The aftermath of the armed Chartist rising in November 1839, which ended in fighting at the Westgate Hotel in Newport, saw the inevitable state repression unleashed. The stories of the Chartist leaders John Frost, Zephaniah Williams and William Jones, who were sentenced to death and then transported are well known, but what of the others?
Jenkin Morgan has become part of the invisible landscape of Welsh Chartism. This Pillgwenlly milkman and tallow chandler was initially sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered alongside Frost, Williams and Jones at Monmouth in 1840, and yet very few people today even know his name. As the three ‘Welsh Martyrs’ were shipped off to Tasmania, Morgan’s sentence was commuted to five years imprisonment in the Millbank Penitentiary.
This is a story of betrayal, retribution and suffering. Pardoned by Queen Victoria on 10 May 1844, he emerged from his incarceration a broken and impoverished man, described by Feargus O’Connor as a ‘Chartist scarecrow’.
Ray Stroud is currently writing a book on Jenkin Morgan and some of his comrades: Chartist Scarecrows: Five Prisoners of the Newport Rising of 1839 (Cardiff: Six points Press, forthcoming).
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