Life in a Railway Factory

by Alfred Williams

The drop-stamps stand in the corner, close under the wall. They are supplied by three coke forges, and by the coal furnace before mentioned. A drop-stamp, or drop-hammer, is a machine used for stamping out all kinds of details and uses in wrought iron or steel, from an ounce to several hundredweights. It differs from a steam-hammer properly so called in that while it is raised by steam power it falls by gravity, striking the metal in the dies by its own impetus, whereas the steam-hammer head is driven down by a piston. Three hands are employed at each machine. They are — the stamper, his hotter, and the small boy who drives the hammer. A similar number compose the night shift; the machines are in constant use by night and day. All the work is done at the piece rate, and the prices are low; the men have to be very nimble to earn sufficient money to pay them for the turn.

The hands employed on the drop-hammers are of a fairly uniform type, though there are several distinguished above the others by reason of their individual features and characteristics. Chief among them are the two young hammer boys, Algy and Cecil, Paul the furnaceman, and a youth who rejoices in the preposterous nickname of “Pump.” Algy drives the end drop-stamp for the chargeman and Cecil the next one to it, larger and heavier. Algy has several nicknames, one of which, from his diminutive stature, being “Teddy Bear,” and the other, carrying with it a certain amount of sarcasm, is plain “Jim.” Sometimes, also, he is called “Dolly” or “Midget.” Cecil boasts of a string of christian names, the correct list being Cecil Oswald Clarence. Questioned concerning the other members of the family he informs you that his brother is named Reginald Cuthbert, his schoolgirl sister May Alberta, and his baby sister Ena Merle. From some cause or other he himself has not obtained a regular nickname; he is rather summarily addressed by his surname. No one in the shed ever deigns to call him by his christian name, it is too unusual and high-sounding, too aristocratic and superb. Bob or Jack would have been preferable; scarcely anyone at the works goes beyond a monosyllable in the matter of names.

The boys are of the same age — fifteen or thereabout — but they are dissimilar in stature and in almost every other respect. Algy is short and small, plump and sturdy, while Cecil is inclined to run. He is tall for his age, and very thin. His body is as flat as a man’s hand; he has no more substance than a herring. Algy’s features are round, regular, and pleasant; he is quite a handsome boy. His forehead slopes a little, his nose is perfect in shape. He has frank, grey eyes sparkling with fun and good-nature, a girlish mouth, and small, pretty teeth. Cecil, on the other hand, is not what one would style handsome. He has thin, hollow cheeks and small, hard features. His forehead is narrow, and his eyes are rather large and searching — expressing strength and keenness. His mouth is stern, and his lips pout a little: they are best represented by the French s’allonger — les lèvres s’allongent, as Monsieur Jourdain’s did in Molière, when he pronounced the vowel sound of u. He has a particularly fine set of teeth, and he has a way of grizzing them together and showing them when in the act of making a special exertion that gives him a savage expression.

Both boys are pale. Algy’s face, when it is clean, shines like a glass bottle; Cecil’s skin is inclined to be yellow. Both have dark rings around the eyes, especially Cecil, who is the more delicate of the two — they are neither very robust-looking. Their hair is very long, and it stands out well from underneath their cloth caps and stretches down the cheeks before the ears. They are consequently often assailed with the cry — “Get yer ’air cut,” or — “You be robbin’ the barber of tuppence,“ or — ”Tell yer mother to use the basin,” suggesting that the boys’ hair is cut at home. It is a common charge to lay to small boys in the shed that their mothers used to put a basin over their heads and cut the hair around the outside of it. Both boys wax indignant at being taunted about the basin, and reply to the other remark with, “You gi’ me the tuppence, then, an’ I’ll have it cut.” Occasionally, more by way of being sarcastic than out of any desire to show good-nature, the stampers will make a collection towards defraying the barber’s expenses, and the next morning the boys will turn up at the shed nearly bald: they have had their hair cut this time with a vengeance.

Several times Algy has come to the shed wearing a pair of wooden clogs, but, as everyone teased him and called him “Cloggy,” he cast them aside and would not wear them any more. Clogs belong rather to the Midlands and the North of England, and are very rarely seen in the railway town. The least respectable of all the boys’ clothing are their shirts. They are usually full of big rents, being split from top to bottom, or torn quite across the back, the lower part falling down and exposing the naked flesh for a space of a foot, and they are of an inscrutable colour. One day an entire sleeve of Algy’s shirt dropped clean away, and Cecil’s was rent completely up one side so that his entire flank and shoulder were visible. Though the stampers laugh at Cecil and sometimes grip hold of whole handfuls of his flesh, where the shirt is torn, he is not very much disconcerted. Algernon blushed considerably, however, when his mate quietly told him one day that he could see his naked posterior through a rent in his trousers.

Although the boys’ clothing is untidy and dilapidated they are not kept short of food, and their appetites are truly enormous. They bring large parcels of provisions to the shed — thick chunks of bread and butter, rashers of raw bacon, an egg to boil or fry, and sometimes a couple of polonies or succulent sausages. The whole is tied up in a red dinner-handkerchief or wrapped in a newspaper; you would often have a difficulty in getting it into an ordinary-sized bucket. The youngsters have to stand a great deal of chaff over their parcels of provisions. The men often take them in their hands and weigh them up and down, showing them about the shed, and asking each other if they do not want to buy a pair of old boots. At breakfast- or dinner-time the lads obtain a roughly-made frying-pan, or take the coke shovel, and, after rubbing it out with a piece of paper, cook their food, usually frying it together and dipping their bread in the fat alternately. Then, if it is fine, still stripped of their waistcoats, they go out in the yard and sit down, or crouch by the furnace door and clear up the food to the last morsel; they will often not have finished when the hooter sounds the first time to warn the men to come back to the shed. When the meal is over, if there is yet time, Algy will produce from his pocket some literature of the Buffalo Bill type, or a school story, of which he is fond, and read it. Cecil will not deign to look at “such stuff,” as he calls it, but will borrow a newspaper, or some part of one, from his mates, and greedily devour the contents of that.

Though neither of them has left school for more than a year, or, at the outside, fifteen months, they have forgotten almost everything they learned, even to the very rudiments in many cases. Their knowledge of grammar, arithmetic, poetry, geography, and history has entirely lapsed, or, if they remember anything at all, it will be but a smattering of each. To test their memory and knowledge of these matters the boys’ chargeman occasionally offers them prizes, and enters them into competition with other lads of the shed, some of whom have not been away from school for more than five or six months, but one and all show a deplorable lack of the faculty of retention. Whether it is the result of too much cramming by the teacher, or whether it is that the rising generation is really deficient in mental capacity, they are quite incapable of answering the most simple and elementary questions. The chargeman’s plan is to offer them pennies for the names of half-a-dozen capitals of foreign countries, half-a-dozen foreign rivers, six names of British kings or British rivers, the capitals of six English counties, or the names of the counties themselves, six fish of English rivers, six wild birds, half-a-dozen names of wild flowers, the capitals of British colonies, the names of six English poets, or a few elementary points of grammar, and so on.

The answers, when any are vouchsafed, are often ludicrous and amazing: the intellectual capacity of the boys is certainly not very brilliant. During these tests the chargeman was astonished to learn that Salisbury is a county, Ceylon is the capital of China, and that Paris stands on the banks of the river Liffey. As for the preterite tense, not one had ever heard of it. Only one out of six could give the names of the six counties and kings complete, though another of the lads had strong impressions concerning a monarch he called the “ginger-headed” one, but he could not think of his name. Not one could furnish the requisite list of fish, fowl, and natural wild flowers, but little Jim, struck with a sudden inspiration, shouted out “jack and perch,” for he had recently been fishing in the clay-pits with his brother. The others frankly confessed they did not know anything about the matter; if they had ever learned it at school they had forgotten it now. Anyway, it was not of much use to one, they said, though it was all right to know about it. Not one of the half-dozen, though all were born in the town, could give the name of a single Wiltshire river.

Paul is not permanently attached to the furnace in the corner, but came to fill the place of one who had met with an accident. As a matter of fact, Paul is everybody’s man; he is here, there, and everywhere. He can turn his hand to almost anything in the second degree, and is a very useful stop-gap. Forge he cannot, stamp he cannot, though he is a capital heater of iron, and makes a good furnaceman; he is a fair all-round, inside man. But somehow or other, everyone persists in making fun of Paul, and contrives to play pranks and practical jokes upon him. Whatever job he is engaged upon his mates address ridiculous remarks to him; they will never take him seriously. Some one or other, in passing by, will knock off his hat; this one gravely takes him by the wrist and feels his pulse, and that one will give him a rough push. Another puts water over him from the pipe, pretending it was by accident; whatever reply he makes his mates only laugh at him. As a rule, Paul takes it all in good part, though sometimes he will lose his temper and retaliate with a lump of coal, or any other missile upon which he can lay his hands.

Paul would be the tallest man in the shed if it were not that he stoops slightly as the result of having had rheumatics. As it is, he is quite six feet in height, bony, but not fleshy, with broad shoulders and large limbs. As he walks his head is thrown forward; he goes heavily upon his feet. His features are regular and pleasant; he has grey eyes and bushy brows. His skin is dark with the heat and grime of the furnace; his expression is one of marked good-nature. In appearance he is a perfect rustic; there is no need to look at him the second time to know that he dwells without the municipal border. It is this air of rusticity, combined with his simplicity of character and behaviour, that makes Paul the butt of the other workmen. They would not think of practising their clownish tricks upon others, for there are many upon whom it would be very inadvisable to attempt a jest without being prepared for a sudden and violent reprisal.