We boast where’er we go—
’Twas all because we sign’d the pledge,
A long, long time ago.”
At the close of my interview with these men I received from them an invitation to visit them at their own houses whenever I should think fit. It was clearly their desire that I should see the comforts and domestic arrangements of their homes. Accordingly on the morrow, choosing an hour when there could have been no preparation, I called at the lodgings of the first. I found the whole family assembled in the back kitchen, that served them for a parlour. As I entered the room the mother was busy at work, washing and dressing her children for the day. There stood six little things, so young that they seemed to be all about the same height, with their faces shining with the soap and water, and their cheeks burning red with the friction of the towel. They were all laughing and playing about the mother, who, with comb and brush in hand, found it no easy matter to get them to stand still while she made “the parting.” First of all the man asked me to step up-stairs and see the sleeping-room. I was much struck with the scrupulous cleanliness of the apartment. The blind was as white as snow, half rolled up, and fastened with a pin. The floor was covered with patches of different coloured carpet, showing that they had been bought from time to time, and telling how difficult it had been to obtain the luxury. In one corner was a cupboard with the door taken off, the better to show all the tumblers, teacups, and coloured-glass mugs, that, with two decanters, well covered with painted flowers, were kept more for ornament than use. On the chimneypiece was a row of shells, china shepherdesses, and lambs, and a stuffed pet canary in a glass-case for a centre ornament. Against the wall, surrounded by other pictures, hung a half-crown water-colour drawing of the wife, with a child on her knee, matched on the other side by the husband’s likeness, cut out in black paper. Pictures of bright-coloured ducks and a print of Father Moore the teetotaler completed the collection.
“You see,” said the man, “we manages pretty well; but I can assure you we has a hard time of it to do it at all comfortably. Me and my wife is just as we stands—all our other things are in pawn. If I was to drink I don’t know what I should do. How others manage is to me a mystery. This will show you I speak the truth,” he added, and going to a secretary that stood against the wall he produced a handful of duplicates. There were seventeen tickets in all, amounting to 3l. 0s. 6d., the highest sum borrowed being 10s. “That’ll show you I don’t like my poverty to be known, or I should have told you of it before. And yet we manage to sleep clean;” and he pulled back the patchwork counterpane, and showed me the snow-white sheets beneath. “There’s not enough clothes to keep us warm, but at least they are clean. We’re obliged to give as much as we can to the children. Cleanliness is my wife’s hobby, and I let her indulge in it. I can assure you last week my wife had to take the gown off her back to get 1s. on it. My little ones seldom have a bit of meat from one Sunday to another, and never a bit of butter.”
I then descended into the parlour. The children were all seated on little stools that their father had made for them in his spare moments, and warming themselves round the fire, their little black shoes resting on the white hearth. From their regular features, small mouths, large black eyes, and fair skins, no one would have taken them for a labouring man’s family. In answer to my questions, he said: “The eldest of them (a pretty little half-clad girl, seated in one corner) is ten, the next seven, that one five, that three, and this (a little thing perched upon a table near the mother) two. I’ve got all their ages in the Bible up-stairs.” I remarked a strange look about one of the little girls. “Yes, she always suffered with that eye; and down at the hospital they lately performed an operation on it.” An artificial pupil had been made.
The room was closed in from the passage by a rudely built partition. “That I did myself in my leisure,” said the man; “it makes the room snugger.” As he saw me looking at the clean rolling-pin and bright tins hung against the wall, he observed: “That’s all my wife’s doing. She has got them together by sometimes going without dinner herself, and laying out the 2d. or 3d. in things of that sort. That is how she manages. To-day she has got us a sheep’s head and a few turnips for our Sunday’s dinner,” he added, taking off the lid of the boiling saucepan. Over the mantelpiece hung a picture of George IV., surrounded by four other frames. One of them contained merely three locks of hair. The man, laughing, told me, “Two of them are locks of myself and my wife, and the light one in the middle belonged to my wife’s brother, who died in India. That’s her doing again,” he added.
After this I paid a visit to the other teetotaler at his home, and there saw one of his sons. He had six children altogether, and also supported his wife’s mother. If it wasn’t for him, the poor old thing, who was seventy-five, and a teetotaler too, must have gone to the workhouse. Three of his six children lived at home; the other three were out at service. One of the lads at home was a coalbacker. He was twenty-four years of age, and on an average could earn 17s. 6d. It was four years since he had taken to backing. He said, “I am at work at one of the worst wharfs in London; it is called ‘the slaughter-house’ by the men, because the work is so excessive. The strongest man can only last twelve years at the work there; after that he is overstrained and of no use. I do the hardest work, and carry the coals up from the hold. The ladder I mount has about thirty-five steps, and stands very nearly straight on end. Each time I mount I carry on my back 238 pounds. No man can work at this for more than five days in the week. I work three days running, then have a day’s rest, and then work two days more. I myself generally do five days’ work out of the six. I never drink any beer, and have not for the last eight months. For three years and four months I took beer to get over the work. I used to have a pint at eleven, a pot at dinner, a pint at four o’clock, and double allowance, or a couple of pots, after work. Very often I had more than double allowance. I seldom in a day drank less than that; but I have done more. I have drunk five pots in four minutes and a-half. So my expenditure for beer was 1s. 4d. a-day regularly. Indeed, I used to allow myself three half-crowns to spend in beer a-week, Sundays included. When a coal-worker is in full work, he usually spends 2s. a-day, or 12s. a-week, in beer. The trade calls these men temperate. When they spend 15s. the trade think they are intemperate. Before I took the pledge I scarcely ever went to bed sober after my labour. I was not always drunk, but I was heavy and stupid with beer. Twice within the time I was a coalbacker I have been insensibly drunk. I should say three-fourths of the coalbackers are drunk twice a-week. Coalbacking is as heavy a class of labour as any performed. I don’t know any that can beat it. I have been eight months doing the work, and can solemnly state I have never tasted a drop of fermented liquor. I have found I could do my work better and brisker than when I drank. I never feel thirsty over my work now; before, I was always dry, and felt as if I could never drink enough to quench it. Now I never drink from the time I go to work till the time I have my dinner; then my usual beverage is either cold coffee or oatmeal and water. From that time I never drink till I take my tea. On this system I find myself quite as strong as I did with the porter. When I drank porter it used to make me go along with a sack a little bit brisker for half-an-hour, but after that I was dead, and obliged to have some more. There are men at the wharf who drink beer and spirits that can do six days’ labour in the week. I can’t do this myself. I have done as much when I took fermented liquors, but I only did so by whipping myself up with stimulants. I was obliged to drink every hour a pint of beer to force me along. That was only working for the publican; for I had less money at the week’s end than when I did less work. Now I can keep longer and more steadily at my work. In a month I would warrant to back more coals than a drunkard. I think the drunkard can do more for a short space of time than the teetotaler. I am satisfied the coalbackers as a class would be better off if they left off the drinking; and then masters would not force them to do so much work after dark as they do now. They always pay at public-houses. If that system was abandoned, the men would be greatly benefited by it. Drinking is not a necessity of the labour. All I want when I’m at work is a bit of coal in the mouth. This not only keeps the mouth cool, but as we go up the ladder we very often scrunch our teeth—the work’s so hard. The coal keeps us from biting the tongue, that’s one use; the other is, that by rolling it along in the mouth it excites the spittle, and it moistens the mouth. This I find a great deal better than a pot of porter.”
In order to complete my investigations concerning the necessity of drinking in the coalwhipping trade, I had an interview with some of the more intelligent of the men who had been principally concerned in the passing of the Act that rescued the class from the “thraldom of the publican.”
“I consider,” said one, “that drink is not a necessity of our labour, but it is a necessity of the system under which we were formerly working. I have done the hardest work that any labouring man can do, and drank no fermented liquor. Nor do I consider fermented liquors to be necessary for the severest labour. This I can say of my own experience, having been a teetotaler for sixteen months. But if the working man don’t have the drink, he must have good solid food, superior to what he is in the habit of having. A pot of coffee and a good beef dumpling will get one over the most severe labour. But if he can’t have that he must have the stimulants. A pint of beer he can always have on credit, but he can’t the beef dumpling. If there is an excuse for any persons drinking there is for the coalwhippers, for under the old system they were forced to become habitual drunkards to obtain work.”