He was born on the 20th of October 1836, so that he had just completed his fifty-ninth year. His parents were poor and respectable, and on his mother's side he was closely connected with the celebrated Welsh poet and dramatist, “Twm o'r Nant." However, he did not make much of the relationship, and it was only his most intimate friends who knew anything of it.

When he was only six months old his father and two of his elder brothers were drowned when the water burst in the old Argoed Colliery in March, 1837, and thenceforward he had but a mother, and elder sister, and a brother some few years his senior to depend upon, and we have heard him speak repeatedly of the hardships which the family bore in the winter of 1846-7, just before the repeal of the Corn Laws, when only 31bs of flour could be had for a shilling, and everything else was dear in proportion.