| December | 22 | £21 | 5 | 5 |
| „ | 15 | 21 | 17 | 3 |
| „ | 8 | 22 | 10 | 1 |
| November | 17 | 28 | 8 | 0 |
This gives an average of more than 1l. 19s. per man a-week for this period; but the slackness of trade in the summer, when coals are in smaller demand, reduces the average to the amount I have stated. In the two weeks omitted in the above statement, viz. those ending December 1st and November 24th, fourteen men had to be employed, on account of the briskness of trade. Their joint earnings were 39l. 12s. 5d. one week, and 33l. 6s. 7d. the other. By this firm each waggoner is paid 1l. a-week, and 6s. extra if he “do” 100 tons; that is, 6s. between him and the trimmer. For every ton above 100 carried out by their waggoner and trimmer, 1d. extra is paid, and sometimes 130 are carried out, but only at a busy time; 142 have been carried out, but that only was remembered as the greatest amount at the wharf in question. For each waggon sent out, the waggoner and the trimmer together receive 4d. for “beer money” from their employers. They frequently receive money (if not drink) from the customers, and so the average of 28s. and upwards is made up. I saw two waggoners fully employed, and they fully corroborated this statement. Such payment, however, is not the rule. Many give the waggoner 21s. a-week, and employ him in doing whatever work may be required. A waggoner at what he called “poor work,” three or four days a-week, told me he earned about 13s. on the average.
The scurfs are looked upon as, in many respects, the refuse of the trade. They are the men always hanging about the wharfs, waiting for any “odd job.” They are generally coalporters who cannot be trusted with full and regular work, who were described to me as “tonguey, or drunken,” anxious to get a job just to supply any pressing need, either for drink or meat, and careless of other consequences. Among them, however, are coalporters seeking employment, some with good characters. These scurfs, with the sifters, number, I understand, more than 500; thus altogether making, with the coalbackers and other classes of coalporters, a body of more than 2000.
I now come to the following statement, made by a gentleman who for more than thirty years has been familiar with all matters connected with the coal-merchants’ trade. “I cannot say,” he began, “that the condition of the coalporter (not referring to his earnings, but to his moral and intellectual improvement) is much amended now, for he is about the same sort of man that he was thirty years ago. There may be, and I have no doubt is, a greater degree of sobriety, but I fear chiefly on account of the men’s earnings being now smaller, and their having less means at their command. Thirty-five years ago, before the general peace, labourers were scarce, and the coalporters then had full and ready employment, earning from 2l. to 3l. a-week. I have heard a coalporter say that one week he earned 5l.; indeed, I have heard several say so. After the peace, the supply of labour for the coal-trade greatly increased, and the coalporters’ earnings fell gradually. The men employed in a good establishment thirty years ago, judging from the payments in our own establishment as a fair criterion, were in the receipt of nearly 3l. a-week on the average. At that time coal was delivered by the chaldron. A chaldron was composed of 12 sacks containing 36 bushels, and weighing about 25 cwt. (a ton and a-quarter). For the loading of the waggons a gang of four men, called ‘fillers,’ was, and is, employed. They were paid 1s. 4d. per chaldron; that is, 4d. per man. This was for measuring the coal, putting it into sacks, and putting the sacks into the waggon. The men in this gang had nothing to do with the conveyance of the coal to the customers. For that purpose two other men were employed; a ‘waggoner,’ and a man known as a ‘trimmer,’ or ‘trouncer,’ who accompanied the waggoner, and aided him in carrying the sacks from the waggon to the customers’ coal-cellar, and in arranging the coal when delivered, so as properly to assort the small with the large, or indeed making any arrangement with them required by the purchaser. The waggoner and the trimmer were paid 1s. 3d. each per chaldron for delivery, but when the coal had to be carried up or down-stairs any distance, their charge was an extra shilling—2s. 3d. Many of the men have at that time, when work was brisk, filled and delivered fifteen chaldrons day by day, provided the distance for delivery was not very far. Drink was sometimes given by the customers to the waggoner and trimmer who had charge of the coal sent to their houses—perhaps generally given; and I believe it was always asked for, unless it happened to be given without asking. At that time I did not know one teetotaler; I do not know one personally among those parties now. Some took the pledge, but I believe none kept it. In this establishment we discourage drunkenness all that we possibly can. In 1832, wages having varied from the time of the peace until then, a great change took place. Previous to that time a reduction of 4d. per ton had been made in the payment of the men who filled the waggons (the fillers), but not in that of the waggoner or the trimmer. The change I allude to was that established by Act of Parliament, providing for the sale of all coal by the merchant being by weight instead of by measure. This change, it was believed, would benefit the public, by ensuring them the full quantity for which they bargained. I think it has benefited them. Coal was, under the former system, measured by the bushel, and there were frequently objections as to the way in which the bushel was filled. Some dealers were accused of packing the measure, so as to block it up with large pieces of coal, preventing the full space being filled with the coal. The then Act provided that the bushel measure should be heaped up with the coal so as to form a cone six inches above the rim of the measure. When the new Act came into operation the coalporters were paid 10d. a-ton among the gang of four fillers, and the same to the waggoner and trimmer. Before two years this became reduced generally to 9d. The gang could load twenty-five tons a-day without extra toil; forty tons, and perhaps more, have been loaded by a gang: but such labour continued would exhaust strong men. With extra work there was always extra drink, for the men fancy that their work requires beer ‘for support.’ My opinion is that a moderate allowance of good malt liquor, say three pints a-day when work is going on all day, is of advantage to a coalporter. In the winter they fancy it necessary to drink gin to warm them. At one time all the men drank more than now. I estimate the average earnings of a coalporter fully employed now at 1l. a-week. There are far more employed at present than when I first knew the trade, and the trade itself has been greatly extended by the new wharfs on the Regent’s Canal, and up and down the river.”
I had heard from so many quarters that “beer” was a necessity of the coal-labourers’ work, that finding the coalwhippers the most intelligent of the whole class, I thought it best to call the men together, and to take their opinion generally on the subject. Accordingly I returned to the basketmen’s waiting-room at the coalwhippers’ office, and, as before, it was soon crowded. There were eighty present. Wishing to know whether the coalbacker’s statement already given, that the drinking of beer was a necessity of hard labour, was a correct one, I put the question to the men there assembled: “Is the drinking of fermented liquors necessary for performing hard work? How many present believe that you can work without beer?” Those who were of opinion that it was necessary for the performance of their labour, were requested to hold up their hands, and four out of the eighty did so.
A basketman who had been working at the business for four years, and for two of those years had been a whipper, and so doing the heaviest labour, said that in the course of the day he had been one of a gang who had delivered as many as 189 tons. For this he had required no drink at all; cocoa was all he had taken. Three men in the room had likewise done without beer at the heaviest work. One was a coalwhipper, and had abstained for six years. Some difference of opinion seemed to exist as to the number in the trade that worked without beer. Some said 250, others not 150. One man stated that it was impossible to do without malt liquor. “One shilling a day properly spent in drink would prolong life full ten years,” he said. This was received with applause. Many present declared that they had tried to do without beer, and had injured themselves greatly by the attempt. Out of the eighty present, fourteen had tried teetotalism, and had thrown it up after a time on account of its injuring their health. One man, on the other hand, said he had given the total-abstinence principle a fair trial for seven months, and had never found himself in such good health before. Another man stated, that to do a day’s work of ninety-eight turns, three pints of beer were requisite. All but three believed this. The three pints were declared to be requisite in winter time, and four pints, or two pots, were considered to be not too much in a hot summer’s day. Before the present office was instituted, each man, they told me, drank half-a-pint of gin and six pots of beer daily. That was the average—many drank more. Then they could not do their work so well; they were weaker from not having so much food. The money went for drink instead of meat. They were always quarrelling on board a ship. Drunken men could never agree. “A portion of beer is good, but too much is worse than none at all.” This was the unanimous declaration.
Since this meeting I have been at considerable pains to collect a large amount of evidence in connexion with this most important question. The opinion of the most intelligent of the class seems to be, that no kind of fermented drink is necessary for the performance of the hardest labour; but I have sought for and obtained the sentiments of all classes, temperate and intemperate, with the view of fairly discussing the subject. These statements I must reserve till my next letter. At present I shall conclude with the following story of the sufferings of the wife of one of the intemperate class:—
“I have been married nineteen or twenty years. I was married at Penton, in Oxfordshire. We came to London fifteen years ago. My husband first worked as a sawyer. For eleven years he was in the coal-trade. He was in all sorts of work, and for the last six months he was a ‘scurf.’ What he earned all the time I never knew. He gave me what he liked, sometimes nothing at all. In May last he only gave me 2s. 8d. for the whole month, for myself and two children. I buried four children. I can’t tell how we lived then. I can’t express what we’ve suffered, all through drink. He gave me twenty years of misery through drink. [This was repeated four or five times.] Some days that May we had neither bit nor sup; the water was too bad to drink cold, and I had to live on water put through a few leaves in the teapot—old leaves. Poor people, you know, sir, helps poor people; and but for the poor neighbours we might have been found dead some day. He cared nothing. Many a time I have gone without bread to give it to the children. Was he ever kind to them, do you say, sir? No; they trembled when they heard his step; they were afraid of their very lives, he knocked them about so; drink made him a savage; drink took the father out of him.” This was said with a flush and a rapid tone, in strong contrast with the poor woman’s generally subdued demeanour. She resumed:—“Twenty miserable years through drink! I’ve often gone to bring him from the public-house, but he seldom would come. He would abuse me, and would drink more because I’d gone for him. I’ve often whispered to him that his children was starving: but I durstn’t say that aloud when his mates was by. We seldom had a fire. He often beat me. I’ve 9s. in pawn now. Since we came to London I’ve lost 20l. in the pawnshop.”
This man had died a fortnight before, having ruptured a blood-vessel. He lay ill six days. The parish doctor attended him. His comrades “gathered” for his burial, but the widow had still some funeral expenses to pay by instalments. The room she and the children occupied was the same as in the husband’s lifetime. There was about the room a cold damp smell, arising from bad ventilation and the chilliness of the weather. Two wretched beds almost filled the place. No article was worth a penny, nor could a penny have been obtained at a sale or a pawnshop. The woman was cleanly clad, but looked sadly pinched, miserable, and feeble. She earns a little as a washerwoman, and did earn it while her husband lived. She bears an excellent character. Her repetition of the words, “twenty years of misery through drink,” was very pitiful. I refrained from a prolonged questioning, as it seemed to excite her in her weak state.