Adventures of Working Men. From the Notebook of a Working Surgeon

by George Manville Fenn

I had a very singular case, one day, being called in to attend, in a busy part of London, upon a curious-looking man who lay in bed suffering from the effects of bad gas. He was a peculiar-looking fellow, with grizzled black hair, excessively sallow skin, piercing eyes, and his face was as strangely and terribly seamed with the smallpox.

I had some little trouble with his case, which was the result of his having been prisoned for some hours in one of the sewers that run like arteries under London. A sudden flood had come on, and he had been compelled with a companion to retreat to a higher level, where the foul air had accumulated, and he had had a narrow escape for his life.

As he amended! Used to chat with him about his avocation, and I was much struck by the coolness with which he used to talk about his work, and incidentally I learned whence came the seaming in his face.

“You see, sir,” he said, “the danger’s nothing if a man has what you call presence of mind—has his wits about him, you know. For instance, say he’s in danger, or what not, and he steps out with his right foot, and he steps out of danger; but say he steps out with his left foot, and he loses his life. Sounds but very little, that does; but it makes two steps difference between the right way and the wrong way, and that’s enough to settle it all; sound or cripple, home or hospital, fireside or a hole in the churchyard. Presence of mind’s everything to a working man, and it’s a pity they can’t teach a little more of it in schools to the boys. I don’t want to boast, for I’m very thankful; but a little bit of quiet thought has saved my life more than once, when poor fellows, mates of mine, have been in better places and lost theirs.

“I’m a queer sort of fellow, always having been fond of moling and working underground from a boy. Why, when I went to school, nothing pleased me better than setting up what we called a robbers’ cave in the old hill, where they dug the bright red sand; and there, of a Wednesday afternoon, we’d go and climb up the side to the steep pitch where it was all honeycombed by the sand-martins, and then, just like them, we’d go on burrowing and digging in at the side, scooping away in the beautiful clean sand, till I should think one summer we had dug in twenty feet. Grand place that was, so we thought, and fine and proud we used to be; and the only wonder is that the unsupported roof did not come down and bury some half-dozen of us. Small sets-out of that sort of course we did have, parts of the side falling down; but as long as it did not bury our heads we rather enjoyed it, and laughed at one another.

“Well, my old love for underground work seemed to cling to me when I grew up, and that’s how it is I’ve always been employed so much upon sewers. They’re nasty places, to say the best of them; but, then, as they’re made for the health of a town, and it’s somebody’s duty to work down in them, why, one does it in a regular sort of way, and forgets all the nastiness.

“Now, just shut your eyes for a few minutes and fancy you’re close at my elbow, and I’ll try if I can’t take you down with me into a sewer, and you shall have the nice little adventure over again that happened to me—nothing to signify, you know, only a trifling affair; but rather startling to a man all the same. The sewerage is altered now a good deal, and the great main stream goes far down the river, but I’m talking about the time when all the sewers emptied themselves straight into the Thames.

“Now, we’ve got an opening here in the street on account of a stoppage, and we’ve gone down ladder after ladder, and from stage to stage, until we are at the bottom, where the brick arch has been cut away, and now I’m calling it all up again, as you shall hear.

“I don’t think I ever knew what fear was in those days—I mean fear in my work, for, being the way in which I got my daily bread, danger seemed nothing, and I went anywhere, as I did on the night I am speaking of. It was a very large sewer, and through not having any clock at home, I’d come out a good hour before my time. I stopped talking to the men I was to relieve for some little time, waiting for my mates to come—the job being kept on with, night and day. Last of all, I lit a bit of candle in one of the lanterns, and, taking it, stepped down into the water, which came nearly to the tops of my boots, and began wading up stream.

“Now, when I say up to the tops of my boots, I mean high navigator’s boots that covered the thigh; and so I went wading along, holding my lantern above my head, and taking a good look at the brickwork, to see if I could find any sore places—it being of course of great consequence that all should be sound and strong.