A Window into the Industry Collections – December 2015

This month the museum purchased four handbills for the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company. They date from the 1960s and 1970s. This company is still going and is the oldest continuously operating passenger shipping company in the world. It was founded in 1830 and is celebrating its 185^th anniversary this year. Three are illustrated here.

The next three images are from a book of cartoons published by the Western Mail and Evening Express. The cartoons by J.M. Staniforth tell the story of the strike of 1898 and are “a Pictorial History of the longest and most disastrous dispute which ever afflicted the extensive coalfield of South Wales and Monmouthshire”. Joseph Morewood Staniforth was born in Gloucester in 1863. His family moved to Cardiff in 1870, and he started working for the Western Mail aged 15. His first cartoons were published by the Western Mail in 1889 and he went on to produce cartoons covering political and social unrest in Wales up until the First World War.

Amgueddfa Cymru holds a large and comprehensive collection of Welsh share certificates. This month we added one further share certificate to the collections. This was for Nobel Industries Ltd. This company, which operated from 1920 to 1926, owned two important explosives works in Wales. The Glynneath Gunpowder Works in the Vale of Neath (now open to the public by the Brecon Beacons National Park), and Pembrey Explosives Works, Carmarthenshire (also open to the public as a local authority owned country park). This certificate is unused and dates from the 1920s.

Finally this month we acquired three photographs showing the hot dip galvanizing of finished steel pressings at Cwmfelin works, Swansea in the early 1960s. The two images here show the galvanising of buckets and rubbish bins.

Mark Etheridge
Curator: Industry & Transport
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