Dr William Price – Round Houses, The Common, Pontypridd
Dr. William Price (4 March 1800 – 23 January 1893) was a physician and a famous eccentric, best known for reintroducing cremation to the United Kingdom. He was born in Rudry and in 1820 went to study medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. He also studied in Caerphilly. Price became fluent in Welsh and English and conversant in Latin and other languages. By the mid-1820s Price was a Doctor at Treforest Iron Works and Brown Lenox Chainworks, a position that enabled him to see at first hand the effects of poor working conditions, low pay, daily danger, accidents, exploitation and conservatism and gave him a strong interest in Chartism as it came to its peak.
Dr Price established the first Co-Operative Society in Wales, known as the Pontypridd Provision Company. He also had a vision to establish a Museum of Welsh Culture and school for the poor and built the Round Houses at Pontypridd. He was a prominent Welsh Chartist and was forced to flee to Paris, France, after being involved in the Newport Rising of 1839. He was an equally prominent Druid and exponent of 19th century Druidic traditions, appointing himself as archdruid. By the following year however, he returned to South Wales and in 1841 his first child, a daughter, was born.
However, Price is remembered chiefly as the performer of the first legal cremation in the UK in modern times, which took place on 18 January 1884, when he attempted to burn the body of his dead five-month-old son, Iesu Grist (Jesus Christ) who had died eight days previously of teething problems. The infant was the illegitimate son of Price and his housekeeper Gwenllian Llewellyn.
As part of his druidic faith, William Price believed that burial was a sin against the earth and felt that cremation was a much better option, even though this was widely thought to be actually illegal in Britain at the time. Price was prosecuted, but successfully defended himself, claiming that “It is not right that a carcass should be allowed to rot and decompose in this way. It results in a wastage of good land, pollution of the earth, water and air, and is a constant danger to all living creatures”. The judge at the Cardiff Assizes, Mr Justice Stephen, agreed that, under English law, an action wasn’t illegal unless it was specifically proscribed. As the existing law made no explicit reference to cremation, the practice was therefore legal. The case set a precedent, which led to the Cremation Act of 1902. In 1885 the first official cremation took place at Woking.
Before his own death, on the night of January 23, 1893, Price fathered a second and a daughter with Gwenllian Llywelyn. He died in 1893 and on January 31 was cremated on a pyre of two tons of coal, in accordance with his will, on the same hillside overlooking Llantrisant. It was watched by 20,000 people.
