The Cardiff Book of Days (45 page)

1964:
The Beatles played a concert at the Capitol Cinema, Cardiff, as part of the group's only UK tour that year. The tour included twenty-seven concerts in twenty-five venues over thirty-three days, visiting most major towns and cities, playing the Gaumont, ABC and Granada cinema circuit. As the venues rarely held more than 3,000 people, often less, at the height of ‘Beatlemania', thousands of fans could not get tickets. (
See
also December 12th.) (Mark Lewisohn,
The Complete Beatles Chronicle
, Chancellor Press, 1992)

1903:
Birth in Cardiff of pioneer naturalist, conservationist and writer, Ronald Lockley. He wrote over fifty books, including
The Private Life of the Rabbit
(1965), which inspired Richard Adams' classic book
Watership Down
. Lockley grew up in Whitchurch where his mother ran a boarding school. He played a leading role in setting up the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park and campaigned unsuccessfully against the oil refinery developments around Milford Haven. His belief that successive British governments were not sufficiently concerned about the threat to environments from industrial development led to his emigration to New Zealand, where he died in 1970. (T.D. Breverton,
The Welsh Almanac
, Glyndwr Publications, 2002 / Wikipedia)

1951:
Pretty 19-year-old Joan Canham was murdered, stabbed by a jealous ex-boyfriend, John Bowling, on the steps of her family home in Gelligaer Road, Cathays. Bowling was charged with murder and the evidence seemed clear enough. However, despite the judge's warning to the contrary, the jury chose to find him guilty only of the lesser charge of manslaughter. He was sentenced to five years' imprisonment. (Mark Isaacs,
Foul Deeds & Suspicious Deaths in Cardiff
, Wharncliffe, 2009)

1711:
Craddock Wells bequeathed the sum of £30 a year to provide for the education of poor children in Cardiff. He had been a leading member of the Borough Council and a Senior Alderman. The bequest was to be held in trust by the Aldermen to apply the income towards the education of as many poor boys and girls as would be named yearly by them They were to be taught ‘to read, write and cipher. Each of the boys to wear a blue bonnet and each of the girls a badge to distinguish them'. (Presumably to distinguish the recipients of the charity, not girls from boys). The school was opened in 1719. The trust continued to make educational grants for many years (
see
October 24th). (William Rees,
Cardiff: A History of the City
, Cardiff Corporation, 1969)

1783:
Edward Davies was up before Cardiff's Gild of Cordwainers and Glovers. It was stated that he had opened a shop and ‘sold a great quantity of boots and shoes' without having served the usual seven years apprenticeship in the town, thereby incurring a fine of 20 shillings for each month that the shop remained open. (William Rees,
Cardiff: A History of the City
, Cardiff Corporation, 1969)

2010:
Thanks to a touch of time-travelling, Christmas came early to Cardiff. Doctor Who and his feisty young assistant, Amy Pond (played by actors Matt Smith and Karen Gillan) arrived in the evening to switch on the Christmas Lights. They were welcomed by large and enthusiastic crowds. The cult science fiction programme had been filmed in and around Cardiff since its revival in 2005 and led to a spin-off series,
Torchwood
. ‘Cardiff is a great city,' Matt Smith said to the reporter from the
South Wales Echo
. ‘I'd like to thank all of its residents for being so welcoming.' Matt was the third incarnation of the famous Time Lord since 2005, his predecessors being Christopher Eccleston and David Tennent. Among the special festive attractions in Cardiff was the ‘Winter Wonderland' set up outside the City Hall. There was a giant Ferris wheel (Cardiff's answer to the London Eye), an open-air ice-rink and a Christmas Market.

1848:
Thirty-year-old Thomas Lewis, the son of the landlord of the Red Lion Hotel in Queen Street, was stabbed to death late at night in Stanley Street by John Connors, an Irishman. The facts of the case were disputed but it brought to the surface the antipathy felt by the Protestant Welsh working class against Irish Catholics, prepared to work for low wages, who were taking their jobs. It led to an outbreak of sectarian violence with vigilantes attacking Irish homes. The windows of a Catholic church were smashed. The priest fled after his house was attacked and did not return. Lewis's funeral became a trial of strength between the two factions – large groups of Irish navvies armed with pickaxes arrived to be met by a Protestant mob from Merthyr. Connors was convicted of manslaughter – not murder – and transported. He lived out his final years at Botany Bay. (Mark Isaacs,
Foul Deeds & Suspicious Deaths in Cardiff
, Wharncliffe, 2009)

1918: Scenes of wild jubilation in St Mary Street and Queen Street marked the end of the First World War. (John O'Sullivan & Bryn Jones,
Cardiff: A Centenary Celebration
, The History Press, 2005)

1935:
The Olympia cinema, which had been thoroughly modernised, was reopened. It stood on the site in Queen Street that had been occupied by the Empire Theatre before it was destroyed by fire in November 1899. The Andrews Hall, named after entrepreneur Soloman Andrews, had replaced the Empire and had in turn been replaced by the cinema. (Stewart Williams,
Cardiff Yesterday
)

1990:
A burst water-main at Tongwynlais caused severe flooding and the closure of the A470 for about eight weeks. Known for its famous landmark, Castell Coch, the village can also claim to be mentioned in two pop hits of the 1990s. Cardiff-based Tigertailz, described as ‘a glam-metal band' had a song called ‘Tongwnynlais Fly' on their ‘Thrill Pistol' album and Rocket Gold Star wrote a song about the place and recorded it for the BBC Radio One ‘Maida Vale Session' show. In 1995 this band ‘moved into a remote farmhouse on top of a Welsh mountain to write and rehearse music'. In May 2000 they released what was claimed to be the first twelve-hour single (listened to on-line, a procedure made almost impossible by the primitive dial-up modems at that time). (Wikipedia)

1961:
Pubs in Cardiff opened on Sundays for the first time since 1881. Under new legislation, if 500 registered voters in each Welsh city, borough or county district requested it, the local authority had to conduct a poll in which electors could decide whether pubs in that area could open on Sundays or not. Opinion was divided – some areas opting to remain ‘dry' while others, including Cardiff, went ‘wet'. It was the predominantly rural and Welsh-speaking parts of the country that remained opposed to Sunday-drinking. Polls were held every seven years until all of Wales became ‘wet'. The last area to go ‘wet' was the Dwyfor district of Gwynedd in 1996. The 2003 Licensing Act finally did away with the right of opponents of Sunday-drinking to call for a ballot. (
www.news/bbc.co.uk/wales
)

1965:
John Toshack, aged 16 years and 236 days, came on as a substitute in Cardiff City's match against Leyton Orient, setting a record as the youngest-ever to play for the club. His record stood until April 28th 2007, when Aaron Ramsey came on in the last minute of Cardiff's 0-1 defeat by Hull City. (Wikipedia)

1840:
Fares on the Cardiff to Merthyr mail coach were reduced to 6 shillings (inside) and 4 shillings (outside) in order to counter competition from the new railway. (John Davies
et al
.,
The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales
, 2008)