Another Look at Dic Penderyn
Introduction
Dic Penderyn is a Welsh working class hero, hanged for stabbing a soldier during the Merthyr Riots in 1831. Dic's life story is sketchy. It is known that his real name was Richard Lewis and that his age at death would put his birth around 1808-1810. It is believed that he may have been born in the Aberavon area and that his Father was named Lewis Lewis who became a collier when in Merthyr. The family were possibly members of the Dyffren Carmel Methodist Chapel, whose records have not survived, thus explaining why Dic's baptism has never been found.
An early biographer (Islwyn ap Nicholas) invented lots of details about Dic's early life which have sometimes been taken as fact but which are actually fiction. An anonymous report in the paper "Y Drysorfa" in 1919 claimed that the Lewis’s came from Pyle. Later research shows that this refers to Dic's brother John Lewis who worked as a lime burner in Pyle after Dic's death. Alexander Cordell, the novelist, wrote a story called "The Fire People" about the life of Dic. He placed Dic as the son of Lewis and Mary Lewis of Pyle. This too has been disproved. This Lewis was a Cordwainer and was baptising children in Pyle long after Dic's family had moved to Merthyr. Furthermore, if Dic was from Pyle, why was he taken to be an Aberavon hero and buried in St Mary's Church there? He must surely have some strong connection with the town?
As must be expected with local folk heroes, many people claim descent from Dic but trace their family back to the Pyle Lewis’s or assume Islywn ap Nicholas's biography to be true. No-one, to my knowledge, has yet been able to find any evidence to prove a connection with Dic Penderyn. I cannot prove a family link myself, nor can I prove that Dic was from Aberavon. The purpose of this article to give yet another alternative version of the Dic Penderyn story.