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Photograph – YMCA, Red Cross Hospital

Swansea Museum Collection

Black and white photograph and postcard showing an internal view of one of the wards at the converted Swansea YMCA taken circa 1918. Nurses and patients are clearly visible. Gelatine paper print.

The photograph is the gymnasium, (now Dojo) which is above the Llewelyn Hall Theatre.  The new building opened in October 1913 and within a year the 1st WW has started.

There are a number of photographs by Chapman the High St photographer of patients and nurses at the hospital. It would appear that a few of his daughters were Red Cross volunteers and a son who was serving in the army, was a member of the YMCA.

An excellent book, Swansea in the Great War by Bernard Lewis has a detailed chapter on the medical provision in Swansea and contains another photograph by Chapman of the staff and patients on the roof of the building.

On the outbreak of war, the Swansea Red Cross Division began the search for suitable accommodation to convert to hospitals.  Early in the search in October 1914 they looked at both Sketty Church Hall and Llewelyn Hall (the YMCA theatre).

Heavy casualties suffered by the British Expeditionary Force in the early months of the war hastened efforts to find suitable premises as hospitals would be required sooner rather than later. It was also becoming clear that more than three Red Cross Volunteer Aid Detachments (VADs) would be required.

VAD 88 was based at Llewellyn Hall and received their first patients on the 3rd December 1914.  With increasing number of casualties Parc Wern was also opened in 1915.

The Red Cross continued to search for a suitable single building as casualties mounted.  In the meantime a further ten beds were installed at the YMCA.

A special committee was appointed to look at a suggestion by Mrs Elswoth of the Red Cross that a hospital of eighty beds could be run if the whole of the YMCA was taken over.  However as Parc Wern had recently opened the project to take over the whole of the YMCA was put to one side. 

However by early 1917 with no end of the war in sight, a decision was taken to take over the building entirely.  In May 1917 the hospital was fully ready with 140 beds. A year later it had received a total 658 patients as compared to 308 in the previous two years.

The YMCA moved out of the building and down St Helen’s Road to St Andrews Church, now Swansea Mosque.

During the 4 years it was open 1443 patients were treated there.  This included 32 survivors from a hospital ship the Rewa who were landed at Swansea after being torpedoed in the Bristol Channel.

One of the nurses who worked at the YMCA hospital was Mary Morgan nee Corfield. An oral history interview was conducted with her in the 1980s and the tape is part of Swansea Museum Collection (oral history interview SM 1991.11.1.)

She describes how during the war the YMCA played an important support role providing soldiers with food and drink and paper and envelopes for writing. She trained as a nurse and then went to work at the YMCA where the shifts would be 6am till 2pm and then 6pm to 10pm.  Most of the casualties were transferred by sea to Cardiff and then onto Swansea.  Mary remembered that patients arrived with terrible injuries.  Despite the terrible injuries Mary enjoyed her work as a nurse and would have liked to pursue a career in nursing.  However her father put an end to her nursing career as soon as the war was over.

The YMCA Hospital was not for walking wounded or convalescence purposes. It is therefore quite remarkable that only one patient is recorded as dying there.  A second casualty who died is unidentified but was a local man and therefore was allowed to go home.  The one patient who died at the hospital was Lance Corporal Gordon Rankin Inglis, an Australian, wounded at Gallipoli.

At the end of March 1919, the hospital was closed and the building handed back to the YMCA.  It was not the end of the relationship as the Red Cross rented a club room in the building in partnership with the Royal College of Nurses (RCN).  This arrangement continued until the mid-1930s at which point they rented a room at 122 Walter Rd due to the unsatisfactory heating arrangements at the YMCA.

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YMCA Clock Key

Swansea Museum Collection

Ornate presentation key, sterling silver. Inscribed – presented to the Mayor of Swansea Alderman T. T. Corker JP Feb 3rd 1914. On the occasion of the starting of the YMCA clock. The gift of Messrs Webber and Sons Ltd. Original buckram covered, velvet lined box.

The YMCA was in Herbert Place from 1870 until moving to larger premises at Dynever Place in 1882.  However by 1908, they were again looking for larger premises.

In 1911, they purchased the Longland’s Hotel, formerly the residence of the Bath shipping family. The initial idea was to convert the building, but at some point the plan changed and the decision was taken to knock it down and build the purpose YMCA building we see today.

A fundraising campaign was initiated in 1911 whereby members of the YMCA would try to get pledges from the good people of Swansea for the estimated cost of £12,000 for the new build in ten days at which they were successful. A detailed article on the campaign can be found in the Swansea History Journal, 2014 volume 21.

The building dated 1912 on the parapet actually opened in October 1913 at a cost of £20,000 including the fit out.

The architect appointed was Glendinning Moxham, who was also the architect for the Glyn Vivian Art Gallery.

The building design included a complicated series of access points and stairwells for parts of the building to be divided and shut off including the hostel on the top floor and Llewelyn Hall on Page Street.

The YMCA National Review for 1913 contains the following description and a photograph of the building without the clock.

“On the first floor the general and private offices for the secretarial staff are placed. The large public hall providing seating for five hundred people with ante rooms etc.  A large social hall and games, billiards and dining rooms.

The second floor is devoted to the classrooms and library, kitchens and caretakers quarters.

On the third floor is the gymnasium etc., eighteen bedrooms, bath rooms and lavatories.

The roof is flat and commands an extensive view over the town and surrounding neighbourhood and will form a useful adjunct to the building.

One problem to be faced in the designing of the building was to keep each department separated and distinct and at the same time to access to every other department.

This necessitated the multiplication of entrances and staircases taking up valuable space.  The whole of the building is built of fire resisting materials, all the floors are as practicable of iron and concrete construction. The sanitary arrangements are of the latest and improved types. The heating apparatus is for low pressure water, and the whole of the building is lighted by electricity. Throughout as afar as possible preference has been in every way given to local and local tradesmen to carry out”.

The clock was not part of the original plan but added later.  However a clock of that size requires a significant length for the clock weights, which had not been taken into consideration.

An oral history recording held in the museum SM 1990.11.8, just happens to be the son of the foreman of the YMCA build and he relates the story his father told him.

“In later life he, (his father) became sort of a quite important man in the building trade. He was Clerk of Works for the Glyn Vivian Art Gallery. He supervised the building of that and at one time we had the original building plans, but they have been mislaid.

He was also Clerk of Works of the YMCA building, the Llewellyn Hall, bottom of Page Street. He used to tell the famous tale that on the top corner of the building, high on the top storey is a big clock, which is still there on the corner facing St Helen’s Road. And the architect designed the clock to go in this wall but forgot the clock had to have weights and a pendulum and forgot all about that! When they put the clock in there was nowhere to let the weights hang down because immediately below the clock was the ‘Minor Hall’ and you could not have weights nipping through the middle of the hall so they had to make a special ducting with pulleys and things to divert the weights from the clock round various corners to keep them away from the Hall! To this very day you look up into the ceiling you’ll see funny shaped ducting going across the ceiling”.

The explanation he gives on close inspection in the clock tower does not appear to make sense at first.  However following a more detailed inspection it turns out that boxed trunking which runs down the interior of Page St elevation through the current Chief Executives office and meeting room 10 on the floor below is not hiding electrics and water pipes as you would have expected, but the actual clock weights.

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YMCA & the Swansea Museum Collection

Phil Treseder is the Learning and Participation Officer at Swansea Museum and also a Trustee of YMCA Swansea.

Currently researching the history of YMCA Swansea, these blogs highlight objects in the Swansea Museum collection linked to the YMCA along with a few from West Glamorgan Archives.

The eleven blogs will act as a pilot for a potential series of blogs on the YMCA from the substantial history and archive material that belong to the YMCA and provides a fascinating social history of Swansea, which hopefully will begin later in 2022.

Each blog will start with a reference to the collection and a description of the object or document as it appears on the museum or archive record.

YMCA Library Catalogue 1900

Swansea Museum Library Collection

The small A6 booklet is twenty four pages long, with another three pages of adverts. It lists the 699 books available in the lending library of YMCA Swansea in the year 1900.  At this time the YMCA was based in Dynevor Place, prior to moving to the purpose built YMCA on the Kingsway which opened in October 1913. The catalogue is divided into seven sections including theology, biography, history, fiction, poetry, voyages and travels and miscellaneous.

The 19th Century saw a considerable expansion in education and learning.  Swansea Public Library opened in 1887 on Alexandra Road following the donation of a significant book collection by Deffet Francis.

Prior to this, access to borrowing books was through subscription libraries.  In 1815 there were six subscription libraries in Swansea.

The most prestigious library and reading rooms in Swansea would open in 1841, at the Royal Institution of South Wales (RISW), now Swansea Museum.

In 1835 the Swansea Philosophical and Literary Society was formed, which soon gained a Royal Charter to become the Royal Institution of South Wales. In 1841 the building was opened.  The downstairs consisted of a lecture theatre, reference library and library and reading room. The reference library is currently staff offices and the main exhibition gallery was the main library and reading room.

This image of the main RISW reading room is from the early 20th century and is now currently the gallery where the natural history collection is displayed.

The initial Swansea YMCA library and reading rooms would have been similar but no doubt smaller, less grand and less books.  Unfortunately we are not aware of any surviving photograph.

YMCA Swansea was established in 1868 (or it could be argued 1857, to be covered in a future blog).  The primary aim at the time would be to divert young men form the temptations of the town of Swansea such as public houses, theatres and brothels towards Christianity and salvation through Jesus Christ.  The police report for example for Swansea in 1888 records nine brothels and sixty five prostitutes in the town.

The primary method would be the provision of a library and reading room. Today the majority of YMCA Swansea staff are Youth and Community Workers, so it may come as a surprise to know that the first paid staff post advertised in the Cambrian Newspaper was for a Librarian in 1872, salary £20 per annum.

The formal opening of the Reading Rooms is described in detail in the Cambrian newspaper on the 19th August 1870.  The location in the article is given as the corner of Dillwyn St and Herbert Place.

The report describes them as;

“The very handsome and commodious reading rooms and news club erected by Mr. Henry Jack, the spirited proprietor for the YMCA were formally opened on Monday evening last.  The principle room is capable of accommodating upon an emergency some 200 or 250 members and has not only been comfortably but luxuriously fitted up.  Through the whole width of the principal room runs a massive mahogany reading table and the comfortable lounges or seats are covered with rich velvet.  The fire place is of polished marble and the grates elegant in design”.

The report also quoted the Mayor John Jones Jenkins, Esq as stating;

“There was practically no room in which the young men of the town can congregate together for mental recreation and improvement. The only room which existed was the Royal Institution (Swansea Museum)… and the fees were rather above what the young people could afford to pay”.

The newspaper goes onto record the following newspapers and periodicals which have been subscribed to for the reading rooms.  National papers include The Times, Standard, Telegraph, Pall Mall, Punch and Judy.  Local papers include the Cambrian, Western Mail, Herald and Journal.  Periodicals to include, Sunday magazine, Good Words, Christian Observer, Christian World, Leisure Hour, Edinburgh Quarterly review and the English Mechanic.

The total income required for the reading rooms per annum would be rent £40, taxes £20, librarian £25, light, heat and cleaning £15 and subscriptions £25.

Unfortunately I have not been able to trace a photograph of the original library and reading rooms.  Actually identifying the building the rooms were located in was a challenge in itself.  The address described or given varied including Herbert Place, St Helens Road and the junction of Dillwyn St and St Helens Road. Herbert Place was the lane running first left off St Helens Road and ending behind what was Peter Allen Estate Agents. Obviously it was in the block of building opposite the current YMCA building.

However, recently a two page leaflet from 1968 celebrating the 100th anniversary emerged with a photograph of the location.  The original library and reading rooms was directly opposite and is still there. The upper floor above what is currently Subway and the Lifestyle Express shop.

The YMCA in Swansea the 1870s appeared to have struggled at first. Research is ongoing but it would appear that the aims of the founders were not matching up with the aims and needs of the young men. A new management committee however appears to have turned matters around by the mid-1870s.  By the end of the decade they were looking for new and larger premises which they found in the former Normal College building on Dynevor Place in 1882.  The new premises had a hall, gymnasium, lounge and of course the library and reading room. The formal opening of the new building by the mayor is reported in the Cambrian on the 2nd February 1883.

In a YMCA newsletter for 1884 `The Record’, a description of the new building is included as follows;

“Young men are most welcome to visit the YMCA in Dynevor Place which adjoins the Tramway Terminus, Gower Street.  Open from 9.30am to 10.30pm.  The commodious building includes:

Reading Room, light, bright and pleasant, well supported with newspapers, magazines and easy chairs. Lending library, stocked with books on biography, fiction, history, poetry, travel and bible studies

Sitting Room, cosy and comfortable, provided with piano, harmonium, writing tables, chess and draughts

Bagatelle Room

Ping-Pong Room

Secretary’s Office, where lists of lodgings and apartments can be seen.  Letters of introductions can be obtained to all parts of the world

Members Bath Room, supplied with hot and cold water and shower bath

Gymnasium, large and well equipped and fitted with hot and cold showers, baths, dressing room and lockers

Social gatherings, lectures etc. take place from time to time.  A literary and debating society started last month”.

The library and reading room would continue to be a feature in the current building on the Kingsway opened in 1913.  Research is ongoing as to the date of the closure of the library and reading room but it was still a feature during WW2.

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Object 2 – Fox Teeth

The two fox (vulpes vulpes) teeth were excavated from Paviland Cave near Port Eynon.  The teeth date from the Palaeolithic era and have holes bored in them, the purpose most likely to form a necklace. The fox teeth were found in Paviland cave on the Gower.

The earliest evidence of human activity in Wales are Neanderthal teeth from Pontnewydd Cave in North Wales and are approximately 250,000 years old. From that point until now human activity would have come and gone in waves as the climate varied and for long periods Wales would be under ice sheets and uninhabitable.

In 1823 the Oxford archaeologist, the Rev. William Buckland found a skeleton and various other mammal remains in the cave. His thesis was that various bones of extinct animals and bones of animals now confined to Africa was evidence of the Bible story Noah’s flood. The skeleton became known as the Red Lady of Paviland. Buckland identified the skeleton as female due to it being buried with a necklace and from the Roman period as according to theological thinking at the time, the earth was no older than around 6500 years old.  Buckland was wrong on both counts.  The skeleton was male and around 32,000 years old.

This remains the oldest ritual burial discovered in Europe.  The body was placed with objects, including a mammoth’s head and ochre, a mineral which over time stained the bones red, hence the name Red Lady. Paviland Cave at this time would not have been overlooking the sea. It would have overlooked grass tundra and the sea would be about a fifty mile walk away. These early humans were hunter gatherers, who had moved out of Africa and entered Europe around 45,000 years ago. 

Later an Ice Age would force them to retreat, along with various species of mammal. Paviland Cave also contained various mammal remains including those of hyena and elephant along with various extinct species including woolly rhinoceros and mammoth for example SM 1836.6.21. A mammoth tooth excavated in 1823 and carbon dated to around 41,000 years old.

We do not know what these early arrivals in Wales believed in but a ritual burial indicates some form of culture and belief. 

The final retreat of ice began about 10,000 BCE and what we recognise as the coastline of Wales emerged around 6,000 BCE.  By around 3000 BCE the climate was around 2.5 centigrade higher than today.

In 1903 Cheddar Man was discovered, the oldest complete skeleton found on the British Isles. The remains were radio carbon dated to around 10,000 BCE, a full 20,000 years later than `the Red Lady’.

It was assumed that after entering Europe around 45,000 years ago, humans would have quickly adapted paler skin to allow for better absorption of vitamin D.  That does not appear to be the case, DNA extracted from the skeleton of Cheddar Man shows that the genetic markers for skin pigmentation are associated with sub Saharan Africa.

Like Cheddar Man, the Red Lady of Paviland was not red and probably not Caucasian either.

Black history on the British Isles started long before the Empire Windrush arrived in 1948.

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History of Swansea in 20 Objects

This is a brief attempt to cover the history of Swansea via 20 objects from the Swansea Museum Collection through short blogs. This is no easy task as there are around 50,000 individual objects and photographs on the database and with a fair number to still go on, the final number will exceed 100,000. Each blog will start with a prefix starting SM usually followed by a number which indicates the unique object reference number for every museum object.  A rather difficult task which no doubt will create some debate, but here goes.

Object 1 – Fossil Tree

A fossil tree, currently on display in the museum garden was excavated from Cwm Llech, near Coelbren, Swansea Valley in 1833 by William E. Logan, a renowned geologist.

In the course of his work he discovered two fossilized trees beneath the Henryhd falls. These impressive specimens now rest outside Swansea Museum. He later became the first director of the Geological Survey of Canada and that country’s highest mountain is named in his honour.

The Swansea Philosophical & Literary Society Report 1838, (later to become Swansea Museum) mentions the donation of the fossil trees:

“There have been presented to the Society two Fossil Trees of such magnitude, that until the erection of the new building is complete, it will be impossible to exhibit them. One is thirteen and a half feet long and eighteen inches in diameter, and the other four feet long by twenty-four inches in diameter. They have been left in situ: Instead of being thrown down and flattened, as such specimens usually are, they were found standing erect at right angles to the dip of the measures, with their lower extremities planted in a bed of shale immediately above a seam of Coal, which cannot be many from the lowest in the Basin, and penetrating a deposit of sandstone, consisting of several wards or layers. The two trees removed, stood close together as if springing from one root, while those remaining were not more than thirty yards from them and from one another. And as they all started from the same bed of shale, and very little of it has been exposed, it is not extravagant to imagine, that were the sides of the dell which cuts it, cleared away a whole primeval forest of these gigantic Sigillaria, standing as they grew, would be exhibited to the wondering eyes of the beholder”.

‘Fossil Segillaria, discovered in Cwm Llech, Vale of Swansea, by Mr. Logan’. Preserved in the grounds of the Royal Institution, Swansea. The print shows two fossilised tree trunks still embedded in the rock, with a man with a pickaxe beside. Excavated under the supervision of Mr. De la Beche.

Other nice fossil samples include SM 1841.3.3, a calamite fossil, a now extinct tree closely related to a horsetail tree that could grow to more than a 100 feet tall. These types of fossils are often found in coal rich terrain.  This particular fossil can be seen on loan in the National Waterfront Museum.

The coal seams, trees and other coal fossils in the collection were laid down in the Late Carboniferous geological period roughly 300 million years ago when Wales was a part of a large tropical forest near the equator.

So why start with these fossils? The origin of Swansea as a town in the 11th Century has nothing to do with geology. The location of Swansea Castle is about geography, defence and resupply by sea if under siege. However, the modern city we now live in has everything to do with geology.

The city we live in today, is what it is, due to it being on the edge of a coalfield.

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Black History Month: Ralph Waldo Ellison

For Black History Month, Swansea Museum will be looking back to WW2.  A number of Americans were stationed in Swansea and the surrounding area. We will be considering three Black Americans who were in Swansea for just a short period but who would become historically significant.

Ralph Waldo Ellison (1913 – 1994)

In 1953, Ralph Ellison won the US National Book Award for fiction for his novel Invisible Man, one of the key texts in African American culture.  The book is about the alienation of being a Black man in post war America.

He was born in 1913 in Oklahoma. In 1933 he was accepted into the prestigious Tuskegee Institute, the all Black university set up by Booker T. Washington, the name given to the Liberty Ship captained by Hugh Mulzac.

In 1936 he moved to New York and lived at Harlem YMCA on 135th Street, the centre of African American Culture during this period.

Ralph Ellison was stationed in Swansea during WW2.  A cook with the merchant marine, he served on a few Liberty Ships supplying the Normandy beach head and the subsequent battle for Europe. 

Ellison wrote three short stories based in Swansea during 1944, in a Strange Country, The Red Cross at Morriston Hospital and A Storm of Blizzard Proportions. The latter two were never published but In a Strange Country appears in a book, Flying Home and Other Stories published in 1998.

Some academics believe that Invisible Man may be influenced and the idea originated from In a Strange Country. In the short story (possibly based on an actual incident in Swansea), the character named Parker, who is Black comes ashore at Swansea and soon after is mugged and assaulted by three white US soldiers.  Parker is rescued by some locals, who take him to a club where a choir is practising. The choir sing the Welsh National Anthem, The British National Anthem, the Internationale and as they have an American guest, The Star Spangled Banner.

Parker finds himself in a swirl of emotional contradictions, particularly when they sing The Star Spangled Banner, as a Black man fighting for his country but treated as a second class citizen and who most likely would not be able to visit a similar members club back in the US.

The short story explores some of the themes that later won him the US National Book Award with Invisible Man.

Ralph Ellison was eventually admitted to the American Academy of Arts and letters and received two Presidential Awards, one from Lyndon Johnson and one from Ronald Reagan.

Ralph Ellison died in 1994 aged 81

For further information on Ralph Ellison, there is an excellent chapter in Black Skin, Blue Books – African Americans in Wales 1845 – 1945.  By Daniel G Williams, Swansea University. Published by University of Wales Press. 2012

Postscript

Searching for images to post with these blogs, I was aware that the museum had photographs taken by Great Western of ships and supplies arriving from the United States at Swansea Docks.

On looking through the two albums I found pictures of the cargo hold of the Sun Yat Set. The text with the photographs explain that the ship was actually on route to Liverpool but was diverted to Swansea. The cargo included 1,520 tons of steel, 278 vehicles, 100 landing craft and 4,927 tons of aviation spirit in drums. It would appear the drums of aviation fuel had been damaged during the crossing. Hence the diversion for special arrangements for handling the aviation spirit at Swansea.

Whilst searching for Great Western I also realised that the museum holds a ledger of all arrivals and departures from 1940 to 1945.  The Sun Yat Set was part of convoy HX 273 and arrived in Swansea on the 16th January 1944. It departed on the 5th February heading towards Belfast to join convoy ON 203 sailing back to New York.

Previous sources indicate that Ralph Ellison was sailing back and fore between Swansea and the United States regularly.  Sources state he served on more than one Liberty Ship, but only his first ship the Sun Yat Sen is named. This ship only docked in Swansea once. Ralph Ellison would have been here for twenty one days and of course this would have been his first experience of another country.  However, if it was not for the damaged aviation fuel Ralph Ellison would have been in Liverpool and for a much shorter period.

Whilst looking through the nearly 10,000 entries for ships arriving and departing Swansea Docks in 1944 and 1945, I also noted a few ships with the name Parker. Ellison names his character Parker in the story. USS Parker a destroyer on escort duty on Atlantic convoy duty in 1943 and early 1944 and a Liberty Ship Theodore Parker, named after a famous abolitionist campaigner, who was quoted by Abraham Lincoln and later Martin Luther King. Neither of these ships were on convoys HX 273 or ON 203. Pure speculation, but I wonder if any of these ships were part of another convoy alongside Sun Yat Sen and hence the name of the character?

Phil Treseder
Learning & Participation Officer