health provision, the tradition of political radicalism and the rise of the chapel, but there is more to the story of nineteenth-century Merthyr than belching furnaces, cholera epidemics, Chartist petitions and nonconformity. This book marks an attempt to broaden the picture by looking too at the paupers and thieves, thimble riggers and prostitutes, Catholics and Mormons, Oddfellows and Ivorites, drunks, fighters and freaks of what was once the iron capital of the world.