Tales of shebeens and crime in city street of notoriety
THE most notorious street in Cardiff a century or so ago was Mary Ann Street in the central area.
Many of the houses in the street were shebeens (unlicensed drinking dens) and at the Cardiff Borough Police Court on June 17, 1894, Catherine Bond, a young woman who lived at number 20 Mary Ann Street, pleaded guilty to a charge of selling beer.
She was fined £10 and costs or two months’ imprisonment with hard labour.
At the Glamorgan Assizes, Judge Justice Vaughan said: “The owners of these properties, which are habitually used for immoral purposes, are the proper persons to proceed against if gross evils of the notorious neighbourhood in question are to be checked.
“Year by year, month by month, and almost every week, Mary Ann Street furnishes chapter after chapter to the criminal annals of Cardiff.
“Assize after assize, Mary Ann Street figures with conspicuous notoriety as the street crimes ranging in growth from murder to robbery with violence and in each instance gross systematic immorality is at the bottom of it. Brothel keepers have been fined time after time, but still the evil is as rampant as ever.”
Hard to believe that Mary Ann Street was just a short walk from posh Charles Street, named after Charles
Vachell, who was elected Mayor of Cardiff in 1849 and 1855.
Another depressing picture of the area is given in the Cardiff Argus (January 10, 1891): “Stanley Street, as a street has no existence. It is almost a cul de sac from Bute Terrace, only a few feet wide, having in the centre of it a narrow channel into which is poured all the liquid refuge, slops etc, from the
houses on each side. The stench from the lower portion of this open gutter is in summer often abominable.
“The street, or rather pitched foot way, forms the drying ground of the occupants of the houses. A clothes line, common to all, extends from one end of the alley to another and this is, in fine weather, constantly in use.
“In the summer the street forms a kind of general washhouse and women, in a semi-state of nudity, whose clothes after often nothing but a collection of dirty rags with old earthenware pans placed on broken chairs occupy the day, give an appearance of cleanness to their children’s clothing.”
We learn that there were around 40 houses in Stanley Street many consisting of two rooms one over the other without a back door, and: “There is scarcely a house with a window but in which a number of panes of glass are not broken and the aperture is filled with old rags.
“There is not a house but in the lower half of the outer door is not honeycombed and large portions eaten away by rats who early in the morning make the street a kind of happy hunting ground for their species.
“The bedroom is reached by a staircase rising from the lower room and entering through an opening in the floor like a trap door.
“Police found a woman and her baby sharing a wooden projection to a house which sheltered a donkey, and homeless children were often found sleeping under carts.”
A lodging house kept by a Michael Harrington contained 54 people and a police inspector told TW Rammell, the Board of Health Inspector, on a visit to Cardiff in 1849 that “there were no beds and the children slept in old orange boxes. In this communal cesspit, the lodgers hoarded belongings which included rags, bones, salt fish
and rotten potatoes”.
Please send your pictures and stories to Brian Lee, Cardiff Remembered, South Wales Echo, Six Park Street, Cardiff, CF10 1XR or email brianlee4@virginmedia.com – please include your phone number as I cannot reply by letter