Young James began his working life as a puddler in the local ironworks - an arduous job at the basic level turning pig iron into wrought iron. A mis-spelling of his name by an immigration official had recorded the name as Davis and this was to be the family name thereafter. While James and his mother with brothers and sisters waited on the quayside before catching a train to his father, an incident gave a definitive form to the way his life would develop. Recording this in the Monmouthshire Local History Journal, Miss S Twiston-Davies, a freelance journalist and former BBC scriptwriter says: “Their arrival was marred by a thief who stole their mother’s possessions on the quayside.