Ernst Georg Ravenstein mapped the distribution of welsh speakers in Wales in 1878 (The Celtic Languages of the British Isles: A Statistical Survey). He suggested that 90% of welsh speakers in the rural parts of Ceredigion spoke only Welsh. In the town of Caernarfon a third of the town were Welsh monolinguals (and 10% spoke only English). He says there were 300 english-only speakers in Bangor. He describes Welsh being used "almost universally" for business there.

He doesn't actually go into much detail about Anglesey, but he notes that:

knowledge of English is more restricted in that county than in any other of similar extent throughout Wales. I am even assured that Welsh "is studied to a greater extent by the younger generation than formerly, and that even English immigrants learn a little Welsh".

Outside of the north west, parts of the country - south Pembs, Radnorshire - spoke very little Welsh (mostly due to historical reasons). Border regions - such as Flintshire - maintained large billingual populations and most people would conduct market business in English while worshipping in Welsh.

Welsh literacy (and literary output) was high thanks to networks of non-conformist Sunday Schools so Welsh speakers would have felt connected to a wider welsh society even if they were in the minority in their community.

In Anglesey and North West Wales in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, knowing only welsh would have been, on a day-to-day basis, less socially isolating and inconvenient than not knowing welsh at all. Equally in other parts of Wales, knowing only Welsh might exclude you from social advancement and possibly public life. Anyone who had any ambitions beyond Wales would have needed to learn English as well as most people in higher-status jobs.

And public institutions, like the courts, used English, so speaking only Welsh would have been a major disadvantage there.

But that doesn't necessarily mean Welsh people thought Welsh was a burden. On the contrary Ravenstein concludes his report:

There is an abiding love of Welsh "which clings to the people with great tenacity," says one of my Glamorganshire correspondents. The Welshman may market in English, but he prefers his religion in a Welsh garb, gives a preference to Welsh reading, and cultivates Welsh at his fireside.

Of course the language is sustaining serious losses from day to day wherever Welsh and English come into contact. Vast tracts, formerly inhabited by Welsh speaking people, have been lost, and others will follow. But a language to which the people who speak it cling with affection dies a slow death, and Welsh may survive for centuries to come, if not for ever.

Welsh parents had long recognised the value of speaking English (alongside Welsh) as a means to social advancement - the 1847 Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales (immortalised as Brad y Llyfrau Gleision - The Treachery of the Blue Books) - claimed that the Welsh peasantry were "anxious" to be taught English - but also there was a "common view among established and dissenting clergy" that being billingual was superior to being monolingual (in either English or Welsh) particularly given how important Welsh was to spiritual knowledge.