Complaining to the Council before 1914 by Carol Powell M.A.

You can’t please all of the people all of the time!

Nowadays we tend to complain if there are potholes in the road and the council workers have not been along to repair the surface, but back in 1907 there were protests because the Council had tarred the roads. The new ‘horseless’ carriages had started to appear in the village and the Council had felt it necessary to improve the roads accordingly.

However, the Mumbles Press reported that ‘horses had slipped on the tarred road and people had been pitched out of vehicles’. One person threatened to report the matter to the SPCA (Society for the Protection of Sick animals). Mr. Graham Vivian complained that ‘the horse in his milk cart had fallen down’ and furthermore ‘the smell of the tar reached up to his house in Clyne!’ There were several claims for damages, although the Council was of the opinion that Tarspra, the company contracted to do the work, should be liable.

By 1911, there were still a considerable number of grievances on the matter.

The second story concerns proposed street improvement schemes. Mr. Aeron Thomas, at a meeting of the Oystermouth District Council, referred to the need for more light at the upper end of West Cross Lane. It had been decided to inform the owners of the new houses erected on land adjacent to the lane that provided they deposited the cost of the standards with the Council the Authority would do the rest. But the owners would not agree to do this, saying they ‘preferred to remain in darkness.’ Mr. Thomas believed that there were several big ratepayers in that area who were surely entitled to consideration and Mr. Davies said that the residents would, of course, be credited for the money when the street came to be made up under the Private Street Works Act, consequently, he could not see why the parties refused to deposit the money for the lamps.

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The third story concerns drinking on a Sunday. Around this time, there was much talk of a need for a change in the licensing laws, as the situation at that time allowed only a ‘bona fide’ traveller who had journeyed three miles, to get a drink on a Sunday. This measure had started in 1880 with the introduction of the Sunday Closing Act — undoubtedly an unpopular change at that time, as locals could not then get a drink in their local pubs on the Sabbath.

The consequences of this state of affairs were discussed in the newspapers of the day. The Rev. Hughes of Cardiff remarked in a letter to the Mumbles Press in 1911 that ‘Mumbles is hell on Sundays. Every week-day is more of a Sabbath than the Sabbath itself.’ Mr. C.W. Slater of the Methodist Church, Mumbles when asked for his opinion, commented, ‘It would be more accurate to describe it as a place frequented largely by people who wish to get fresh air, although there are a considerable number who go for the sake of the drink they can get.’ The Rev. Harold Williams, Vicar of All Saints Church blamed the drunkenness on ‘the six days’ license that rules in Wales and the situation of the Mumbles itself.’ He felt the only remedy lay ‘in an extension of the distance limit for “bone fide” travellers or a universal adaptation of the six days license. If the limit could be extended it would be a very good thing as men will come a few miles from Swansea, but would not go ten to twelve miles for a drink’.

Harry Libby, writing some many years later in 1963, remembered that, ‘The Currant Tree was the first pub out of Swansea where folk could get a drink on a Sunday as it was just outside the three-mile limit from the town, at least, by road. However, one great temperance advocate in Swansea had discovered that by travelling on the Mumbles Railway, the distance was just below three miles. So it was established legally that if you wanted a drink at Mumbles on a Sunday, you had to walk to the Currant Tree and not travel by train’.

There was plenty of choice of pubs in those days. Between his house at Southend and West Cross alone, Mr. Libby recalled that there were sixteen—The Pilot, The George, The Beaufort, The Mermaid, the Ship and Castle, the Greyhound, the Prince of Wales, the Antelope, the Waterloo, the Marine, the Nag’s Head, the White Rose, the Rhondda, the Talbot, the Railway and the Currant Tree. The Rhondda, Talbot and Railway were like a trinity, two alongside each other and one opposite near Oystermouth Station. However, he commented wryly that, ‘the law did not seem to prevent a return at night by train. The sight along the railway track at West Cross on Sunday evenings had to be seen to be believed, with drunks literally sprawled all over the place on the little embankment, stretched out “quite blotto” waiting for the train’.

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