| Edward Carroll (1824 - 1900) | >> |
Edward Carroll was born on the 24th November 1824 in Co. Clare, Ireland, probably in the Parish of Liscannor, although possibly in Ennis. His father was John Carroll, a carpenter by trade who is reputed to have been born in Co. Tipperary and to have spent some time in Co. Wexford, but the name of his mother is unknown.
Very little is known about Edward�s early life. He does seem, however, to have set out to follow in his father�s footsteps because subsequent records show that he was, by trade, a sawyer. Apart from that there are a couple of stories that have been handed down that offer us some clues to his young adulthood and why he may have left his home country for Carmarthen. According to one, Edward was serving in the army in Ireland and was brought over to Wales to help quell riots that had broken out between local Protestants and the Irish Catholics who had been steadily moving into the area and now outnumbered them. According to this account Edward was first sent to London to be trained by the Metropolitan Police before returning to Carmarthenshire to take up his post in the County Constabulary.
The other story about Edward�s early years states that he first joined the Irish Constabulary in Dublin on the 15th May 1845, leaving two years later on the 9th of April 1847 having suffered from fever due, presumably, to the Potato Famine. (Irish Constabulary records, however, do not list him.) This account goes on to say that on the 12th of April 1847 he was accepted into the Carmarthenshire County Constabulary by the Chief Constable, Capt. Scott, in Carmarthen and was sent from there to Conwil Elfed six miles to the north.
As to how he got to Wales, yet another tale says that Edward, described as tall with red hair (he was in fact 5ft. 10 with brown hair and blue eyes), and another man (possibly his brother, Michael), rowed there from Ireland in an open rowing boat. It was during this crossing that he is meant to have dropped the �O� from the original surname of O�Carroll into the Irish Sea leaving us with the current, shortened form.
What is beyond doubt, however, is that by the late 1840s Edward was a Police Constable and living in Conwil Elfed. He was staying in the Blue Bell Hotel opposite the home of the Reverend David Evans, Baptist Minister of Ffynonhenry (the Baptist parish in which Conwil is situated), and it was the Reverend�s daughter, Rachel, who would become Edward�s first wife. Both the Reverend and Mrs. Evans strongly objected to Edward�s courtship of their daughter, and on one occasion when Mrs Evans caught them talking, she ordered Rachel indoors and then proceeded to cane Edward with her stick. Edward would have been in police uniform at the time, even if off duty, and whilst the reinforced top hat on his head and the leather stock around his neck may have offered some protection against an attack by criminals, they were useless against the displeasure of Mrs. Margaret Evans! Some time after this incident Rachel escaped the parental home by climbing down a ladder and eloped with Edward to Carmarthen. There she stayed in Lammas Street for fourteen days until, on the 22nd of September 1848, they were married at St. David�s Church by special licence.
The Blue Bell Inn in Cynwyl Elfed, Carmarthenshire
The Reverend David Evans was a radical preacher (he had even been arrested in the pulpit for his views), and he and his wife, Margaret, objected to Edward because he was a Catholic. Although Catholic emancipation had come in 1829, anti-catholic feelings still existed and could surface at any time, as happened on Guy Fawkes Day 1850, when the windows of some Catholic churches were smashed and effigies of the pope burnt. In the end, however, the Evanses did come to accept their daughter�s marriage.
Being a Catholic, an Irishman and a policeman, Edward was probably no stranger to such prejudices to the extent that his being treated kindly by one of the locals may have been the cause of his remarking in the Haverfordwest Police Station Diary in January 1862 that the landlord of the Lamb and Flag in Llangwm, Owen Jenkins, and his wife were always �very civil� to him when he called by there.
Police forces were still fairly new in South West Wales when Edward arrived in 1847 (the Pembrokeshire Constabulary wouldn�t be formed for another ten years) and were viewed with suspicion by criminals and the law-abing alike, the former for obvious reasons and the latter because they saw the police as an infringement of their liberties. That Irishmen were not very popular was clearly seen in 1851 when Irish navvies building the railway into Carmarthen were driven out of Ferryside by an army of local men armed with scythes tied to poles and other improvised weapons. (Paddy did, however, get his revenge: the Carmarthen Journal reported that, once work had resumed on the railway, a couple of well-built Irishmen took a walk through Ferryside attacking any man they came across, knocking the teeth out of one and leaving another for dead, unconcious in the street.)