London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1

by Henry Mayhew

Of Water-Carriers.

It may surprise many to learn that there are still existing water-carriers in London, and some of them depending upon the trade for a livelihood; while others, the “odd men” of the neighbourhood, carry pails of spring water to the publicans or eating-house keepers, who may not have servants to send to the nearest pump for it, and who require it fresh and cool for those who drink it at their meals. Of these men there are, as near as I can ascertain, from 100 to 150; their charge is 1d. per pail. Their earnings per day 6d. to 1s. Perhaps none of them depend solely upon this labour for their support.

It is otherwise at Highgate and Hampstead, for in those places both men and women depend entirely for their daily bread on water carrying. At Hampstead the supply is derived from what may be called a double well, known as “the Conduit.” The ground is flagged, and the water is seen at each corner of a wall built to the surface of the ground (about eight feet) and surmounted by an iron rail. The water is covered over, in one corner and not in the other, and the carrier descends a step or two, dips in his pails and walks away with them when filled. The water is carried by means of a “yoke,” in the same way as we see the milk-pails carried in every street in London. The well and the field in which the Hampstead water is situated are the property of the Church, and the water is free to any one, in any quantity, either for sale or any other purpose, “without leave.” In droughts or frosts the supply fails, and the carriers have sometimes to wait hours for their “turn,” and then to bale the water into their pails with a basin. The nearest street to which the water is carried is half a mile distant. Some is carried three quarters of a mile, and some (occasionally) a mile. The two pails full, which contain seven gallons, are sold at 1½d. The weight is about 70 lbs. Seventeen years ago the price was 3d.; after which it fell to 2½d., then to 2d., and has been 1½d. these five or six years, while now there are three or four carriers who even “carry” at two pails a-penny to the nearer places. The supply of the well (apart from drought or frost) is fifty-six gallons an hour. The principal customers are the laundresses; but in wet weather their cisterns and water-tubs are filled, and the carriers, or the major part of them, are idle. The average earnings of the carriers are 5s. a week the year through. Two of them are men of seventy. There is a bench about midway to Hampstead, at which these labourers rest; and here on almost every fine day sits with them a palsied old soldier, a pensioner of about eighty, who regales them, almost daily, with long tales of Vinegar Hill, and Jemmy O’Brien (the informer), and all the terrors of the terrible times of the Irish rebellion of 1798; for the old man (himself an Irishman) had served through the whole of it. This appears to be a somewhat curious theme for constant expatiation to a band of London water-carriers.

There are now twenty individuals, fourteen men and six women, carrying at Hampstead, and twice that number at Highgate. Some leave the carrying when they get better work,—but three-fourths of the number live by it entirely. The women are the wives and widows of carriers. The men have been either mechanics or labourers, except six or eight youths (my informant was not certain which) who had been “brought up to the water, but would willingly get away from it if they could.”

A well-spoken and intelligent-looking man, dressed in thick fustian, old and greasy, “but good enough for the carrying,” gave me the following account.

“I was a copper-plate printer,” he said, “and twenty years ago could earn my 25s. a week. But employment fell off. The lithographic injured it, and at last I could get very little work, and then none at all, so I have been carrying now between three and four years. My father-in-law was in the trade, and that made me think of it. My best day’s work, and it’s the same with all, is 2s., which is sixteen turns. It’s not possible to do more. If that could be done every day it would be very well, but in wet weather when the laundresses, who are my customers, don’t want water, I can’t make 1s. a week. Then in a drought or a frost one has to wait such a long time for his turn, that it’s not 6d. a day; a dry spring’s the worst. Last March I had many days to wait six turns, and it takes well on to an hour for a turn then. We sit by the well and talk when we’re waiting. O, yes, sir, the Pope has had his turn of talk. There’s water companies both at Hampstead and Highgate, but our well water (Hampstead) is asked for, for all that. It’s so with Highgate. It is beautiful water, either for washing or drinking. Perhaps it’s better with a little drop of spirit for drinking, but I seldom taste it that way. The fatigue’s so great that we must take a little drop of spirit on a long day. No, sir, we don’t mix it; that spoils two good things. I’ve been at the well first light in the morning, and in summer I’ve been at work at it all night. There’s no rule among us, but it’s understood that every one has his turn. There’s a little chaff sometimes, and some get angry at having to wait, but I never knew a fight. I have a wife and three children. She works for a laundress, and has 2s. 6d. a day. She has two days regular every week, and sometimes odd turns as well. I think that the women earn more than the men in Hampstead. My rent is 1s. 6d. a week for an unfurnished room. There is no trade on Sundays, but on fine summer Sundays old —— attends at the well and sells glasses of cool water. He gets 2s. 6d. some days. He makes no charge; just what any one pleases to give. Any body might do it, but the old gentleman would grumble that they were taking his post.”

Computing the number of water carriers at the two places at sixty, and their average earnings through the year at 5s. a week, it appears that these men receive 780l. yearly. The capital required to start in the business is 9s., the cost of a pair of pails and a yoke.

The old man who sells water on the summer Sunday mornings, generally leaving off his sale at church-time, told me that his best customers were ladies and gentlemen who loved an early walk, and bought of him “as it looked like a bit of country life,” he supposed, more than from being thirsty. When such customers were not inhabitants of the neighbourhood, they came to him to ask their way, or to make inquiries concerning the localities. Sometimes he dispensed water to men who “looked as if they had been on the loose all night.” “One gentleman,” he said, “looks sharp about him, and puts a dark-coloured stuff—very likely it’s brandy—into the two or three glasses of water which he drinks every Sunday, or which he used to drink rather, for I missed him all last summer, I think. His hand trembled like a aspen; he mostly gave me 6d.” The water-seller spoke with some indignation of boys, and sometimes men, going to the well on a Sunday morning and “drinking out of their own tins that they’d taken with ’em.”