News
Notorious: Charlotte Street and 'The Lane'
My new book 'Notorious' will deal with thirty people over a thirty year period living and working in two notorious Cardiff streets.
My first art show was based on archetypal stories
for Victorian characters, my second was based on real people from a wide time
period in Carmarthen, my third was based on 30 characters from one year in
Merthyr Tydfil. My paintings are based on character and personality but I also
get a deep joy from history, especially the outsiders in Welsh Victorian
History.
My next project is a book based on thirty people
over a thirty year time period living in two streets in Cardiff- Charlotte
Street and Whitmore Lane. Not heard of them? That’s because they’ve been
purposefully eradicated- Whitmore Lane was renamed Custom House Street in 1873
and Charlotte Street lies under the Marriott Hotel. Only one building, The
Golden Cross Pub, remains in a rebuilt form on the original site. In their time
from 1841 to 1870 they held brothels, beerhouses and lodging houses and a
community emerged there based on vice and pleasure.
Full of prostitutes, gangsters, thieves and pimps
they were very, very notorious in their day. Bute Street is still well known in
Cardiff as an area for pubs and prostitutes and Cardiff docks/ Tiger Bay has a
semi-mythical status now as a multicultural unique community.
The story of Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane however
is unknown. Google searches reveal very little, academic books and articles
make brief mention of it. It was a liminal area inhabited by unique subcultures.
It was half town half docks, half working class half criminal, half land half
water, half Welsh half Irish, half pleasure and half pain. It is a story of
sex, violence, money, disease, prison and transportation, drink and drugs and
death.
The place of women in the community was strong
also. They owned and ran brothels and beerhouses, they were prostitutes and thieves,
they were drunk and violent and they also made money. Disability was not always
a hindrance there either and one of the most important figures, a woman severely
disabled from birth, managed to thrive and support an extended family there through
difficult times. She is a character unique in Welsh history.
I am a painter and this book with contain thirty
portraits of the main people within it. All of them are social outcasts to some
extent, more than half of them women and three of them disabled. All of them
are intriguing. For their story I have used whatever sources are available-
newspaper reports, censuses, gaol and workhouse records, birth, death and marriage
certificates, court records and maps. Their stories interweave with each other throughout
the thirty years and it is almost possible to recreate the community. I am
turning these historical sources into a ‘creative history’ or ‘narrative
history’ format, that I have admired in the work of historians work such as
Helen Rogers and Lesley Hulonce.
I am passionate about this book. My family lived
there from the 1830’s until 1865. My grandmother knew her grandfather who was
born there. The family were not notorious enough to be in this book but they do
appear in the sidelines. They would have known everyone in it, they would have
heard about every event on the street, they lived it and they are a part of me.
So, using over 4,000 sources of information about
these people, I’m drafting through the finished work. It’s currently around
55,000 words long with 30 paintings to do alongside it.
I can’t wait to introduce you to Kitty Pig Eyes,
Lewis Leyshon, Mary the Cripple, The Notorious Jack Matthews, Swansea Sue, Mrs
Prothero, Billy Shortlegs, Harry Kickup and the rest of the formidable cast of 'Notorious' who hung around the Lame Chicken, The Kings Head, The Flying Eagle and
the many brothels of Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane.
The photograph of The Golden Cross is from the National Library of Wales collection.