Chapter 58 of 137 · 3912 words · ~20 min read

Part 58

------------------------------+------------------+-------------------+------------------+---------------------------- Contractors (Large). | Dust. | Scavengery. | Rubbish Carting. | Working in the Yard. +---------+--------+---------+----------------------------+---------+---------+-------- | | | | Number | | | | | | | | |of Carts,| | | | | | Number | Number | Number | Waggons,| Number | Number | Number | Number | Number | of Men |of Carts| of Men | or | of Men |of Carts| of Men |of Women |of Boys |employed.| used. |employed.| Machines|employed.| used. |employed.|employed.|working. | | | | used. | | | | | ------------------------------+---------+--------+---------+---------+---------+--------+---------+---------+-------- Mr. Dodd | 20 | 10 | 26 | 13 | 20 | 20 | 9 | 12 | 4 „ Gould | 20 | 10 | 28 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 5 | 15 | 4 „ Redding | 32 | 16 | 41 | 18 | 22 | 22 | 5 | 12 | 4 „ Gore | 32 | 16 | 18 | 7 | none. | none. | 4 | 20 | 6 „ Rooke | 16 | 8 | 16 | 6 | 16 | 16 | 2 | 6 | 3 „ Stapleton & Holdsworth | 10 | 5 | 11 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 4 | 8 | 2 „ Tame | 20 | 10 | 5 | 1 | 12 | 12 | 4 | 8 | 2 „ Starkey | 10 | 5 | 22 | 8 | none. | none. | 4 | 12 | 3 „ Newman | 8 | 4 | 23 | 10 | 8 | 8 | 4 | 8 | 2 „ Pratt and Sewell | 10 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 20 | 20 | 2 | 6 | 2 „ W. Sinnott, Sen. | 28 | 14 | 5 | 2 | none. | none. | 5 | 15 | 5 „ J. Sinnott | 8 | 4 | 16 | 6 | ditto. | ditto. | none. | none. | none. „ Westley | 10 | 5 | 18 | 9 | ditto. | ditto. | 3 | 9 | 2 „ Parsons | 10 | 5 | 18 | 3 | ditto. | ditto. | 2 | 6 | 1 „ Hearne | 18 | 9 | 7 | 2 | 20 | 20 | 3 | 9 | 3 „ Humphries | 20 | 10 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 9 | 3 „ Calvert | 6 | 3 | none. | none. | 7 | 7 | 2 | 6 | 2 +---------+--------+-------------------+---------+--------+---------+---------+-------- | 278 | 139 | 262 | 107 | 152 | 152 | 61 | 161 | 48 | | | | | | | | | Contractors (Small). | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Mr. North | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 „ Milton | 6 | 3 | none. | none. | none. | none. | 3 | 6 | 2 „ Jenkins | 2 | 1 | 5 | 1 | ditto. | ditto. | 1 | 2 | 1 „ Stroud | 10 | 5 | none. | none. | ditto. | ditto. | 4 | 9 | 3 „ Martin | 2 | 1 | 6 | 3 | ditto. | ditto. | 1 | 2 | 1 „ Clutterbuck | 4 | 2 | none. | none. | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 1 „ W. Sinnott, Jun. | 4 | 2 | ditto. | ditto. | 6 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 1 +---------+--------+-------------------+---------+--------+---------+---------+-------- | 32 | 16 | 13 | 5 | 15 | 15 | 12 | 26 | 10 | | | | | | | | | Contractors, but not having | | | | | | | | | any contract at present, | | | | | | | | | only carting rubbish, &c. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Mr. Darke | ... | ... | ... | ... | 36 | 36 | | | „ Tomkins | ... | ... | ... | ... | 6 | 6 | | | „ J. Cooper | ... | ... | ... | ... | 8 | 8 | | | „ T. Cooper, Sen. | ... | ... | ... | ... | 12 | 12 | | | „ Athill | ... | ... | ... | ... | 6 | 6 | | | „ Barnett (lately sold off) | | | | | | | | | „ Brown | ... | ... | ... | ... | 4 | 4 | | | „ Ellis | ... | ... | ... | ... | 6 | 6 | | | „ Limpus | ... | ... | ... | ... | 10 | 10 | | | „ Emmerson | ... | ... | ... | ... | 6 | 6 | | | | | | | +---------+--------+ | | | | | | | 94 | 94 | | |

--------------------------------+-------------+-------------------+-------------+----------------------- | Dust. | Scavengers. | Rubbish. | Employed in Yard. Machines. +------+------+-----+-------------+------+------+------+------+--------- | Men. |Carts.| Men.| Carts. | Men. |Carts.| Men. |Women.|Children. --------------------------------+------+------+-----+-------------+------+------+------+------+--------- Woods and Forests | none.| none.| 4 | 2 machines.| none.| none.| none.| none.| none. Regent-street and Pall-mall |ditto.|ditto.| 12 | 2 „ |ditto.|ditto.|ditto.|ditto.| ditto. St. Martin’s |ditto.|ditto.| 9 | 4 „ |ditto.|ditto.|ditto.|ditto.| ditto. +------+------+-----+---- | | | | | | | | 25 | 8 „ | | | | | Parishes. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Kensington[16] | ... | ... | 5 | 2 | | | | | Chelsea[16] | ... | ... | 5 | 2 | | | | | St. George’s, Hanover-sq.[16] | ... | ... | 5 | 1 | | | | | St. Margaret’s, Westminster[16] | ... | ... | 7 | 3 | | | | | Piccadilly[16] | ... | ... | 28 | 2 | | | | | St. Ann’s, Soho[16] | ... | ... | 4 | 2 | | | | | Paddington[16] | ... | ... | 6 | 2 | | | | | St. Marylebone[16] (5 Districts)| ... | ... | 35 | 4 | | | | | St. James’s, Westminster | ... | ... | 2 | 1 | | | | | {|No parochial |} | | | | | | Hampstead {| removal of |} 4 | 1 | | | | | {| dust. |} | | | | | | Highgate | ditto. | 4 | 1 | | | | | Islington[16] | ... | ... | 8 | 1 | | | | | Hackney | 8 | 4 | 7 | 1 | ... | ... | 2 | 6 | 2 St. Clement Danes[16] | ... | ... | 7 | 3 waggons. | | | | | Commercial-road, East[16] | ... | ... | 6 | 3 carts. | | | | | Poplar | 4 | 2 | 4 | 1 | ... | ... | 2 | 4 | 1 Bermondsey | 6 | 3 | 6 | 3 | ... | ... | 3 | 6 | 2 Newington | 8 | 4 | 6 | 2 | ... | ... | 2 | 6 | 2 Lambeth[16] | ... | ... | 16 | 3 | | | | | Ditto (Christchurch) | 4 | 2 | 20 | 3 | ... | ... | 1 | 4 | 1 Wandsworth | 4 | 2 | 4 | 1 | ... | ... | 1 | 4 | 1 Camberwell and Walworth | 8 | 4 | 6 | 2 | ... | ... | 2 | 5 | 3 Rotherhithe | 6 | 3 | 5 | 2 | ... | ... | 1 | 5 | 2 Greenwich | 4 | 2 | 5 | 2 | ... | ... | 1 | 3 | 1 Deptford | 4 | 2 | 4 | 2 | ... | ... | 1 | 3 | 1 Woolwich | none.| none.| 5 | 2 | | | | | Lewisham |ditto.|ditto.| 4 | 1 | | | | | +------+------+-----+---- | | | | | Total for Parishes | 56 | 28 ||218 | 50 carts. | | | 16 | 46 | 16 | | | | 3 waggons. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Total for large contractors | 278 | 139 | 262 |107 | 152 | 152 | 61 | 161 | 48 Total for small contractors | 32 | 16 | 13 | 5 | 15 | 15 | 12 | 26 | 10 Total for machines | ... | ... | 25 | 8 machines.| | | | | Total for street orderlies | ... | ... | 60 | 9 | | | | | +------+------+-----+---- |------|------|------|------|-------- Gross total | 366 | 183 | 578 |179 carts. | 167 | 167 | 89 | 233 | 74 | | | | 3 waggons. | | | | | --------------------------------+------+------+-----+-------------+------+------+------+------+--------

Men. Carts. Total employed at dust 366 183 „ „ scavenging 578 179 „ „ rubbish carting 167 167 „ (men, women, and children), in yard 396 ---- --- Total employed in the removal of house and street refuse 1507 529

Thus the annual sum of the street-dirt, as regards the quantity collected by the contracting scavengers (as shown in the table given at page 186), is, in round numbers, 89,000 cart-loads; that collected by parish labour, with or without the aid of the street-sweeping machines, at 52,000 cart-loads, or a total (I do not include what is collected by the orderlies) of 141,000 loads.

This result shows, then, that the contractors yearly collect by scavenging the streets with their own paid labourers, and receive as the produce of pauper labour, as follows:--

---------------+--------------+-------+--------- | Loads of | Per | | Street Dirt. | Load. | Total. ---------------+--------------+-------+--------- By Contractors | 89,000 | 3_s._ | £13,350 By Parishes | 52,000 | 3_s._ | 7,800 ---------------+--------------+-------+--------- Total | 141,000 | | £21,150 ---------------+--------------+-------+---------

or a value of rather more than 1113_l._ as the return to each individual contractor in the table, or about 255_l._ as the average on each contract. As, however, the whole of the parish-collected manure does not come into the hands of the contractors, it will be fair, I am assured, to compute the total at 19,000_l._, a sum of 1000_l._ to each contractor, or nearly 229_l._ on each contract.

It would appear, then, that the total receipts of the contractors for the scavenging of London amount to very nearly 30,000_l._; that is to say, 10,000_l._ as remuneration for the office, and 20,000_l._ as the value of the dirt collected. But against this sum as received, we have to set the gross expense of wages paid to men, wear and tear of carts and appliances, rent of wharfs, interest for money, &c.

Concerning the amount paid in wages, it appears by the table at pp. 186, 187, that the men employed by the scavenging contractors in wet weather, are 260 daily (being nearly half of the whole force of 531 men, the orderlies excepted). In dry weather, however, there are only 194 men employed. I will therefore calculate upon 194 men employed daily, and 66 employed half the year, making the total of 260. By the table here given, it will be seen that the total number of scavengers employed by the large and small contractors, is 275.

There remains now to show the amount of capital which a large contractor must embark in his business: I include the amount of rent, and the expenditure on what must be provided for business purposes, and which is subject to wear and tear, to decay, and loss.

There are not now, I am told, more than twelve scavengers’ wharfs and 20 yards (the wharf being also a yard) in the possession of the contractors in regular work. These are the larger contractors, and their capital, I am assured, may be thus estimated:--

CAPITAL OF THE MASTER SCAVENGERS.

£ _s._ _d._

179 Carts, 21_l._ each 3,759 0 0 3 Waggons, 32_l._ each 96 0 0 230 Horses, 25_l._ each 5,750 0 0 230 Sets of harness, 2_l._ each 460 0 0 600 Brooms, 9_d._ each 22 10 0 300 Shovels, 1_s._ each 15 0 0 100 Barges, 50_l._ each 5,000 0 0 ----------------- Total 15,102 10 0 -----------------

I have estimated according to what may be the _present_ value, not the original cost, of the implements, vehicles, &c. A broom, when new, costs 1_s._ 2_d._, and is worn out in two or three weeks. A shovel, when new, costs 2_s._

The following appears to be the

YEARLY EXPENDITURE OF THE MASTER SCAVENGERS.

£ _s._ _d._ Wages to working scavengers (as before shown) 9,443 0 0 Wages to 48 bargemen, engaged in unloading the vessels with street-dirt, 4 men to each of 12 wharfs, at 16_s._ weekly wage 1,996 0 0 Keep of 300 horses (26_l._ each) 7,800 0 0 Wear and tear (say 15 per cent. on capital) 2,250 0 0 Rent of 20 wharfs and yards (average 100_l._ each) 2,000 0 0 Interest on 15,000_l._ capital, at 10 per cent. 1,500 0 0 ------------------ £24,989 0 0 ------------------

I have endeavoured in this estimate to confine myself, as much as possible, to the separate subject of scavengery, but it must be borne in mind that as the large contractors are dustmen as well as scavengers, the great charges for rent and barges cannot be considered as incurred solely on account of the street-dirt trade. Including, then, the payments from parishes, the account will stand thus:--

YEARLY RECEIPTS OF MASTER SCAVENGERS.

From Parishes £9,450 From Manure, &c. 19,000 ------- Total Income £28,450 Deduct yearly Expenditure 25,000 ------- Profit £3,450 -------

This gives a profit of nearly 182_l._ to each contractor, if equally apportioned, or a little more than 41_l._ on each contract for street-scavenging alone, and a profit no doubt affected by circumstances which cannot very well be reduced to figures. The profit may appear small, but it should be remembered that it is _independent_ of the profits on the dust.

OF THE CONTRACTORS’ (OR EMPLOYERS’) PREMISES, &C.

At page 171 of the present volume I have described one of the yards devoted to the trade in house-dust, and I have little to say in addition regarding the premises of the contracting or employing scavengers. They are the same places, and the industrious pursuits carried on there, and the division and subdivision of labour, relate far more to the dustmen’s department than to the scavengers’. When the produce of the sweeping of the streets has been thrown into the cart, it is so far ready for use that it has not to be sifted or prepared, as has the house-dust, for the formation of brieze, &c., the “mac” being sifted by the purchaser.

These yards or wharfs are far less numerous and better conducted now than they were ten years ago. They are at present fast disappearing from the banks of the Thames (there is, however, one still at Whitefriars and one at Milbank). They are chiefly to be found on the banks of the canals. Some of the principal wharfs near Maiden-lane, St. Pancras, are to be found among unpaven, or ill-paved, or imperfectly macadamized roads, along which run rows of what were once evidently pleasant suburban cottages, with their green porches and their trained woodbine, clematis, jasmine, or monthly roses; these tenements, however, are now occupied chiefly by the labourers at the adjacent stone, coal, lime, timber, dust, and general wharfs. Some of the cottages still presented, on my visits, a blooming display of dahlias and other autumnal flowers; and in one corner of a very large and very black-looking dust-yard, in which rose a huge mound of dirt, was the cottage residence of the man who remained in charge of the wharf all night, and whose comfortable-looking abode was embedded in flowers, blooming luxuriantly. The gay-tinted holly-hocks and dahlias are in striking contrast with the dinginess of the dust-yards, while the canal flows along, dark, sluggish, and muddy, as if to be in keeping with the wharf it washes.

The dust-yards must not be confounded with the “night-yards,” or the places where the contents of the cess-pools are deposited, places which, since the passing of the Sanatory Act, are rapidly disappearing.

Upon entering a dust-yard there is generally found a heavy oppressive sort of atmosphere, more especially in wet or damp weather. This is owing to the tendency of charcoal to absorb gases, and to part with them on being saturated with moisture. The cinder-heaps of the several dust-yards, with their million pores, are so many huge gasometers retaining all the offensive gases arising from the putrefying organic matters which usually accompany them, and parting with such gases immediately on a fall of rain. It would be a curious calculation to estimate the quantity of deleterious gas thus poured into the atmosphere after a slight shower.

The question has been raised as to the propriety of devoting some special locality to the purposes of dust-yards, and it is certainly a question deserving public attention.

The chief disposal of the street manure is from barges, sent by the Thames or along the canals, and sold to farmers and gardeners. In the larger wharfs, and in those considered removed from the imputation of “scurfdom,” six men, and often but four, are employed to load a barge which contains from 30 to 40 tons. In such cases the dust-yard and the wharf are one and the same place. The contents of these barges are mixed, about one-fourth being “mac,” the rest street-mud and dung. This admixture, on board the vessel, is called by the bargemen and the contractors’ servants at the wharfs Leicester (properly Læsta, a load). We have the same term at the end of our word bal-_last_.

I am assured by a wharfinger, who has every means of forming a correct judgment, it may be estimated that there are dispatched from the contractors’ wharfs twelve barges daily, freighted with street-manure. This is independent of the house-dust barged to the country brick-fields. The weight of the cargo of a barge of manure is about 40 tons; 36 tons being a low average. This gives 3744 barge-loads, or 132,784 tons, or loads, yearly; for it must be recollected that the dirt gathered by pauper labour is dispatched from the contractors’ yards or wharfs, as well as that collected by the immediate servants of the contractors. The price per barge-load at the canal, basin, or wharf, in the country parts where agriculture flourishes, is from 5_l._ to 6_l._, making a total of 20,594_l._ The difference of that sum, and the total given in the table (21,147_l._) may be accounted for on the supposition that the remainder is sold in the yards and carted away thence. The slop and valueless dirt is not included in this calculation.

OF THE WORKING SCAVENGERS UNDER THE CONTRACTORS.

I have now to deal with what throughout the whole course of my inquiry into the state of London Labour and the London Poor I have considered the great object of investigation--the condition and characteristics of the working men; and what is more immediately the “labour question,” the relation of the labourer to his employer, as to rates of payment, modes of payment, hiring of labourers, constancy or inconstancy of work, supply of hands, the many points concerning wages, perquisites, family work, and parochial or club relief.

First, I shall give an account of the class employment, together with the labour season and earnings of the labourers, or “economical” part of the subject. I shall then pass to the social points, concerning their homes, general expenditure, &c., and then to the more moral and intellectual questions of education, literature, politics, religion, marriage, and concubinage of the men and of their families. All this will refer, it should be remembered, only to the working scavagers in the honourable or better-paid trade; the cheaper labourers I shall treat separately as a distinct class; the details in both cases I shall illustrate with the statement of men of the class described.

The first part of this multifarious subject appertains to the division of labour. This in the scavaging trade consists rather of that kind of “gang-work” which Mr. Wakefield styles “simple co-operation,” or the working together of a number of people at the same thing, as opposed to “complex co-operation,” or the working together of a number at _different branches_ of the same thing. Simple co-operation is of course the ruder kind; but even this, rude as it appears, is far from being barbaric. “The savages of New Holland,” we are told, “never help each other even in the most simple operations; and their condition is hardly superior--in some respects it is inferior--to that of the wild animals which they now and then catch.”

As an instance of the advantages of “simple co-operation,” Mr. Wakefield tells us that “in a vast number of simple operations performed by human exertion, it is quite obvious that two men working together will do more than four, or four times four men, each of whom should work alone. In the lifting of heavy weights, for example, in the felling of trees, in the gathering of much hay and corn during a short period of fine weather, in draining a large extent of land during the short season when such a work may be properly conducted, in the pulling of ropes on board ship, in the rowing of large boats, in some mining operations, in the erection of a scaffolding for a building, and in the breaking of stones for the repair of a road, so that the whole road shall always be kept in good repair--in all these simple operations, and thousands more, it is absolutely necessary that many persons should work together at the same time, in the same place, and in the same way.”

To the above instances of simple co-operation, or gang-working, as it may be briefly styled in Saxon English, Mr. Wakefield might have added dock labour and scavaging.

The principle of complex co-operation, however, is not entirely unknown in the public cleansing trade. This business consists of as many branches as there are distinct kinds of refuse, and these appear to be four. There are (1) the wet and (2) the dry _house_-refuse (or dust and night-soil), and (3) the wet and (4) the dry _street_-refuse (or mud and rubbish); and in these four different branches of the one general trade the principle of complex co-operation is found commonly, though not invariably, to prevail.