Within the last few years they have established a Benefit Society, and they expended in the year 1847, according to the last account, 646l. odd, in the relief of the sick and the burial of the dead. They have also established a superannuation fund, out of which they allow 5s. per week to each member who is incapacitated from old age or accident. They are, at the present time, paying such pensions to twenty members. At the time of the celebrated Chartist demonstration, on the 10th of April, the coalwhippers were, I believe, the first class of persons who spontaneously offered their services as special constables.

Further than this they have established a school, with accommodation for six hundred scholars, out of their small earnings. On one occasion as much as 80l. was collected among the men for the erection of this institution.

The men are liable to many accidents; some fall off the plank into the hold of the vessel, and are killed; others are injured by large lumps of coal falling on them; and, indeed, so frequent are these disasters, that the Commissioners have directed that the indivisible fraction which remains, after dividing the earnings of the men into nine equal parts, should be applied to the relief of the injured; and although the fund raised by these insignificant means amounts in the course of the year to 30l. or 40l., the whole is absorbed by the calamities.

Furnished with this information as to the general character and regulations of the calling, I then proceeded to visit one of the vessels in the river, so that I might see the nature of the labour performed. No one on board the vessel (the ——, of Newcastle) was previously aware of my visit or its object. I need not describe the vessel, as my business is with the London labourers in the coal trade. It is necessary, however, in order to show the nature of the labour of coal-whipping, that I should state that the average depth of coal in the hold of a collier, from ceiling to combing, is sixteen feet, while there is an additional seven feet to be reckoned for the basketman’s “boom,” which makes the height that the coals have to be raised by the whippers from twenty-three to thirty feet. The complement of a gang of coalwhippers is about nine. In the hold are four men, who relieve each other in filling a basket—only one basket being in use with coal. The labour of these four men is arduous: so exhausting is it in hot weather that their usual attire is found to be cumbrous, and they have often to work merely in their trousers or drawers. As fast as these four men in the hold fill the basket, which holds 1¼ cwt., four whippers draw it up. This is effected in a peculiar and, to a person unused to the contemplation of the process, really an impressive manner. The four whippers stand on the deck, at the foot of what is called “a way.” This way resembles a short rude ladder: it is formed of four broken oars lashed lengthways, from four to five feet in height (giving a step from oar to oar of more than a foot), while the upright spars to which they are attached are called “a derrick.” At the top of this “derrick” is a “gin,” which is a revolving wheel, to which the ropes holding the basket, “filled” and “whipped,” are attached. The process is thus one of manual labour with mechanical aid. The basket having been filled in the hold, the whippers correctly guessing the time for the filling—for they never look down into the hold—skip up the “way,” holding the ropes attached to the basket and the gin, and pulling the ropes at two skips, simultaneously, as they ascend. They thus hoist the loaded basket some height out of the hold, and, when hoisted so far, jump down, keeping exact time in their jump, from the topmost beam of the way on to the deck, so giving the momentum of their bodily weight to the motion communicated to the basket. While the basket is influenced by this motion and momentum, the basketman, who is stationed on a plank flung across the hold, seizes the basket, runs on with it (the gin revolving) to “the boom,” and shoots the contents into the weighing-machine. The boom is formed of two upright poles, with a cross-pole attached by way of step, on to which the basket-man vaults, and rapidly reversing the basket, empties it. This process is very quickly effected, for if the basket-man did not avail himself of the swing of the basket, the feat would be almost beyond a man’s strength, or, at least, he would soon be exhausted by it.

The machine is a large coal-scuttle or wooden box, attached to a scale connected with 2½ cwt. When the weight is raised by two deposits in the machine, which hangs over the side of the ship, it discharges it, by pulling a rope connected with it down a sliding wooden plane into the barge below. The machine holds 2½ cwt., and so the meter registers the weight of coal unladen. This process is not only remarkable for its celerity but for another characteristic. Sailors, when they have to “pull away” together, generally time their pulling to some rude chant; their “Yo, heave, yo,” is thought not only to regulate but to mitigate the weight of their labour. The coalwhippers do their work in perfect silence: they do it indeed like work, and hard work, too. The basket-man and the meter are equally silent, so that nothing is heard but the friction of the ropes, the discharge of the coal from the basket into the machine, and from the machine into the barge. The usual amount of work done by the whippers in a day (but not as an average, one day with another) is to unload, or whip, ninety-eight tons! To whip one ton, sixteen basketfuls are required; so that to whip a single ton these men jump up and down 144 feet: for a day’s work of ninety-eight tons, they jump up and down 13,088 feet, more in some instances; for in the largest ship the way has five steps, and ten men are employed. The coalwhippers, therefore, raise 1¼ cwt. very nearly four miles high, or twice as high as a balloon ordinarily mounts in the air: and, in addition to this, the coalwhippers themselves ascend very nearly 1½ mile perpendicularly in the course of the day. On some days they whip upwards of 150 tons—200 have been whipped, when double this labour must be gone through. The ninety-eight tons take about seven hours. The basket-man’s work is the most critical, and accidents, from his falling into the hold, are not very unfrequent. The complement of men for the unlading of a vessel is, as I have said, nine: four in the hold, four whippers, and the basket-man—the meter forms a tenth, but he acts independently of the others. They seldom work by candlelight, and, whenever possible, avoid working in very bad weather; but the merchant, as I have shown, has great power in regulating their labour for his own convenience. The following statement was given to me by a coalwhipper on board this vessel:—

“We should like better wages, but then we have enemies. Now suppose you, sir, are a coal-merchant, and this gentleman here freights a ship of the captain—you understand me? The man who freights the ships that way is paid, by the captain, ninepence a-ton, for a gang of nine men, such as you’ve seen—nine coalwhippers—but these nine men, you understand me, are paid by the merchant (or buyer) only eightpence a ton; so that by every ton he clears a penny, without any labour or trouble whatsomever. I and my fellows is dissatisfied, but can’t help ourselves. This merchant, too, you understand me, finds there’s rather an opening in the Act of Parliament about whippers. By employing a man as his servant on his premises for fourteen days, he’s entitled to work as a coalwhipper. We call such made whipper ‘boneyfides.’ There’s lots of them, and plenty more would be made if we was to turn rusty. I’ve heard, you understand me, of driving a coach through an Act of Parliament, but here they drive a whole fleet through it.”

The coal whippers all present the same aspect—they are all black. In summer, when the men strip more to their work, perspiration causes the coal-dust to adhere to the skin, and blackness is more than ever the rule. All about the ship partakes of the grimness of the prevailing hue. The sails are black; the gilding on the figure-head of the vessel becomes blackened, and the very visitor feels his complexion soon grow sable. The dress of the whippers is of every description; some have fustian jackets, some have sailors’ jackets, some loose great coats, some Guernsey frocks. Many of them work in strong shirts, which once were white with a blue stripe: loose cotton neckerchiefs are generally worn by the whippers. All have black hair and black whiskers—no matter what the original hue; to the more stubbly beards and moustachios the coal-dust adheres freely between the bristles, and may even be seen, now and then, to glitter in the light amidst the hair. The barber, one of these men told me, charged nothing extra for shaving him, although the coal-dust must be a formidable thing to the best-tempered razor. In approaching a coal-ship in the river, the side has to be gained over barges lying alongside—the coal crackling under the visitor’s feet. He must cross them to reach a ladder of very primitive construction, up which the deck is to be reached. It is a jest among the Yorkshire seamen that every thing is black in a collier, especially the soup. When the men are at work in whipping or filling, the only spot of white discernible on their hands is a portion of the nails.

There are no specific hours for the payment of these men: they are entitled to their money as soon as their work is reported to be completed. Nothing can be better than the way in which the whippers are now paid. The basket-man enters the office of the pay-clerk of the coal commission at one door, and hands over an adjoining counter an amount of money he has received from the captain. The pay-clerk ascertains that the amount is correct. He then divides the sum into nine portions, and, touching a spring to open a door, he cries out for “Gang such a number.” The nine men, who, with many others, are in attendance in rooms provided for them adjacent to the pay-office, appear immediately, and are paid off. I was present when nine whippers were paid for the discharge of 363½ tons. The following was the work done and the remuneration received:—

Day.Tons.
Dec.14th1st35
„15th2nd56
Sunday intervenes.
„17th3rd84
„18th4th98
„19th5th90½
363½

These 363½ tons, at 8d. per ton, realized to each man, for five days’ work, 1l. 6s. 4¼d.; 10s. of which had been paid to each as subsistence money during the progress of the work. In addition to the work so paid to each, there was deducted a farthing in every shilling as office fees, to defray the expenses of the office. From this farthing reduction, moreover, the basket-man is paid 1½d. in the pound, as commission for bringing the money from the captain. Out of the sum to be divided on the occasion I specify there was an indivisible fraction of 1¼d. This, as it cannot be shared among nine men, goes to what is called “The Fraction Fund,” which is established for the relief of persons suffering from accidents on board coal-ships. These indivisible fractions realize between 30l. and 40l. yearly.