Secret Sins

Sex, Violence & Society in Carmarthenshire 1870-1920

By Russell Davies 1996

Indexed by Angela Davies April 2000

**My copy of this book was deposited with Glamorgan FHS in April 2022 (Gareth Hicks)

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• Contents/Introduction
• Names

Contents/Introduction

• Introduction; Private Lives, Public Witnesses; The Individual and Society in Carmarthsnhire
• A Sense of Place
• A Psychic Crisis ? The Social Context of Mental Illness and Suicide
• "Secret Sins"; Crime and Protest
• Sexuality and Tension
• Spiritual Skeletons ; Religion, Superstition and Popular Culture
• Conclusion; Carmarthenshire and Welsh Society

Introduction from the book's cover;

"The traditional portrait of Welsh rural society in late Victorian and Edwardian times was of an intensely religious land of bible-black morality.

This exciting book challenges that view by using the experiences of individuals, rural inhabitants and town dwellers, to present a radically new interpretation of Welsh social history.

After an overview of the economic, social, and political changes in Carmarthenshire between 1870 and 1920, Russell Davies probes the records of people's private lives to analyse the reluctance for education in farming communities, the influence of religion and the Revival, the continuation of superstitions, and the rich variety of popular culture.  We are also taken into a twilight world of mental illness and suicide, crime and protest, sexuality, prostitution, high illegitimacy, assaults, disease, cruelty, neglect and infanticide.

This challenging, passionately written and meticulously researched volume gives a major new appraisal of the social history of an area of rural and industrial Wales which many Nonconformists in particular had claimed to be thoroughly law abiding, moral and respectable."

For my part, I found the book managed to live down its "racey title" , completely lived up to the above introduction and was a thoroughly absorbing read.

Gareth Hicks 2000

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