Life in a Railway Factory

by Alfred Williams

A little humour is occasionally in evidence in the life that is lived by the grimy pack of toilers in the factory sheds. There is, for instance, the story of the young man engaged to be married to a smart lass, and who gave himself certain unjustifiable airs, representing himself as holding a position in the drawing office. After the wedding took place, at the end of the first week, he took home 18s. in wages and was severely taken to task by his spouse and mother-in-law. It transpired that he was employed pulling a heavy truck about; that was the only “drawing office” to which he was attached.

One young fellow was subjected to the ridicule of his mates by reason of an accident that befell him on his wedding-day. He lived far out in the country, and, on the morning of the ceremony, just before the appointed hour, happening to give an extra specially good yawn, he dislocated his jaw and had to be driven twelve miles to a doctor. Another artless youth, newly brought into the shed, when he was put to withdraw the white-hot plates from a vast furnace, finding the iron rake much too short, tied a piece of tar-cord on the end in order to lengthen it!

The riveter and his mates occasionally practise the ludicrous. One day, when “Dobbin,” the “holder-up,” who was short-sighted, was sitting underneath the floor of the waggon with his head against the plate, dozing perhaps, the riveter began to beat on the floor with his hand-hammer and severely hurt his mate’s cranium. Shortly afterwards Dobbin unconsciously took his revenge. It is usual to “drift” the holes with a steel tool in order to make them clear to admit the rivet, and on this particular occasion the riveter thrust his finger through instead and Dobbin, seeing it in the dim light and thinking it was the drift, gave it a mighty ram upwards with the dolly and smashed it.

Then there is “Budget,” who works one of the oil furnaces, with only half a shirt to his back and hair six or seven inches long and as straight as gunbarrels; whose face, long before breakfast-time, is as black as a sweep’s; who slaves like a Cyclops at the forge and is frequently quoting some portions of the speeches of Antonio and Shylock in the “Merchant of Venice,” which he learnt at school and has not yet forgotten. He sprang out of bed in a great fright, seized his food and ran at top speed, and only partly dressed, half through the town in the darkness to discover finally that it wanted an hour to midnight: he had only gone to bed at ten o’clock. His father is a platelayer on the railway receiving the magnificent sum of 16s. a week in wages, and his mother, after suffering five operations, was lately sent home from the hospital as incurable; it is a struggle to make both ends meet and to keep the home respectable. It is no wonder that Budget’s shirt is always out of repair and that he himself is racked with colds and influenza.

There is romance in every walk of life, and legends of ghosts and spirits that frequent desolate ruins and dark places, but few would think to find such a thing as a haunted forge or coke heap, though they were believed to exist by the credulous among the night-men at the factory. “Sammy,” the cokewheeler, had a mortal dread of the cokeheap at midnight, by reason of strange, weird noises he had heard there in the lone, dark hours, and the men at the fires often had to wait for fuel, or go and get it in for themselves. Accordingly, certain among them determined to frighten the old man still further. For several nights in succession, at about twelve o’clock, someone scaled the big high heap at the back and waited for Samuel’s return from the shed with his wheel-barrow. When he arrived the hidden one set up a loud, moaning noise and started to clamber down the pile. The coke gave way and fell with a crash, and Sammy, stuttering and stammering with a childlike simplicity and in a paroxysm of fear, rushed off and told how the “ghost” had assailed him.

The haunted forge was in the smith’s shed, adjoining the steam-hammer shop. There a simple fellow was by a waggish mate first of all beguiled into the belief that a treasure was hidden beneath the floorplate and anvil, and then induced to go alone during the supper-hour in the hope of obtaining a clue from the “spirit” as to its exact whereabouts. Accordingly he went fearfully in through the darkness and up to the fire, while his mate, concealed in the roof, moaned and spoke to him in a ghostly voice down the chimney, telling how, many years before, he had been murdered on that spot and his body buried there together with the treasure, and promising to discover it to the workman if he would come secretly to the fire a fixed number of nights and not communicate the matter to any outsiders. This went on for some time, until the unhappy dupe was made ill, and driven half out of his mind with crazy fear, and things began to get serious. Suddenly the noises stopped, and the midnight visit to the forge was discontinued.

Cases have occurred in which a man has actually been driven out of his mind by continual and systematic trading on his weakness, and by a downright wicked and criminal prosecution of the unscrupulous game. Teddy, the sweeper-up, who was a young married man, and highly respectable, but who discovered a trifling weakness, was assailed and befooled with disgusting buffoonery and drivelling nonsense to such an extent that he became a perfect mental wreck, to the complete amusement of the clique who had brought it about, and who indulged in hysterical laughter at the unfortunate man’s antics and general condition. To such a point was the foolery carried that Teddy had to be detained, and he fell seriously ill. In a fortnight he died, and those who had been the chief cause of his collapse went jesting to his funeral. It was nothing to them that they had been instrumental in his death; a man’s life and soul are held at a cheap rate by his mates about the factory.

Jim Cole is considerably out of place in the factory crowd; ill-health and other misfortunes were the cause of his migration to the railway town. He is a Londoner by birth, and was first of all a valet in good service; afterwards he bought a cab and plied with it about the streets of the metropolis. As a valet he lived with a sister of John Bright, and was often in attendance upon the famous statesman and orator. John Bright’s faith in the Book of Books is well nigh proverbial; the old valet says whenever he went to his room in the morning he was always sitting up in bed reading the Bible.

As a cabman Jim was brought into contact with many celebrities, and it is interesting to learn in what light great men appear to those who are at their service about the thoroughfares. He knew Tennyson well by sight. The famous poet was never a favourite with the “men in the street.” His testiness of manner and severity were well-known to them; to use Jim Cole’s words: “They hated the sight of him.” “There goes the miserable old d — —l,” they would say to each other.

Carlyle was not a favourite with the cabmen either. They said he was “hoggish,” and “too miserable to live.” Everyone was in his way, and everything had to be set aside for him. His brilliant literary fame was no recommendation in the face of his stern personal characteristics.