"The Blue-bottles don't twig—eh?" cried the woman with the domino teeth.
"That's it: but you asked me how I come to be a prig—I'll tell you. My father was a coal-whipper, and had three sons. He brought us all up to be coal-whippers also. My eldest brother was drownded in the pool one night when he was drunk, after only drinking about two pots of the publicans' beer: my other brother died of hunger in Cold-Bath Fields prison, where he was sent for three months for taking home a bit of coal one night to his family when he couldn't get his wages paid him by the publican that hired the gang in which he worked. My father died when he was forty—and any one to have seen him would have fancied he was sixty-five at least—so broke down was he with hard work and drinking. But no coal-whipper lives to an old age: they all die off at about forty—old men in the wery prime of life."
"And why's that?" demanded the large-toothed lady.
"Why not?" repeated the man. "Because a coal-whipper isn't a human being—or if he is, he isn't treated as such: and so I've always thought he must be different from the rest of the world."
"How isn't he treated like any one else?"
"In the first place, he doesn't get paid for his labour in a proper way. Wapping swarms with low public-houses, the landlords of which act as middle-men between the owners of the colliers and the men that's hired to unload 'em. A coal-whipper can't get employment direct from the captain of the collier: the working of the collier is farmed by them landlords I speak of; and the whipper must apply at their houses. Those whippers as drinks the most always gets employment first; and whether a whipper chooses to drink beer or not, it's always sent three times a-day on board the colliers for the gangs. And, my eye! what stuff it is! Often and often have we throwed it away, 'cos we could'nt possibly drink it—and it must be queer liquor that a coal-whipper won't drink!"
"I should think so too. But go on."
"Well, I used to earn from fifteen to eighteen shillings a-week; and out of that, eight was always stopped for the beer; and if I didn't spend another or two on Saturday night when I received the balance, the landlord set me down as a stingy feller and put a cross agin my name in his book."
"What was that for?"
"Why, not to give me any more work till he was either forced to do so for want of hands, or I made it up with him by standing a crown bowl of punch. So what with one thing and another, I had to keep myself, my wife, and three children, on about seven or eight shillings a-week—after working from light to dark."