CARDIFFREMEMBERED Colourful pubs galore a magnet for sailors in city’s lively past

IN HIS Cardiff Reminiscences, published 100 years ago in 1918, Sam Allen informed his readers that the town had too many public houses and that doing away with a large number of them had been to the advantage of the citizens in general.

And a reader writing to a local paper some 17 years earlier, in 1901, had this to say: “In Caroline Street there were so many pubs and so close together that their names are almost forgotten by me.

“One of them was the Happy Returns (landlady Moll Price).

“At the old Custom House at the bridge end of Custom House Street everything in connection with the shipping of vessels or crews took place and there were any number of little pubs. In Charlotte Street, which was at the back of Whitmore Lane (or Custom House Street of today) there were no less than 10 or 12.

“Here the decoys of the poor sailors – the ladies of easy virtue – resorted and by their wiles led poor Jack into them, and the sequel generally was his departure fleeced of every single dime and often minus the best part of his clothes.”

The taverns were given names that would attract the sailors on their return from a voyage, such as the Six Bells, Sailor’s Return and Jolly Boatman.

By way of providing a counterattraction, the town council installed a water fountain near the lane so that the sailors could quench their thirst without having to enter any of these