You’ve all heard of Llandanffwnfafegettupagogo, the little border town in the Wild West of Wales, and how it became famous in the great Coal Rush of 1881. . . .
It became a boom town, with wild gambling parties and drinking in the rip-roaring Temperance Hotel until often as late as 9 p.m. There were sheep rodeos too, and every day wagon trains left to cross the wild wet mountains and colonize the fertile valleys of Aberystwyth and Fishguard.
But the full story of the coal rush has never been told. Well, it will be now.
It was a wild gray Welsh day when the peace of the old public bar was disturbed by wild cries of “Coal! Coal! It’s coal, look you, isn’t it.”
Everyone rushed to the window. Down the street galloped a big shaggy cart horse, and on its back was a little old man covered in coal dust from head to foot. In one hand he waved a great big nugget of coal.
By the time he reached the assay office half the town was following him. An assay office, as you probably know, is where gold prospectors can find out if the gold they find really is gold and how much it is worth. Only this one was for coal, of course.
“Pure anthracite!” said the man at the office. “Worth as much as two pounds a ton*—where did you find it?”
“Up on Banwen’s Beacon,” said the little prospector. “I’d just like to stake my claim, please. My name’s Rupert Pullover.”
Anthracite! The news whizzed round the town like a bullet, and soon everyone was loading up their donkeys with picks and shovels and claim jumpers.†
Banwen’s Beacon was a large bald hill above the village. A wide seam of coal came almost to the surface there, and all Rupert Pullover had done was dig down through the turf.
It wasn’t long before all work had stopped in the village. The clang of picks and shovels floated down from the beacon, and every sheep and cart for miles around was hauled in to take the coal away.
Everything would have been fine if a tall man wearing a forbidding bowler hat hadn’t climbed up the hill. He called out to all the miners to stop work.
“As clerk of the county council,” he said, “I have to tell you all that you are trespassing.”
“But this is common land,” said Rupert Pullover. “It doesn’t belong to anyone!”
“According to papers deposited at our offices this morning,” said the clerk, “it belongs to Lord Cake. I should clear off if you don’t want to be up before the magistrates tomorrow.”
Lord Cake owned a big sheep farm not far from Llandanffwnfafegettupagogo and was a well-known local cheat and general nuisance.
“How can it belong to Lord Cake?” asked Dai Taten* the village grocer, now also a prospector with everyone else in the village. “It’s not belonged to anyone for hundreds of years, boyo.”
“It’s all legal,” said the clerk, and hurried off before they started to throw things.
“Let’s get back down to the village and see about this!” said Dai.
Rupert Pullover, Dai Taten, and the other prospectors rushed down to the village.
“It’s true,” said the man in the assay office. “Just after you came in shouting about finding coal one of Lord Cake’s men brought in the deeds for the Beacon hills. That means he owns Banwen’s Beacon, and if you dig up that coal you might be put in prison.”
“But Banwen’s Beacon doesn’t belong to anyone, boyo,” said Dai Taten.
“The papers said it belonged to Lord Cake.”
“It’s a rotten fiddle,” said Rupert Pullover, when they were outside again.
Just then the door of the saloon bar swung open, and out came Lord Cake with his bailiffs behind him. He resembled a large pudding and had a face as red as a cherry. When he walked, he wobbled so much that he looked like he would fall over.
“I heard you, Pullover,” he growled. “It’s about time you little coal miners were taught a lesson. I’m going to have the Great Western railway brought through the village to take the coal away, and you can’t stop me. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”*
“You know Banwen’s Beacon doesn’t really belong to you,” said Rupert.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Lord Cake. “If you can prove Banwen’s Beacon doesn’t belong to me, then you’ll be able to mine coal there, won’t you?”
And with another evil laugh he waddled away down the High Street.
“There’s an old map in the bank,” whispered Dai; “that’ll show who Banwen’s Beacon belongs to!”
But when they got to the bank there was Lord Cake!
“Well, well,” he said. “If you’re looking for a certain map, well, it’s locked in the vaults, and since I’ve just bought the bank . . .” He grinned nastily.
That night the miners held a meeting in the public bar. It was a typical Wild West saloon, with people gambling huge sums at dominoes and darts, and someone playing cheerful tunes on the piano.*
“So it’s all agreed,” said Rupert. “To get the map, tomorrow morning we rob the bank.”
“Can’t we pinch a bit of money too?” asked Dai.
“Just the map.”
“Waste of an opportunity, if you ask me,” said Dai.
“Now, you all know what you’ve got to do?” asked Rupert. “One-Arm Evans and Black-Eye Morgan’ll attract the attention of Police Constable Hodgkins while me and Dai rob the bank, and Tom’ll have our getaway bicycles waiting outside.” He looked around at them all, then added, “We’ve only got one chance, so things had better go well! Otherwise Lord Cake will have our coal.”
Tomorrow came, and Rupert Pullover’s plan for stealing the map from Llandanffwnfafegettupagogo bank went into action.
Rupert and Dai Taten waited outside the bank until it opened. Then, with spotted handkerchiefs over their faces and brandishing pistols bought only that morning from the toy shop, they rushed in.
“Reach for the sky, pardner,” said Dai, waving his pistol at the manager.
“Eh?”
Rupert Pullover felt a bit of a fool. “Stop putting your hands in the air and open the safe,” he said. “We don’t want your money, just the map.”
“Lord Cake said I wasn’t to let it out of my sight,” said the manager.
“We’ll fill you full of holes, boyo,” said Dai, who was really enjoying himself.
But Rupert took the manager’s keys and started to open the safe. Now the news of the robbery was spreading like an out-of-control fire, and when PC Hodgkins at the police station heard it, he rushed out on his bike.
Only to find that someone had let his tires down. It was all part of the plan.
He puffed up to the bank just as Rupert and Dai were escaping on their getaway bicycles.
But Lord Cake had heard the commotion too, and he knew it could mean only one thing. Sooner than it takes to tell, he and his men were cycling madly in pursuit of our heroes.
“We’ll take a shortcut and head them off at the library!” he bawled.
Faster went Rupert and Dai, but Cake and his cronies were gaining on them.
Up Banwen’s Beacon they went, and whizzed back up the High Street to the assay office.
“Here is the map,” panted Rupert, throwing it over the counter. “It proves that Banwen’s Beacon doesn’t belong to anyone.”
“It belongs to the whole village,” puffed Dai.
Lord Cake came wobbling in, very out of breath, but a crowd of miners rushed up and caught him by his coat. Up came PC Hodgkins too.
“You haven’t robbed any banks today, by any chance?” he said, looking closely at Rupert.
“Absolutely not. Really. A masked man dropped this from his bicycle,” said Rupert, who had stuffed his mask into his pocket. “But arrest that man for forgery and claim jumping. And riding a bike without a bell, now I come to think of it.”
So all the miners were able to go up on Banwen’s Beacon, and each was able to mine his own mine.
And that was how the Great Coal Rush started.