WATER-CARRIER.
Plate IV.
The Conduits of London and its environs, which were established at an early period, supplied the metropolis with water until Sir Hugh Middleton brought the New River from Amwell to London, and then the Conduits gradually fell into disuse, as the New River water was by degrees laid on in pipes to the principal buildings in the City, and, in the course of time, let into private houses.
When the above Conduits supplied the inhabitants, they either carried their vessels, or sent their servants for the water as they wanted it; but we may suppose that at an early period there were a number of men who for a fixed sum carried the water to the adjoining houses. The first delineation the writer has been able to discover of a Water-carrier, is in Hoefnagle’s print of Nonsuch, published in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
The next is in the centre of that truly-curious and more rare sheet wood-cut, entitled, “Tittle-Tattle,” which from the dresses of the figures must have been engraved either in the latter part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, or the beginning of that of James the First. In this wood-cut the maid servants are at a Conduit, where they hold their tittle-tattle, while the Water-carriers are busily engaged in filling their buckets and conveying them on their shoulders to the places of destination.
The figure of a Water-carrier, introduced in the Fourth Plate, is copied from one of a curious and rare set of cries and callings of London, published by Overton, at the White Horse without Newgate. The figure retains the dress of Henry the Eighth’s time; his cap is similar to that usually worn by Sir Thomas More, and also to that given in the portrait of Albert Durer, engraved by Francis Stock. It appears by this print, that the tankard was borne upon the shoulder, and, to keep the carrier dry, two towels were fastened over him, one to fall before him, the other to cover his back. His pouch, in which we are to conclude he carried his money, has been thus noticed in a very curious and rare tract, entitled, “Green’s Ghost, with the merry Conceits of Doctor Pinch-backe,” published 1626: “To have some store of crownes in his purse, coacht in a faire trunke flop, like a boulting hutch.”
Ben Jonson, in his admirable comedy of “Every Man in his Humour,” first performed in 1598, has made Cob the water-carrier of the Old Jewry, at whose house Captain Bobadil lodges, a very leading and entertaining character. Speaking of himself before the Justice, he says, “I dwell, Sir, at the sign of the Water-tankard, hard by the Green Lattice; I have paid scot and lot there many time this eighteen years.”
The first notice which the writer has been able to obtain of the introduction of the New River water into public buildings in London, he found in the Archives of Old Bethlem, in which it appears, that “on the 26th of February, 1626, Mr. Middleton conveyed water into Bethlem.” This must have been, according to its date, the old Bethlem Hospital that stood in Bishopsgate-street, near St. Botolph’s Church, on the site of the streets which are at this time under the denomination of Old Bethlem; as the building lately taken down in London Wall, Moorfields, was begun in April 1675, and finished in July 1676. It should seem therefore that this magnificent building, which had more the appearance of a palace than a place of confinement, most substantially built with a centre and two wings, extending in length to upwards of 700 feet, was only one year in building; a most extraordinary instance of manual application.
In 1698, when Cheapside Conduit was no longer used for its original purpose, it became the place of call for chimney-sweepers, who hung up their brooms and shovels against it, and there waited for hire.
It appears that even in 1711 the New River water was not generally let into houses; for in Laroon’s Cries of London, which were published at that time, there is a man with two tubs suspended across his shoulders, according to the present mode of carrying milk, at the foot of which plate is engraved “Any New River Water, water here.”[11]