One woman's story

I scratched my head a bit over how to mark International Woman's Day. I have already blipped Fishguard's best known daughter, Jemima Nicholas, and the vast majority of local woman in past times remain unsung heroines, rearing their children, supporting their menfolk and making a few extra pennies taking in washing, keeping chickens, packing herrings or brewing beer to sell illicitly from the back door.

But here is one story that we do know something about. For years, the name of this small dwelling, "The Monthly Tutor's Cottage", puzzled me. (I imagined it to be the base of some sort of peripatetic music teacher, a young man who did the rounds providing piano tuition perhaps.) The cottage is tiny and stands on a steep hill that runs down to a little beach that is now neglected but was once a focus of marine activities - boat building and repairs, rope-making, fishing.

In 1845 local girl Mary Owen married Haverfordwest boy John Morgan, both aged 24. They settled in Fishguard, John working as a mason while Mary bore two children, William and Phoebe. Seven years into their marriage John died of tuberculosis and Mary was left destitute with two small children. She must have been a woman of some character though, for somehow she got herself the paid job of taking care of the town's unwanted children. The elders of the chapel and the town rented this cottage and installed her in it with her charges: the rejected, orphaned or illegitimate offspring of the community.

In 1861 there was a census. It was the custom, due to general illiteracy, that the census officer completed the forms and not the occupants. Mary was no exception. She had signed the birth certificates of her own children with an X, her mark. The census return officer, aware that she was the guardian of the town's infant poor, enhanced her social standing by giving her the occupation and title of 'Monthly Tutor'.

In 1869 Mary left this cottage and what happened to her afterwards is unknown. She died a pauper, aged 70, in another part of the town. She never remarried.

The story of one woman who stands for many, still fighting to survive in the world today.