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# Volume 2, Number 43
- URL: https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/volume-2-number-43/
- Published: 2026-10-24T06:06:46.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T06:07:20.000Z
- Description: When the Polka dance arrived in Newport, stealing a horse brush, the early closing of shops, the many enterprises of C. Desmond and the 'Cambrian Youth' freak of nature.
- Author: Newport Cornucopia
- Tags: News

Welcome to another issue of The Newport Cornucopia where we dig through the newspapers archives for interesting news articles and adverts. All articles are posted verbatim and most headlines are original (headlines in quotes are my own).

## Sign up for The Newport Cornucopia

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![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2025/01/image-56.png)

## 'When the Polka Dance Arrived in Newport'

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-22-at-08.32.32.png)

[Monmouthshire Merlin, 19th October, 1844](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3424930/3424932?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

An [advert](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3424930/3424932?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk) appeared in the Monmouthshire Merlin in October, 1844 for Polka dancing lessons at the 'Music Saloon' on Commercial Street. The Polka dance was very new in the country having publicly debuted at Her Majesty's Theatre in London on 11th April, 1844\. 

The sister of Mr T.R. Price, the owner of the Music Saloon, had travelled to London to be taught by the city's first 'Professor in Town' and would return to provide lessons to the gentry of Newport. 

"Why is the Polka like bitter beer? Because there are so many hops in it! — [**Monmouthshire Merlin, 21st December, 1844*](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3424975/3424979/55/Polka?from=search&ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

Miss Price had returned the following month after her training and she started her Polka lessons in two varieties — National and Quadrille — on 14th November.

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/image-1.png)

[Monmouthshire Merlin, 9th November, 1844](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3424945/3424947/6/?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/image-2.png)

[Monmouthshire Merlin, 26th October, 1844](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3424935/3424937?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2025/01/image-56.png)

## Jack of All Trades at No. 12 Commercial Street

### The Many Enterprises of C. Desmond

A single printed trade circular from Victorian Newport reveals an astonishingly varied enterprise operating from No. 12 Commercial Street. Situated strategically "between the Westgate Hotel and Council House," the proprietor, C. Desmond, ran an establishment that went far beyond a standard grocer's shop.

At its core, the premises served as a grocery depot stocking provisions Desmond claimed to have secured following a personal inspection of the London tea and coffee markets. Alongside teas "warranted free from adulteration" and raw sugars, Desmond supplied Frys chocolate and cocoas, spices, snuffs, tobacco, and "Polka Cigars". Customers could also purchase medicinal tonic in the form of "Double Strong Jamaica Green Ginger Wine" (promoted as a remedy for gout, spasms, and cramp), stationery, and decorative paper hangings reduced by 15 per cent.

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-22-at-12.49.02-1.png)

Beyond retail goods, Desmond operated several distinct service enterprises under the same roof:

- **An Intelligence & Employment Office:** A registry matching domestic and commercial staff—from governesses and counting-house clerks to cooks and errand boys—with local employers, charging a two-shilling entrance fee.
- **A Circulating Library:** Lending works by popular contemporary authors, including Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, William Harrison Ainsworth, Frances Trollope, and Captain Frederick Marryat.
- **A Property Agency:** Run "on the London method," facilitating the rental, sale, and letting of local land, houses, and central apartments.
- **Commercial Coffee Rooms:** Offering refreshments, mock turtle and gravy soups by the pint or quart, private business rooms, and "well-aired beds" for travellers wishing to avoid the bustle of a traditional coaching inn.

Desmond acknowledged the sheer breadth of his ventures in the circular's preamble, admitting that while such promotional circulars were often seen as "the mere channel of falsehood and deceit," custom demanded he lay his wide-ranging trade before the town.

— [*Monmouthshire Merlin, 1st March, 1845*](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3425025/3425027?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2025/01/image-56.png)

## A Freak of Nature

"The Cambrian Youth" has been exhibiting himself in Newport during this week. There is a peculiar substance on the whole of his body, except his face and neck. In some places, the covering is of a horny and scaly substance and in others, of thick bristles, like porcupine quills, about half-an-inch in length. He has been in this extraordinary state since his birth, and, it is said, enjoys good health. 

— [*Monmouthshire Merlin, 30th May, 1846*](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3425325/3425328?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2025/01/image-56.png)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/IMG_4270.jpeg)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2025/01/image-56.png)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-07-at-18.21.00.png)

[Monmouthshire Merlin, 24th September, 1859](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3398676/3398681/29/?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2025/01/image-56.png)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2025/01/image-12.png)

### A Nice Couple

Jane Davies, an interesting, but rather vixenish-looking young wile, with an infant, in its night-clothes, in her arms, was charged with assaulting her husband, John Thomas Davies, letter carrier. 

**Wife**: I am not guilty he beat me first.  
**The Mayor**: Can't you settle this matter with your wife, Davies? It will he very discreditable to both of you, to expose your domestic differences in a public court.  
**Davies**: Why no, gentlemen, I can't live with her it's no use to try.  
**Wife**: And I can't live with him. He came home last Saturday morning in one of his tantrums, and beat me shamefully.  
**Husband**: Last Saturday morning, at half past nine, when I went home to breakfast, she threw a cup of coffee at me.  
**Wife, sharply**: You struck me first—you know You did.  
**Husband**: When I went in, she began to insult me. She said: Here I'll sit in this "humble cot," and make you maintain me, at six shillings a week.  
**Wife**: No such thing, you bad fellow; you beat me first; I'll swear it.  
**Husband**: Oh, you'll swear anything, and that the gentlemen know well.  
**The Mayor**: You are both pretty well acquainted with swearing, I think.  
**Husband**: She smashed the looking-glass all to pieces. She flung the kettle at me. I've tried her four times, and it's all no use. But she shan't hobble me any longer. No, I won't stand it no longer. I give her every indulgence a man could give a wife; but it's all no good.  
**Wife**: Oh, you bad fellow; it's no such thing. Here am I and the blessed babby, and you acting as you do.   
**Husband**: Give her as much drink as she likes, and she will sit down all day, and do nothing, instead of leaving my linen go to rags. Then she left the babby, when it was only a fortnight old—why, the beasts of the field wouldn't do so bad a thing. (Laughter.) Let any gentleman consider whether he could walk fourteen miles a day, on ten shillings a-week. I only get 14s. a week, and can't afford her more than 4s. a-week; but I'll cheerfully give her that, to get rid of such a thing.

**Case dismissed, Davies promising to allow the rib (sic) 4s. a-week.** 

— [*Monmouthshire Merlin, 14th July, 1849*](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3394681/3394685/59/?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

### Stealing a Horse-brush

Abraham Thomas was charged with stealing a horse-brush, the property of Mr. Edmund Jones, of the Parrot hotel, Commercial-street. Sergt. Lloyd said he had received the horse-brush (produced) from Mr. Greenland, of the Tradesmen's Arms, who gave him some information, upon which he apprehended the prisoner, whom he accused of having offered the brush for sale to Mr. Greenland. 

Prisoner said something about having picked it up but afterwards confessed that he had stolen it from the Parrot stable that afternoon, from poverty. Mr. Jones said it was his; and that the brush had cost him 5s. 6d. a few weeks ago. The ostler and Mr. Greenland added their evidence; and the prisoner, having elected to be tried by the magistrates, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to one month's hard labour.

— [*Monmouthshire Merlin, 10th October, 1855*](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3396537/3396539?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2025/01/image-56.png)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-07-at-18.29.47.png)

[Monmouthshire Merlin, 9th March, 1844](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3424781/3424784/7/?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2025/01/image-56.png)

## A Midnight Visit

 John Palmer, John Francis, and Horatio Fox, three young men, were charged with having been found on the premises of Mr. H. J. Groves, Stow-hill. Mr. Champ defended Palmer.

Mr. Groves said that on his reaching home at about one o'clock on Sunday morning his servant at first refused him admission and on finding it was him, opened the door, but said persons were about the premises. He had not been sitting down long, before he heard a noise, and an attempt to open one of the doors. He ran out, with the poker in his hand, and saw the three prisoners running off. He pursued and came up with them—one of them recognising him. He then got a policeman; and only now wanted to know what the party wanted there. 

Mr. Champ said his client did not deny being near, but not upon, Mr. Groves' premises. Mr. Matthews gave the highest character to Palmer and said he could not have been at Mr. Groves' place at the time stated, as he had but just left his business premises. The officer said if Palmer was not there, his shoes were; for the footprints corresponded exactly with his shoes. As no proof of felonious or improper intent was shown against the parties, they were discharged.

— [*Monmouthshire Merlin, 3rd October, 1855*](http://newspapers.library.wales/view/3396532/3396534?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

### Henry James Groves

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-21-at-08.29.55.png)

[Monmouthshire Merlin, 19th December, 1846](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3425469/3425471/9/?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

Henry James Groves, the man mentioned in the article, had a long musical career in Newport and appears to arrived in the town around 1846 when an advert was published mentioning him as the organist of St Paul's on Commercial Street and the late deputy organist of Gloucester Cathedral.

In 1847 he had a premises at 140 Commercial Street as a 'Professor of Music, Singing &c.' That premises today is to the left of Primark.

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-21-at-08.37.00.png)

In 1848 he was residing at 99 Stow Hill and whilst the numbers of the houses on the street today are odds and evens, they were originally sequential running up the right side to St Woolos and then back down the left side. A directory of 1878 places number 99 as five houses above Charles Street so it may have been the white house on the right in the photo. 

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-21-at-08.23.55.png)

[Monmouthshire Merlin, 26th March, 1864](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3400851/3400859/45/?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

After being organist at St Paul's he was then organist at St Woolos and regularly held concerts in the town into the early 1870s. in 1865 he opened a pianoforte shop in Tredegar Place which is the row of buildings on Bridge Street on the corner of Cambrian Road. The advert mentioned that he had moved further up the street to 'the second house above Victoria Place'. It *may* have been the building in the photo below. 

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-21-at-08.26.23.png)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2025/01/image-56.png)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-21-at-17.41.28.png)

An advert from [20th June 1851](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3395098?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk), although dated June 1850, mentioning that the wool fair was moving from the High Street to the 'New Market'

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2025/01/image-56.png)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-22-at-08.44.14.png)

[Monmouthshire Merlin, 19th October, 1844](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3424930/3424932?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

## Closing of Shops

It is gratifying to perceive that the drapers and grocers of Newport have published their intention to close their shops at eight o'clock each evening- Saturdays excepted—from Monday next to the first of April, 1845\. We hope this kind but just concession by employers, will be rightly estimated by the assistants, who will now find opportunities both of rendering effectual aid, by membership, to the Mechanics Institution, and of improving themselves.

— [*Monmouthshire Merlin, 19th October, 1844*](http://newspapers.library.wales/view/3424930/3424933?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2025/01/image-56.png)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-22-at-12.46.34.png)

[Monmouthshire Merlin, 26th October, 1844](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3424935/3424937?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2025/01/image-56.png)

## "Not London Slop-Made": High Street Tailoring at Thomas Davies

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-23-at-08.12.51.png)

[Monmouthshire Merlin, 30th May, 1846](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3425325/3425327?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)

In 1841, tailor and outfitter Thomas Davies set up shop at 11 High Street, right next door to the Carpenters’ Arms. Aiming to lure Newport customers away from both pricey metropolitan imports and shoddy mass manufacturing, Davies promised the cut, style, and quality of London’s most fashionable houses—at roughly half the cost.

To pull this off, he ran on a strict cash-only model: "Ready Money and small profits," betting that high turnover would make up for tight margins.

A standout feature of Davies' advertisement was his pitch for the Ready-Made Department. Ready-to-wear clothing in the mid-nineteenth century carried a poor reputation, dominated by what the trade called "slop"—cheap, poorly stitched, off-the-peg garments churned out by exploited pieceworkers in city sweatshops. Davies tackled this stigma directly, assuring customers that his garments were:

> *"Cut and Made equal to bespoke, not London slop-made."*

His seasonal stock covered working-class staples alongside bourgeois finery: linen, jean, and drill jackets from 3s., alongside heavy-duty moleskin, cord, and cantoon trousers, velvet Chesterfields, and satin or cashmere waistcoats. He even carried waterproof hats and French-style satin nap hats, proudly advertising them as "quite free from the offensive smell so common to French hats".

The advert closes with an egalitarian sales policy printed in both English and Welsh:

> *"One Price and no Abatement. / Un Pris i Bawb."*

At a time when haggling over prices was standard practice and class-based pricing common, Davies promised fixed pricing for all, tipping his hat directly to Newport’s Welsh-speaking trade.

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2025/01/image-56.png)

![](https://www.newportcornucopia.co.uk/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-16-at-10.05.19.png)

[Monmouthshire Merlin, 6th August, 1836](https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3392261/3392263?ref=newportcornucopia.co.uk)