London Labour and the London Poor: Selection (Classics)

by Henry Mayhew

  Some of the women were as glib and systematic in their answers as the men and boys. Others were much abashed. Among the glib-tongued women, there seemed no shamefacedness. Some of the women admitted here, however, have acquitted themselves well when provided (through charitable institutions) with situations. The absence of shame which I have remarked upon is the more notable, because these women were questioned by men, with other men standing by. Some of the women were good-looking; and when asked how old they were, they answered at once, and, judging by their appearance, never understated their years. Many I should have pronounced younger than they stated. Vanity, even with silliness and prettiness, does not seem to exist in their utter destitution.

  All the regular processes having been observed (and the women have a place for their ablutions after the same fashion as the men), the applicants admitted enter their several wards. The women’s ward is at the top of the building. It supplies accommodation, or berths, for 95 women in an apartment 35 yards in length and 6 in width. At one corner of this long chamber, a few steps lead down to what is called ‘the nursery’, which has 30 berths. Most of these berths may be described as double, and are large enough to accommodate a mother and her children. The children, when I saw them, were gambolling about in some of the berths as merry as children elsewhere, or perhaps merrier, for they were experiencing the unwonted luxuries of warmth and food. The matron can supply these women and their children with gruel at her discretion; and it appeared to be freely given. Some who had children seemed to be the best of all there in point of physiognomy. They had not, generally, the stolid, stupid, indifferent, or shameless look of many of the other women; it was as though the motherly feeling had somewhat humanized them. Some of the better sort of women spoke so low as to be hardly audible. Among them were, indeed, many decent-looking females.

  The men’s wards are the Chapel Ward (for the better sort of persons), containing 90 berths, one line being ranged 2 berths deep; the Lower Ward, containing 120 berths; the Boys’ Ward, containing 60 berths; and the Straw Loft, 40. There is a walk alongside the berths in each ward. What is called the Boys’ Ward is not confined to boys: it used to be so, but they were found so noisy that they could no longer be allowed a separate apartment. They are now scattered through the several wards with the men, the officers arranging them, and varying the arrangements as they consider best. Before there can be any retirement to rest, each man, woman, and child must be examined by a surgeon. Whilst I was present, a young assistant conducted the investigation in a careful, yet kindly and gentlemanly manner. Indeed, I was much struck with the sympathy and gentleness he displayed; and it was evident from the respect of the people, that kindness and consideration are the very qualities to impress and control the class he has to deal with. All afflicted with cutaneous disorders (and there were but five men so afflicted) were lodged apart from the others. Bronchitis and rheumatism are the prevalent disorders, occasioned by their exposure to the weather, and their frequent insufficiency of food. Ninety per cent of them, I was told by Mr Gay, the intelligent surgeon of the establishment, might have coughs at some periods, but of that they thought nothing. Women advanced in pregnancy, and men with any serious (especially any infectious) ailment, are not permitted to sleep in the Refuge; but the institution, if they have been admitted, finds them lodgings elsewhere.

  Each person admitted receives in the evening half-a-pound of the best bread. Every child has the same allowance. If a woman be admitted with four children, she receives two half-pounds of bread – a half-pound for every one, no matter if one be at the breast, as is not unfrequently the case. The same quantity of bread is given in the mornings. In the night that I was present 430 were admitted, and consequently (including the evening and morning allowances), 430 lbs. of bread were disposed of. On Sundays, when Divine Service is celebrated by a clergyman of the Church of England, three half-pounds of bread and three ounces of cheese are distributed to each inmate, children and babies included. I witnessed a number of young men eating the bread administered to them. They took it with a keen appetite; nothing was heard among them but the champing of the teeth, as they chewed large mouthfuls of the food.

  The berths, both in the men’s and women’s wards, are on the ground, and divided one from another only by a wooden partition about a foot high; a similar partition is at the head and feet; so that in all the wards it looks as if there were a series of coffins arranged in long catacombs. This burial-like aspect is the more striking when the inmates are all asleep, as they were, with the rarest exceptions, when I walked round at ten o’clock at night. Each sleeper has for covering a large basil (dressed sheep-skin), such as cobblers use for aprons. As they lie in long rows, in the most profound repose, with these dark brown wrappers about them, they present the uniform look and arrangement of a long line of mummies. Each bed in the coffin, or trough-like division, is made of waterproof cloth, stuffed with hay, made so as to be easily cleaned. It is soft and pleasant to the touch. Formerly the beds were plain straw, but the present plan has been in use for seven years. In this Refuge only three men have died since it was established, thirty years ago. One fell dead at the sink-stone while washing himself; the other two were found dead in their berths during the prevalence of the cholera.

  Every part of the building was scrupulously clean. On the first night of the opening, the matron selects from the women who have sought an asylum there, three, who are engaged for the season to do the household work. This is done during the day when the inmates are absent. All must leave by eight in the morning, the doors being open for their departure at five, in case any wish to quit early – as some do for the chance of a job at Covent-garden, Farringdon, or any of the early markets. The three women-helpers receive 7s. a week each, the half of that sum being paid them in money every Saturday, and the other half being retained and given to each of them, in a round sum, at the closing of the Refuge. The premises in which this accommodation to the houseless is now supplied were formerly a hat manufactory on a large scale; but the lath and plaster of the ceilings, and the partitions, have been removed, so that what was a suite of apartments on one floor is now a long ward. The rafters of the ceilings are minutely whitewashed, as are the upright beams used in the construction of the several rooms before the place was applied to its present charitable end. Those now are in the nature of pillars, and add to the catacomb-like aspect that I have spoken of. In different parts of each ward are very large grates, in which bright fires are kept glowing and crackling; and as these are lighted some time before the hour of opening, the place has a warmth and cosiness which must be very grateful to those who have encountered the cold air all the day, and perhaps all the night before.

  In order to arrive at a correct estimate as to the number of the really poor and houseless who availed themselves of the establishment (to afford nightly shelter to whom the refuge was originally instituted by the benevolent founder, Mr Hick, the City mace-bearer) I consulted with the superintendent as to the class of persons he found most generally seeking refuge there. These were – among the men – mostly labourers out of work – agricultural, railway, and dock; discharged artisans, chiefly carpenters and painters; sailors, either cast away or without their registry tickets; broken-down tradesmen, clerks, shopmen, and errand-boys, who either through illness or misfortune had been deprived of their situations; and, above all, Irish immigrants, who had been starved out of their own country. These he considered the really deserving portion of the inmates for whom the institution was designed. Among the females, the better and largest class of poor were needlewomen, servants, charwomen, garden-women, sellers of laces in the street, and occasionally a beggar-woman. Under his guidance I selected such as appeared the most meritorious among the classes he had enumerated, and now subjoin the statements of a portion of the number.

  The first of the houseless that I saw was a railway navigator. He was a fine, stoutly-built fellow, with a fresh-coloured open countenance, and flaxen hair – indeed, altogether a splen
did specimen of the Saxon labourer. He was habited in a short blue smockfrock, yellow in parts with clay, and he wore the heavy high lace-up boots, so characteristic of the tribe. These were burst, and almost soleless with long wear.

  The poor fellow told the old story of the labourer compelled to squander the earnings at the public-house of his master:

  ‘I have been a navvy for about eighteen years. The first work that I done was on the Manchester and Liverpool. I was a lad then. I used to grease the railway waggons, and got about 1s. 6d. a day. There we had a tommy-shop, and we had to go there to get our bit of victuals, and they used to charge us an extra price. The next place I had after that was on the London and Brummagem. There I went as horse-driver, and had 2s. 6d. a day. Things was dear then, and at the tommy-shop they was much dearer; for there was tommy-shops on every line then; and indeed every contractor and sub-contractor had his shop that he forced his men to deal at, or else he wouldn’t have them in his employ. At the tommy-shop we was charged half as much again as we should have had to pay elsewhere; and it’s the same now, wherever these tommy-shops is. What the contractors, you see, can’t make out of the company, they fleeces out of the men. Well, sir, I worked on that line through all the different contracts till it was finished: sometimes I was digging, sometimes shovelling. I was mostly at work at open cuttings. All this time I was getting from 2s. 6d. to 3s. and 3s. 6d. a day; that was the top price; and if I’d had the ready-money to lay out myself, I could have done pretty well, and maybe have put a penny or two by against a rainy day: but the tommy-shop and the lodging-house took it all out of us. You see, the tommy-shop found us in beer, and they would let us drink away all our earnings there if we pleased, and when pay-time came we should have nothing to take. If we didn’t eat and drink at the tommy-shop we should have no work. Of an evening, we went to the tommy-shop after the drink, and they’d keep drawing beer for us there as long as we’d have anything coming to us next pay-day (we were paid every fortnight, and sometimes every month), and when we had drunk away all that would be coming to us, why they’d turn us out. The contractor, who keeps these tommy-shops, is generally a gentleman, a man of great property, who takes some four, five, or seven lengths to do. Well, with such goings on, in course there wasn’t no chance in the world for us to save a halfpenny. We had a sick fund among ourselves, but our masters never cared nothing about us further than what they could get out of us at their tommy-shops. They were never satisfied if a man didn’t spend all his money with them; if we had a penny to take at the month’s end, they didn’t like it; and now the half of us has to walk about and starve, or beg, or go to the union. After I left the Brummagem line, I went on to the Great Western. I went to work at Maidenhead. There it was on the same system, and on the same rules – the poor man being fleeced and made drunk by his master. Sometimes the contractor would lot the work out to some sub-contractor, and he, after the men had worked for a month, would run away, and we should never see the colour of his money. After the Great Western, I went into Lancashire, on the Manchester and Oldham branch. I started there to work at nights, and there I worked a month for the contractors, when they went bankrupt, and we never received a farthing but what we had got out of the tommy-shop. Well, I came away from there, and got on to the London and Brighton, and I worked all up and down that, saving the tunnels; and it was the same there – the tommy-shop and imposition was wherever we went. Well, from there I went on to the London and Dover. It was monthly payments on that. There, too, I worked for a month, when the sub-contractor runned away with all the men’s money – 900l., sir, it were calculated. After that another party took it, and it was the same all the way up and down – the tommy-shop and beer as much as we liked, on credit. Then I went on to the London and Cambridge, and there it was the same story over and over again. Just about this time, railway work began to get slack, and then farmers’ work was slack too; and you see that made things worse for the navvies, for all came to look for employment on the railroads. This is about seven years ago. After that some more fresh lines started throughout Lancashire and Yorkshire, and trade being bad in them parts, all the weavers applied for work on the railways, and the regular navvies had a hard time of it then. But we managed to get on somehow – kept lingering on – till about three years agone, when trade got a little bit better. That was about the time when things was very dear, and our wages was rose to 3s. 6d. a day.: they’d been only 2s. 6d. and 3s. before that; and we did much better when our pay was increased, because we had the ready-money then, and there was no tommy-shops that summer, for the company wouldn’t have them on that line. At the end of that year the work was all stopped, on account of the Chartist rising, and then there was hundreds of men walking about begging their bread from door to door, with nothing to do. After this, (that’s two years ago, the back end of this year,) I went to work on the London and York. Here we had only 2s. 9d. a day. and we had only four days’ work in the week to do besides; and then there was a tommy-shop, where we were forced to get our victuals and drink: so you see we were very bad off then. I stopped on this line (for work was very scarce, and I thought myself lucky to have any) till last spring. Then all the work on it stopped, and I dare say 2,000 men were thrown out of employ in one day. They were all starving, the heap of them, or next door to it. I went away from there over to the Brummagem and Beechley branch line. But there I found things almost as bad as what I left before. Big, strong, able-bodied men were working for 1s. 8d. a day, and from that to 2s.: that was the top price; for wages had come down, you see, about one-half, and little or no work to do at that price; and tommy-shop and beer, sir, as before, out of the little we did get. The great cause of our wages being cut down was through the work being so slack in the country; everybody was flocking to them parts for employment, and the contractors, seeing a quantity of men walking backwards and forwards, dropped the wages: if one man wouldn’t work at the price, there was hundreds ready to do it. Besides, provisions was very cheap, and the contractors knew we could live on less, and do their work quite as well. Whenever provisions goes down our wages does, too; but when they goes up, the contractors is very slow in rising them. You see, when they find so many men walking about without work, the masters have got the chance of the poor man. Three year agone this last winter – I think it was ’46 – provisions was high and wages was good; and in the summer of the very same year, food got cheap again, and our wages dropped from 3s. 6d. to 3s. and 2s. 9d. The fall in our wages took place immediately the food got cheaper. The contractors said, as we could live for less, we must do the work for less. I left the Brummagem and Beechley line, about two months before the Christmas before last, and then I came to Copenhagen-fields, on the London and York – the London end, sir; and there I was till last March, when we were all paid off, about 600 on us; and I went back to Barnet, and there I worked till the last seven weeks, and had 2s. 9d. a day for what, four years ago, I had 3s. 6d. for; and I could only have three or four days’ work in the week then. Whilst I was there, I hurted my leg, and was laid up a month. I lived all that time on charity; on what the chaps would come and give me. One would give a shilling, another sixpence, another a shilling, just as they could spare it; and poorly they could do that, God knows! I couldn’t declare on to the sick fund, because I hadn’t no bones broken. Well, when I come to look for work, and that’s three weeks agone, when I could get about again, the work was all stopped, and I couldn’t get none to do. Then I come to London, and I’ve looked all about for a job, and I can’t find nothing to do. I went to a lodging-house in the Borough, and I sold all my things – shovel and grafting-tool and all, to have a meal of food. When all my things was gone, I didn’t know where to go. One of my mates told me of this Refuge, and I have been here two nights. All that I have had to eat since then is the bread night and morning they gives us here. This will be the last night I shall have to stop here, and after that I don’t know what I shall do. There’s no railway work – that is, there’s none to speak of, seeing the thou
sands of men that’s walking about with nothing to do, and not knowing where to lay their heads. If I could get any interest, I should like to go away as an emigrant. I shouldn’t like to be sent out of my native country as a rogue and a vagabone; but I’m tired of stopping here and if I can’t get away, why I must go home and go to the parish, and it’s hard for a young man that’s willing and able like me to work, and be forced to want because he can’t get it. I know there is thousands – thousands, sir, like I am – I know there is, in the very same condition as I am at this moment: yes, I know there is.’ [This he said with a very great feeling and emphasis.] ‘We are all starving. We are all willing to work, but it ain’t to be had. This country is getting very bad for labour; it’s so overrun with Irish that the Englishman hasn’t a chance in his own land to live. Ever since I was nine years old I’ve got my own living, but now I’m dead beat, though I’m only twenty-eight next August.’