Abergavenny’s Best Kept Secret
Seventy-two-years ago a sex scandal rocked the quiet Welsh town of Abergavenny. Twenty- four men and youths from the town and nearby Abercarn and Abertillery faced charges under ancient laws passed in 1861 and 1885 outlawing homosexuality. The alleged offenders were rounded up like stray dogs in a clamp down by Monmouthshire Police, officers travelling as far a field as Scotland and London to secure arrests in order that the accused be dragged back to Abergavenny to face the music.
Britain’s sex laws were very different then from today’s acceptance of same-sex couplings, civil partnerships and gay marriage. Although much has changed everyone agrees that the protection of children and vulnerable adults remains paramount.
The early police action in the Abergavenny case of 1942 exposed serial abuse of young boys by William Edwards, the manager of the town’s YMCA in Frogmore Street and a Fagin- like abuser of youths named George Rowe, the manager of the Coliseum Cinema in Lion Street, who preyed on the page- boys who worked under him.
The Police could have stopped there, rightly pursuing these pockets of abuse ( as indeed they must do today ). However what followed was a wider trawl ( a deliberate ‘witch-hunt’) of homosexuals. This uprooted an oddball mix of ordinary men including a farmer, a clerk, a conscientious objector, two chefs, a fireman, several serving soldiers, a hairdresser, an actor, whose crimes in the main simply being they were gay.
The country was of course at war, with nerves frayed. Abergavenny was stunned at being a centre of depravity. Public hostility against the men was rife. The uncompromising toughness of the police investigations secured confessions from the men, who later stood trial at Monmouthshire Assizes and they received prison sentences ranging from twelve-months to ten-years penal servitude.
A heavier price was paid by some. One nineteen-year-old Abergavenny-born lad who was arrested ( and couldn’t cope with the shame ) took his own life by throwing himself under the Cardiff Express train. Two others attempted suicide. Not only did the case cause personal downfall for the individuals but disgrace for their families. The town naturally has buried this secret past that tainted it’s prestigious image, no other similar case was seen before, or since in South Wales.
For adult homosexuals, their plight was ended twenty-five-years later, in 1967, when Pontypool MP Leo Abse pioneered the law change. For others, innocent and guilty the humiliation was life-long.
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Profits from the sale of the book ( available at The Abergavenny Book Shop at 1, High Street, Abergavenny @ £12.00 ) will go to The Abergavenny Community Cafe in memory of Lewis Matthews, the nineteen-year- old lad who killed himself.
CONTACT THE AUTHOR WILLIAM CROSS FOR FURTHER INFORMATION REGARDING THE BOOK
