The Life of a Steeplejack.
By Will Larkins.
In this impressive article, Mr. W. Larkins, the well-known steeplejack, of Bow, London, sets forth some of his most exciting experiences in the way of felling chimneys and repairing steeples—a form of "high art" which has perils peculiarly its own. The striking photographs which accompany the text lend additional realism to a straightforward narrative.
I COME of a race of steeplejacks. My father earned his living at the business, and met his death at it, falling from a church spire at Dumbarton, in Scotland.
Strictly speaking, the work is not really and truly so extraordinarily hazardous as people seem to think—that is to say, if a man takes proper precautions. Steeple-climbing is very much like mountaineering in this respect: it is the foolhardy folk who get hurt, and those who are inexperienced or careless.
Look at myself, for instance. I have been climbing since I was seven, and am now past thirty, and I have never met with an accident. But, then, I am a life-long abstainer and non-smoker, and I take no risks that forethought is able to provide against.
Narrow escapes I have had in plenty, but they hardly count in my line of business. All dangerous trades involve risks to those following them.
A rotten coping; a puff of wind, coming up unexpectedly from nowhere in particular; a loose brick, or a piece of decayed ironwork—any one of these may easily spell death.
Then, too, there are what, for want of a better term, I may call "outside risks": outside the regular run of our hazards, that is to say. For example, I once came very near to losing my life through being attacked by a swarm of bees while repairing a tower at Culmstock, in Devonshire. I had to descend very quickly, but I returned at two o'clock in the morning and asphyxiated the lot while they were asleep. Incidentally, I secured for myself thirty pounds of very excellent honey. The insects had been there for years, having found their way into the interior through a cavity left by a scaffold-pole used in erecting the edifice.
Another nasty experience that befell me occurred so recently as October, 1908. I was engaged to fell two lofty stacks at Millwall. They were each about a hundred feet high,
and were known locally as the "leaning chimneys," being about four feet six inches out of the perpendicular.
This peculiarity made the task of cutting into their bases a somewhat ticklish one, since it was difficult to say, even approximately, when they were going to fall. Also, of course, I had to perform the work on the side to which they were inclined.
THE AUTHOR, MR. W. LARKIN, OF BOW, LONDON, WHO HERE RELATES SOME OF HIS MOST REMARKABLE EXPERIENCES.
From a Photo. by F. W. Pickford.
However, the first one toppled over all right, the "groaning" of the undermined mass, as it swayed ever so slightly to its fall, giving me timely warning of what was about to happen. But the second one collapsed far more suddenly, with the result that the "heel" of the falling portion actually "kicked" me clean off the base that remained standing! I fell fifteen feet, turning a complete somersault and alighting on all fours. I was somewhat shaken, but quite uninjured.
The biggest job I have undertaken up till now has been the decorating and repairing of the Nelson column in Trafalgar Square. This was my Matterhorn, so to speak.
I carried out the decorations to the order of the Navy League. It was the year 1905, the centenary of the great Admiral's crowning victory and death, and it was determined to do the thing in style. Nearly forty tons of laurel were used, and the greater portion of this had to be carried aloft and fixed to the column at varying heights right up to the top.
My orders as to not damaging the memorial in any way were most stringent; no nails or spikes of any kind were to be driven into it. This meant devising an altogether new method of ascent.
I thought out many plans, but eventually decided to lash ladders to the structure by means of ropes passed round and round it. It was a ticklish, trying job, but it was accomplished without hitch or mishap of any kind.
MR. LARKINS AT THE SUMMIT OF THE NELSON COLUMN IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE.
From a Photograph.
Two sets of ladders were used, placed opposite to one another. This was necessary, as the column measures forty feet in circumference—too far to pass a rope round with ease. The most difficult part of the ascent to negotiate was the cornice at the top of the column. This is the heaviest projection for "throw-back" work in England, and I had to climb up and over it with my back to the ground, for all the world like a fly on a ceiling.
FELLING A CHIMNEY AT PIMLICO.
From a Copyright Photo.
by The Sport and General Illustrations Co.
I am not ashamed to confess that I breathed more freely when I had rounded the obstruction, and was able to cautiously slide myself on to the platform which supports the statue. From below this appears flat, but it is really bevelled, with a sharp slope outwards. I found it, too, covered with an inch-thick layer of greasy soot; so that to walk about on it was exceedingly risky. However, once I got the life-line secured to the statue all was plain sailing.
I discovered a crack in the hero's arm, which I afterwards repaired. When I tell people this they not infrequently ask, on the spur of the moment, "Which arm?" Of course, the figure has only one.
By the way, I have read many accounts of the statue, professing to give its size and dimensions, and they are nearly all wrong. The exact measurements, as taken by my assistant, and afterwards carefully verified by myself, are as follows.
The figure itself is seventeen feet four and a half inches in height, and it measures five feet three inches across the shoulders. The sword which hangs by its side is seven feet nine and a half inches long.
Besides repairing the statue I also re-pointed the column from top to bottom. It is a splendidly-executed piece of work, solid granite throughout, and should have lasted for centuries, but the authorities have allowed an underground railway station to be excavated right at its base, and this must undoubtedly have weakened the foundations. I do not wish to pose as an alarmist, but I should not be greatly surprised if, owing to this cause, the memorial suddenly collapsed some day, like the Campanile at Venice.
Speaking of statues, I had the task of repairing that of the first Duke of Sutherland. It stands out in my memory as the very coldest and most uncomfortable piece of work I ever undertook. The memorial is situated on top of Ben Bhragie, a mountain more than twelve hundred feet high, near Golspie, Sutherlandshire. The figure is of colossal size—thirty-three feet six inches from heel to head—and the pedestal on which it stands measures ninety feet from base to summit.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END—A STACK JUST BEGINNING TO FALL.
From a Copyright Photo.
by Gale & Polden, Ltd.
The time was mid-winter; there was five feet of snow on the mountain, and gale followed gale with irritating persistency. Ladders and gear froze solid during the night, so that it became necessary in the morning for me to chop my way to the top through the ice that had accumulated meanwhile. The ascent and descent of the mountain, too, proved so long and arduous that I could only put in about two hours' work in a day. Altogether, I was not sorry when the job was completed.
CUTTING INTO THE TOOTING CHIMNEY—THIS STACK FELL UNEXPECTEDLY, ACTUALLY GRAZING MR. LARKINS'S SCALP AS HE SLIPPED FROM UNDER IT.
From a Copyright Photo.
by The Sport and General Illustrations Co.
Personally, I consider there is more risk in felling chimneys and such-like structures than in climbing them; that is to say, when they are felled in "my" way. The old-fashioned method was to undermine the base and prop it up with timber. This was then saturated with a mixture of oil and tar and set on fire. When it burnt through, down came the chimney.
The other way, which I may truthfully lay claim to have invented, is to cut away the bricks without under-pinning, keeping a sharp look-out aloft meanwhile. Sometimes I stand a small, straight twig upright in the gash. When this bends ever so little it is a sign to me that the thousand tons or so of masonry above me is inclining away from the perpendicular, and that its collapse is imminent.
One has to be very careful and very agile. I remember felling a shaft at Summerstown, near Tooting. It was brick-built and circular, a hundred and forty feet high, and weighed about eight hundred tons. Experience has taught me that this kind of chimney can usually be cut about halfway through at the base before it shows signs of giving way.
On this occasion, however, the collapse came when I was barely a third of the way through, and with scarcely any warning. I leapt aside, but the descending stack grazed my scalp as I slipped from under. I was able to realize then something of the feelings of Marmion when he galloped out of Tantallon Castle across the rising drawbridge, and felt the falling portcullis bars "raze his plume."
There were probably not far short of a thousand people present, and in the silence that followed the fall of the stack they sent up, as with one voice, a loud cry of horror. I was completely hidden from view by the clouds of dust that always arise on these occasions, and they were quite sure I had been killed. All I lost, however, were my tools and cap and jacket, which were buried under the mass of masonry. They are there now.
It transpired afterwards that the chimney had been built too close to the banks of the Wandle River, so that its foundations had become undermined—hence its premature collapse.
One reads not infrequently of fights with madmen in mid-air. I used to regard these as fiction pure and simple, until such an adventure actually befell myself.
It happened at Deptford, about two years ago. I had been engaged to repair the outside of the top of the shaft at the waterworks there. The fires were not drawn, and the heated fumes and smoke that were continually being belched from the mouth of the chimney made the job a far from pleasant one, especially as the day happened to be exceptionally warm, with scarcely a breath of air stirring.
Still, a "jack" takes but little notice of these things, and I and my two assistants worked steadily on for some hours. I was just thinking of giving the word to knock off for dinner, when the man nearest me suddenly stopped of his own accord, threw down his tools, straightened himself up on the coping, facing inwards, and clasped his hands above his head, like a man about to take a dive—which was, in point of fact, precisely what he was going to do. Only, it was not into water that he intended plunging, but straight down the reeking chimney, to be presently incinerated by the flaming furnaces far below!
I think the two of us that were left divined his intention at the same moment. "Quick! Grab him!" I cried, and we both dashed at him. Only just in time, for his head and shoulders were disappearing within the mouth of the shaft as we clutched him by the legs. It was a wonder that he did not drag us down with him, for he struggled fiercely. But it was two to one, and eventually we overpowered him and hauled him out on the coping.
There he lay, limp and gasping, half choked with the fumes, while we bound him hand and foot with a ladder-rope. Then, with assistance, we managed to lower him to the ground. The doctors said that the heat of the sun had temporarily affected his brain.
Another nasty turn I had was while I was engaged in repairing the steeple of a church in Wiltshire. I was sitting in a cradle under a coping, while my man was standing on the projection immediately above my head. He leaned over to ask me a question, lost his balance, and the next thing I knew was that his body was hurtling downwards past me through the empty air. I nearly followed him, so sick and unnerved was I at the sight.
THE WALLINGFORD CHIMNEY—OWING TO THE CONFIGURATION OF THE GROUND THIS HAD TO BE THROWN UPON ITS CORNER.
From a Copyright Photo.
by The Sport and General Illustrations Co.
This may sound strange, but I think any man who has done much climbing, whether on mountains or on steeples and other high artificial erections, will bear me out when I say that to witness an accident of this kind, and to know oneself impotent either to prevent or assist, is one of the most terrifying experiences that it is possible to conceive. Whymper has left it on record how, when during his most memorable ascent Lord Frederick Douglas and his friend fell to their deaths, he was so utterly unnerved for the time being that he could only cling to the face of the precipice, trembling and crying, unable to move a step one way or the other.
THE WALLINGFORD CHIMMNEY FALLING—IT WILL BE NOTICED THAT THE BRICKWORK IS STILL ALMOST INTACT.
From a Copyright Photo.
by The Sport and General Illustrations Co.
ONE OF THE ALDERSHOT CHIMNEYS FALLING, WATCHED BY AN IMMENSE CROWD—THIS STACK AND ANOTHER FELL EXACTLY UPON THE LINES MARKED OUT FOR THEM.
From a Copyright Photo.
by Gale & Polden, Ltd.
Luckily the end of my little adventure partook rather of the nature of comedy than tragedy. When I mustered up courage to look down, I saw my mate sitting on the corrugated iron roof of a building far below, vigorously rubbing that portion of his anatomy upon which schoolboys are popularly supposed to be birched.
He had fallen squarely upon it, and the resilient roof, acting like a spring mattress, had broken his fall, bouncing him up and down some half-a-dozen times with continually decreasing momentum until at last he came to rest. He was much bruised and shaken, but no bones were broken, and after a few days' rest was as fit as a fiddle again.
Most jobs a steeplejack has to undertake are hard ones; hard, that is to say, from the point of view of manual labour. Occasionally, however, one drops across one that is ridiculously easy.
For example, I was called to Truro because the vane on top of the steeple of its famous cathedral refused to work. Residents were making obvious jokes about its being a weatherhen, and not a weathercock at all, because it "sat so tight."
I travelled three hundred miles on the level, and then climbed four hundred feet into the air, with visions of displaced masonry and fractured ironwork before my eyes, only to find that the socket in which the vane worked was badly in need of oiling. I rather think that that is a record in big efforts for little objects. Three hundred miles by rail, four hundred feet by ladder—and all to grease a weathercock!
This, by the way, was the highest steeple I ever climbed, also the most southerly, except the French Cathedral, Jersey. The most northerly was that which surmounts Dornoch Cathedral. This is Mr. Andrew Carnegie's regular place of worship, and quite close to his residence, Skibo Castle.
FELLING A CHIMNEY A HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OLD—IT STOOD TWO HUNDRED FEET HIGH AND WEIGHED TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED TONS—THIS AND ANOTHER CHIMNEY WERE THROWN WITHIN AN HOUR.
From a Photograph.
THE OLD-FASHIONED METHOD OF BURNING PROPS—APPLYING THE MATCH TO THE MATERIAL. WHEN THE SUPPORTS HAVE BURNT THROUGH DOWN COMES THE CHIMNEY.
From a Copyright Photo.
by The Sport and General Illustrations Co.
"I suppose," I remarked to some of the local residents, "that Mr. Carnegie is pretty generous round here?"
"No," they replied; "he has made it a rule not to give anything to any charity that is situated within twenty miles of Skibo."
At the time I thought this was hard, not to say foolish. On further reflection, however, I can see he is wise; he does not want his demesne to become a magnet, drawing hospitals, almshouses, and what not to its immediate vicinity from the uttermost ends of the earth.
When I am given a job, I usually keep quiet about it beforehand. It is no use attracting a crowd, and that is precisely what happens if the news gets spread abroad. The work of a steeplejack seems to exercise a quite extraordinary fascination over all sorts and conditions of men.
Thus, at Aldershot recently, some twenty thousand people assembled to see me throw two chimneys. They flocked to the scene from the surrounding neighbourhood, and Aldershot itself made high holiday of the occasion, most of the big works being closed.
The authorities kept the ground clear, although I must say that the crowd showed no disposition to invade the immediate proximity of the stacks, when once we had got fairly to work on them. Even the dwelling-houses within a possible radius of the falling masses were deserted, and one family erected a tent in a neighbouring field and camped out in it until all danger was at an end.
They need not have been scared, however, for the stacks fell exactly upon the lines I had chalked out for them. Outsiders can rarely be made to understand how comparatively simple it is for a steeplejack who knows his business to make a chimney fall precisely where he wills it to.
In many instances exactitude in this matter is the first essential. In the case of the great Par stack, in Cornwall, for example, I was under forfeit of two hundred pounds not to deviate more than a yard either way from the space marked out for it, which was only a foot or two wider than its own diameter.
This insistence was quite reasonable, for the chimney was surrounded with cottages, and stood close alongside the main line of railway. Officials and populace were alike alarmed, and the former begged of me to desist. When I declined, they held up the traffic as a measure of precaution until I had completed the job. As a matter of fact, not even a window in the cottages was broken nor a shilling's-worth of damage done to the railway line.
People are always asking me to take them with me to the tops of shafts and steeples. Usually I decline, but I have to make exceptions. I have piloted some scores of clergymen to the summits of the steeples of their own churches; and once I escorted the reverend incumbent's daughter, a sprightly girl of eighteen. I was rather nervous about it, but I need not have been. She was the steadiest and coolest climber, for an amateur, that I ever had any dealings with.
I cannot end this article without speaking about what I always call "my most romantic climb." This was at Athenry, in County Galway. A steeple had been struck by lightning and knocked out of the perpendicular. After this it had been taken down—an easy job—but nobody could be found who could put it up again. When several other steeplejacks had failed I was sent for as a forlorn hope, and succeeded. The romance of the climb, however, lies not in this feat, but in the fact that it was from the spire, after its replacement, that I first caught sight of the young lady who is now my wife.
THE DOMINICAN CHURCH, NEWRY, IRELAND—A PORTION OF THE SPIRE WAS BLOWN OFF IN A GALE. A TELEGRAPH WAS SENT TO MR. LARKINS, AND THE FOLLOWING DAY THE SPIRE WAS "LADDERED" AND WORK IN FULL SWING.
From a Photo. by H. Allison & Co.