WILLIAM PRICE

Born this day 1800 in Rudry, Caerphilly,
William Price, physician and eccentric.
Price trained as a doctor in Caerphilly and after qualifying from the Royal College of Surgeons in London in 1821 he returned to Wales to practice. He became involved in Chartist politics, becoming a local leader, and after the Chartist march on Newport in 1839 he fled to France disguised as a woman. During his time in France, he visited the Louvre museum where he became highly interested in a stone with a Greek inscription that he interpreted as a prophecy given by an ancient Welsh prince named Alun, who would liberate the Welsh people. Feeling that that the prophecy applied to him, Price returned to Wales to free his people from the English-dominated authorities.
Upon his return, he began to get increasingly interested in Welsh cultural activities. He scorned orthodox religion, claimed to be an arch-druid and performed ancient rites on the Pontypridd rocking-stone. Price was also responsible for the building of the famous 'Round houses' in Pontypridd, persuading a local builder to build them even though he didn't own the land. At this time he had taken to wearing a white tunic covering a scarlet waistcoat, green cloth trousers and a huge fox skin hat; he neither shaved nor cut his hair. After another spell in France, he returned and opened a medical practice in Llantrisant. In 1881 at the age of 81 he married Gwenllian Llewellyn, who was only 21. She bore him a son, who Price named Iesu Grist (Jesus Christ). However, the infant died after five months, and Price decided to cremate his son’s body upon the summit of a hill outside Llantrisant. Cremation at the time was unlawful and Price was arrested and put on trial for the illegal disposal of a corpse. He successfully argued that there was no legislation that specifically outlawed it and this paved the way for the Cremation Act of 1902. On his release, Price returned to Llantrisant to find a crowd of supporters cheering for his victory and in 1892 he erected a pole, which was over sixty feet high with a crescent moon symbol at its peak, on top of the hill where the cremation had taken place.
William Price died on 23rd January 1893 and 20,000 people attended his cremation on a pyre of two tons of coal on a hillside overlooking Llantrisant.