The grocers' plight
Sir: A Welsh soldier, Frank Richards, who worked in the mines as a boy, writes in his army memoirs (Old-Soldier Sahib, 1937): I had well passed my fourteenth birthday when the whole of the miners in South Wales came out on strike. This was in 1898 and the strike lasted six months and, like all other strikes before or since, ended up in a victory for the coal-owners. . . . During the whole of the strike the grocers and butchers allowed their old customers credit, trusting to their honesty to pay them back once the strike was settled and work in full swing again. Many of the customers did pay them back, but many didn't, so quite a number of grocers and butchers went bankrupt in South Wales that year or the next.
10a West Castle Road, Edinburgh
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