Benjamin, mary Ann & the thomas family

Benjamin Thomas' live was going well in March 1904. He had worked hard at the Gendros mine which was a short walk from the small house in Cockett he shared with his beloved wife, Mary Ann, and their three children David Howell, Mary Hannah and the latest arrival Annie who was 7 weeks old. 

Sure, he and Mary Ann had had setbacks over the years, including the death of their first-born child, Blodwen, who was taken from them 8 years earlier before her first birthday - as Dr Allington had recorded, Blodwen had "defective vitality". There had also been the death 18 months earlier of Benjamin's younger brother Joe in an accident at the pit where he now worked.

Joe had been buried at the Babell Chapel in the same grave as two of their sibling; Sarah Ann aged 6 months in 1871; Joseph aged 7 years in 1873.

Sarah Ann had been one of the first burials at Babell. The grave also became the final resting place of their parents, Dafydd and Mary. 

As he walked to work on 8th March 1904 Benjamin had idea that today would be his last, but he had worked underground long enough to know that deadly accidents were part and parcel of a miners life. The fall when it happened was sudden and Benjamin was killed instantaneously. He was 35 years old.

Benjamin's death left Mary Ann a window at 39 years old with three young children to raise and support. Reportedly, widows of miners would receive a ton of coal per month by way of a pension, but one can only imagine how tough life must have been for Mary Ann and her children. She married 3 years later to John Williams, passed away in 1929 aged 64, and was laid to rest with her husband Benjamin and baby Blodwen.

But what of the children? 

Little is known about the life of David Howell except that he lived in Swansea until his death in 1968.

Mary Hannah also spent her entire life in Swansea, living with husband George Taylor in the Townhill estate. They had two children; Harold who died in 1928 aged 7; and Colin who passed away at 70 in 1994. Mary Hannah was the last person buried at Babell before it was deconsecrated in 1986, and her grave is also the last resting place of husband George and son Harold.

Annie became a schoolteacher and left Swansea in the early 1930s before marrying William at the Calvinistic Mthodist Chapel in Small Heath, Birmingham in 1934. William was a local lad from Cockett, and together with Annie moved to London where they operated a sub-post office during the second world war. They had one son who was born in Clapham in 1937 who was evacuated during the war to Swansea to live with his Aunt Mary Hannah and Uncle George.

 William died in 1960.

Annie lived to 90 and passed away in Gloucestershire in 1994.

Mary Hannah and Annie were close throughout their lives and would spend hours chatting away in Welsh, while sipping tea and nibbling Welsh cakes.