Part 44

The rest of the histories may easily be imagined, for there was a painful uniformity in the stories of all the children: they were either the children of the very poor, who, by their own improvidence or some overwhelming calamity, had been reduced to the extremity of distress, or else they were orphans, and compelled from utter destitution to seek for the means of appeasing their hunger in the mud of the river. That the majority of this class are ignorant, and without even the rudiments of education, and that many of them from time to time are committed to prison for petty thefts, cannot be wondered at. Nor can it even excite our astonishment that, once within the walls of a prison, and finding how much more comfortable it is than their previous condition, they should return to it repeatedly. As for the females growing up under such circumstances, the worst may be anticipated of them; and in proof of this I have found, upon inquiry, that very many of the unfortunate creatures who swell the tide of prostitution in Ratcliff-highway, and other low neighbourhoods in the East of London, have originally been mud-larks; and only remained at that occupation till such time as they were capable of adopting the more easy and more lucrative life of the prostitute.

As to the numbers and earnings of the mud-larks, the following calculations fall short of, rather than exceed, the truth. From Execution Dock to the lower part of Limehouse Hole, there are 14 stairs or landing-places, by which the mud-larks descend to the shore in order to pursue their employment. There are about as many on the opposite side of the water similarly frequented.

At King James’ Stairs, in Wapping Wall, which is nearly a central position, from 40 to 50 mud-larks go down daily to the river; the mud-larks “using” the other stairs are not so numerous. If, therefore, we reckon the number of stairs on both sides of the river at 28, and the average number of mud-larks frequenting them at 10 each, we shall have a total of 280. Each mud-lark, it has been shown, earns on an average 3_d._ a day, or 1_s._ 6_d._ per week; so that the annual earnings of each will be 3_l._ 18_s._, or say 4_l._, a year, and hence the gross earnings of the 280 will amount to rather more than 1000_l._ per annum.

But there are, in addition to the mud-larks employed in the neighbourhood of what may be called the pool, many others who work down the river at various places as far as Blackwall, on the one side, and at Deptford, Greenwich, and Woolwich, on the other. These frequent the neighbourhoods of the various “yards” along shore, where vessels are being built; and whence, at certain times, chips, small pieces of wood, bits of iron, and copper nails, are washed out into the river. There is but little doubt that this portion of the class earn much more than the mud-larks of the pool, seeing that they are especially convenient to the places where the iron vessels are constructed; so that the presumption is, that the number of mud-larks “at work” on the banks of the Thames (especially if we include those above bridge), and the value of the property extracted by them from the mud of the river, may be fairly estimated at double that which is stated above, or say 550 gaining 2000_l._ per annum.

As an illustration of the doctrines I have endeavoured to enforce throughout this publication, I cite the following history of one of the above class. It may serve to teach those who are still sceptical as to the degrading influence of circumstances upon the poor, that many of the humbler classes, if placed in the same easy position as ourselves, would become, perhaps, quite as “respectable” members of society.

The lad of whom I speak was discovered by me now nearly two years ago “mud-larking” on the banks of the river near the docks. He was a quick, intelligent little fellow, and had been at the business, he told me, about three years. He had taken to mud-larking, he said, because his clothes were too bad for him to look for anything better. He worked every day, with 20 or 30 boys, who might all be seen at daybreak with their trowsers tucked up, groping about, and picking out the pieces of coal from the mud on the banks of the Thames. He went into the river up to his knees, and in searching the mud he often ran pieces of glass and long nails into his feet. When this was the case, he went home and dressed the wounds, but returned to the river-side directly, “for should the tide come up,” he added, “without my having found something, why I must starve till next low tide.” In the very cold weather he and his other shoeless companions used to stand in the hot water that ran down the river side from some of the steam-factories, to warm their frozen feet.

At first he found it difficult to keep his footing in the mud, and he had known many beginners fall in. He came to my house, at my request, the morning after my first meeting with him. It was the depth of winter, and the poor little fellow was nearly destitute of clothing. His trousers were worn away up to his knees, he had no shirt, and his legs and feet (which were bare) were covered with chilblains. On being questioned by me he gave the following account of his life:--

He was fourteen years old. He had two sisters, one fifteen and the other twelve years of age. His father had been dead nine years. The man had been a coal-whipper, and, from getting his work from one of the publican employers in those days, had become a confirmed drunkard. When he married he held a situation in a warehouse, where his wife managed the first year to save 4_l._ 10_s._ out of her husband’s earnings; but from the day he took to coal-whipping she had never saved one halfpenny, indeed she and her children were often left to starve. The man (whilst in a state of intoxication) had fallen between two barges, and the injuries he received had been so severe that he had lingered in a helpless state for three years before his death. After her husband’s decease the poor woman’s neighbours subscribed 1_l._ 5_s._ for her; with this sum she opened a greengrocer’s shop, and got on very well for five years.

When the boy was nine years old his mother sent him to the Red Lion school at Green-bank, near Old Gravel-lane, Ratcliffe-highway; she paid 1_d._ a week for his learning. He remained there for a year; then the potato-rot came, and his mother lost upon all she bought. About the same time two of her customers died 30_s._ in her debt; this loss, together with the potato-disease, completely ruined her, and the whole family had been in the greatest poverty from that period. Then she was obliged to take all her children from their school, that they might help to keep themselves as best they could. Her eldest girl sold fish in the streets, and the boy went to the river-side to “pick up” his living. The change, however, was so great that shortly afterwards the little fellow lay ill eighteen weeks with the ague. As soon as the boy recovered his mother and his two sisters were “taken bad” with a fever. The poor woman went into the “Great House,” and the children were taken to the Fever Hospital. When the mother returned home she was too weak to work, and all she had to depend on was what her boy brought from the river. They had nothing to eat and no money until the little fellow had been down to the shore and picked up some coals, selling them for a trifle. “And hard enough he had to work for what he got, poor boy,” said his mother to me on a future occasion, sobbing; “still he never complained, but was quite proud when he brought home enough for us to get a bit of meat with; and when he has sometimes seen me down-hearted, he has clung round my neck, and assured me that one day God would see us cared for if I would put my trust in Him.” As soon as his mother was well enough she sold fruit in the streets, or went out washing when she could get a day’s work.

The lad suffered much from the pieces of broken glass in the mud. Some little time before I met with him he had run a copper nail into his foot. This lamed him for three months, and his mother was obliged to carry him on her back every morning to the doctor. As soon, however, as he could “hobble” (to use his mother’s own words) he went back to the river, and often returned (after many hours’ hard work in the mud) with only a few pieces of coal, not enough to sell even to get them a bit of bread. One evening, as he was warming his feet in the water that ran from a steam factory, he heard some boys talking about the Ragged School in High-street, Wapping.

“They was saying what they used to learn there,” added the boy. “They asked me to come along with them for it was great fun. They told me that all the boys used to be laughing and making game of the master. They said they used to put out the gas and chuck the slates all about. They told me, too, that there was a good fire there, so I went to have a warm and see what it was like. When I got there the master was very kind to me. They used to give us tea-parties, and to keep us quiet they used to show us the magic lantern. I soon got to like going there, and went every night for six months. There was about 40 or 50 boys in the school. The most of them was thieves, and they used to go thieving the coals out of barges along shore, and cutting the ropes off ships, and going and selling it at the rag-shops. They used to get 3/4_d._ a lb. for the rope when dry, and 1/2_d._ when wet. Some used to steal pudding out of shops and hand it to those outside, and the last boy it was handed to would go off with it. They used to steal bacon and bread sometimes as well. About half of the boys at the school was thieves. Some had work to do at ironmongers, lead-factories, engineers, soap-boilers, and so on, and some had no work to do and was good boys still. After we came out of school at nine o’clock at night, some of the bad boys would go a thieving, perhaps half-a-dozen and from that to eight would go out in a gang together. There was one big boy of the name of C----; he was 18 years old, and is in prison now for stealing bacon; I think he is in the House of Correction. This C---- used to go out of school before any of us, and wait outside the door as the other boys came out. Then he would call the boys he wanted for his gangs on one side, and tell them where to go and steal. He used to look out in the daytime for shops where things could be ‘prigged,’ and at night he would tell the boys to go to them. He was called the captain of the gangs. He had about three gangs altogether with him, and there were from six to eight boys in each gang. The boys used to bring what they stole to C----, and he used to share it with them. I belonged to one of the gangs. There were six boys altogether in my gang; the biggest lad, that knowed all about the thieving, was the captain of the gang I was in, and C---- was captain over him and over all of us.

“There was two brothers of them; you seed them, sir, the night you first met me. The other boys, as was in my gang, was B---- B----, and B---- L----, and W---- B----, and a boy we used to call ‘Tim;’ these, with myself, used to make up one of the gangs, and we all of us used to go a thieving every night after school-hours. When the tide would be right up, and we had nothing to do along shore, we used to go thieving in the daytime as well. It was B---- B----, and B---- L----, as first put me up to go thieving; they took me with them, one night, up the lane [New Gravel-lane], and I see them take some bread out of a baker’s, and they wasn’t found out; and, after that, I used to go with them regular. Then I joined C----’s gang; and, after that, C---- came and told us that his gang could do better than ourn, and he asked us to join our gang to his’n, and we did so. Sometimes we used to make 3_s._ or 4_s._ a day; or about 6_d._ apiece. While waiting outside the school-doors, before they opened, we used to plan up where we would go thieving after school was over. I was taken up once for thieving coals myself, but I was let go again.”

I was so much struck with the boy’s truthfulness of manner, that I asked him, _would_, he really lead a different life, if he saw a means of so doing? He assured me he would, and begged me earnestly to try him. Upon his leaving me, 2_s._ were given him for his trouble. This small sum (I afterwards learned) kept the family for more than a fortnight. The girl laid it out in sprats (it being then winter-time); these she sold in the streets.

I mentioned the fact to a literary friend, who interested himself in the boy’s welfare; and eventually succeeded in procuring him a situation at an eminent printer’s. The subjoined letter will show how the lad conducted himself while there.

“Whitefriars, April 22, 1850.

“Messrs. Bradbury and Evans beg to say that the boy J. C. has conducted himself in a very satisfactory manner since he has been in their employment.”

The same literary friend took the girl into his service. She is in a situation still, though not in the same family.

The boy now holds a good situation at one of the daily newspaper offices. So well has he behaved himself, that, a few weeks since, his wages were increased from 6_s._ to 9_s._ per week. His mother (owing to the boy’s exertions) has now a little shop, and is doing well.

This simple story requires no comments, and is narrated here in the hope that it may teach many to know how often the poor boys reared in the gutter are thieves, merely because society forbids them being honest lads.

OF THE LONDON DUSTMEN, NIGHTMEN, SWEEPS, AND SCAVENGERS.

These men constitute a large body, and are a class who, all things considered, do their work silently and efficiently. Almost without the cognisance of the mass of the people, the refuse is removed from our streets and houses; and London, as if in the care of a tidy housewife, is _always_ being cleaned. Great as are the faults and absurdities of many parts of our system of public cleansing, nevertheless, when compared with the state of things in any continental capital, the superiority of the metropolis of Great Britain is indisputable.

In all this matter there is little merit to be attributed to the workmen, except that they may be well drilled; for the majority of them are as much machines, apart from their animation, as are the cane and whalebone made to cleanse the chimney, or the clumsy-looking machine which, in its progress, is a vehicular scavenger, sweeping as it goes.

These public cleansers are to be thus classified:--

1. Dustmen, or those who empty and remove the collection of ashes, bones, vegetables, &c., deposited in the dust-bins, or other refuse receptacles throughout the metropolis.

2. Nightmen, or those who remove the contents of the cesspools.

3. Sweeps, or those who remove the soot from the chimneys.

4. Scavengers, or those who remove the dirt from the streets, roads, and markets.

Let me, however, before proceeding further with the subject, lay before the reader the following important return as to the extent and contents of this prodigious city: for this document I am indebted to the Commissioners of Police, gentlemen from whom I have derived the most valuable information since the commencement of my inquiries, and to whose courtesy and consideration I am anxious to acknowledge my many obligations.

RETURN SHOWING THE EXTENT, POPULATION, AND POLICE FORCE IN THE METROPOLITAN POLICE DISTRICT AND THE CITY OF LONDON IN SEPTEMBER, 1850.

-----------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+------------+------------- | Metropolitan Police District[6]. | | +------------+-----------+--------------+ City of | Grand | Inner | Outer | | London[8]. | Total. |District[7].| District. | Total. | | -----------------------------------------+------------+-----------+--------------+------------+------------- Area (in square miles) | 91 | 609-1/2| 700-1/2 | 1-3/4 | 702-1/4 Parishes | 82 | 136 | 218 | 97 | 315 Streets, Roads, &c. (length of, in miles)| 1,700 | 1,936 | 3,636 | 50 | 3,686 Number of Houses inhabited | 289,912 | 59,995 | 349,907 | 15,613 | 365,520 „ „ uninhabited | 11,868 | 1,437 | 13,305 | 387 | 13,692 „ „ being built | 4,634 | 1,097 | 5,731 | 23 | 5,754 Population | 1,986,629 |350,331 |2,336,960 |125,000 |2,461,960 Police Force | 4,844 | 660 | 5,504 | 568 | 6,072 -----------------------------------------+------------+-----------+--------------+------------+----------

_18th September, 1850._

The total here given can hardly be considered as the dimensions of the metropolis; though, where the capital begins and ends, it is difficult to say. If, however, London be regarded as concentring within the Inner Police District, then, adding the extent and contents of that district to those of the City, as above detailed, we have the subjoined statement as to the dimensions and inhabitants of the

_Metropolis Proper._

Area 92-3/4 square miles. Parishes 179 Length of street, roads, &c. 1750 miles. Number of inhabited houses 305,525 Ditto uninhabited 12,255 Ditto being built 4657 Population 2,111,629 Police force 5412

But if the extent of even this “inner district” be so vast as almost to overpower the mind with its magnitude--if its population be greater than that of the entire kingdom of Hanover, and almost equal to that of the republic of Switzerland--if its houses be so numerous that placed side by side they would form one continuous line of dwellings from its centre to Moscow--if its streets and roads be nearly equal in length to one quarter of the diameter of the earth itself,--what a task must the cleansing of such a bricken wilderness be, and yet, assuredly, though it be by far the greatest, it is at the same time by far the cleanest city in the world.

The removal of the refuse of a large town is, perhaps, one of the most important of social operations. Not only is it necessary for the well-being of a vast aggregation of people that the ordure should be removed from both within and around their dwellings as soon as it is generated, but nature, ever working in a circle and reproducing in the same ratio as she destroys, has made this same ordure not only the cause of present disease when allowed to remain within the city, but the means of future health and sustenance when removed to the fields.

In a leading article in the _Morning Chronicle_, written about two years since, I said--

“That man gets his bones from the rocks and his muscles from the atmosphere, is beyond all doubt. The iron in his blood and the lime in his teeth were originally in the soil. But these could not be in his body unless they had previously formed part of his food. And yet we can neither live on air nor on stones. We cannot grow fat upon lime, and iron is positively indigestible in our stomachs. It is by means of the vegetable creation alone that we are enabled to convert the mineral into flesh and blood. The only apparent use of herbs and plants is to change the inorganic earth, air, and water, into organic substances fitted for the nutrition of animals. The little lichen, which, by means of the oxalic acid that it secretes, decomposes the rocks to which it clings, and fits their lime for ‘assimilation’ with higher organisms, is, as it were, but the primitive bone-maker of the world. By what subtle transmutation inorganic nature is changed into organic, and dead inert matter quickened with life, is far beyond us even to conjecture. Suffice it that an express apparatus is required for the process--a special mechanism to convert the ‘_crust_ of the earth,’ as it is called, into food for man and beast.

“Now, in Nature everything moves in a circle--perpetually changing, and yet ever returning to the point whence it started. Our bodies are continually decomposing and recomposing--indeed, the very process of breathing is but one of decomposition. As animals live on vegetables, even so is the refuse of the animal the vegetable’s food. The carbonic acid which comes from our lungs, and which is poison for us to inhale, is not only the vital air of plants, but positively their nutriment. With the same wondrous economy that marks all creation, it has been ordained that what is unfitted for the support of the superior organisms, is of all substances the best adapted to give strength and vigour to the inferior. That which we excrete as pollution to our system, they secrete as nourishment to theirs. Plants are not only Nature’s scavengers but Nature’s purifiers. They remove the filth from the earth, as well as disinfect the atmosphere, and fit it to be breathed by a higher order of beings. Without the vegetable creation the animal could neither have been nor be. Plants not only fitted the earth originally for the residence of man and the brute, but to this day they continue to render it habitable to us. For this end their nature has been made the very antithesis to ours. The process by which we live is the process by which they are destroyed. That which supports respiration in us produces putrefaction in them. What our lungs throw off, their lungs absorb--what our bodies reject, their roots imbibe.

“Hence, in order that the balance of waste and supply should be maintained--that the principle of universal compensation should be kept up, and that what is rejected by us should go to the sustenance of plants, Nature has given us several instinctive motives to remove our refuse from us. She has not only constituted that which we egest the most loathsome of all things to our senses and imagination, but she has rendered its effluvium highly pernicious to our health--sulphuretted hydrogen being at once the most deleterious and offensive of all gases. Consequently, as in all other cases where the great law of Nature has to be enforced by special sanctions, a double motive has been given us to do that which it is necessary for us to do, and thus it has been made not only advantageous to us to remove our refuse to the fields, but positively detrimental to our health, and disgusting to our senses, to keep it in the neighbourhood of our houses.