“I’ve got,” said the husband, “about 90l. owing me down there now. It’s quite out of character to think of getting it. At Clerkenwell I got a job at a grocer’s shop. The master was in the Queen’s-bench Prison, and the mistress employed me at 12s. a-week until he went through the Insolvent Debtor’s Court. When he passed the Court the business was sold, and of course he didn’t want me after that. I’ve done nothing else but this dock-labouring work for this long time. Took to it first because I found there was no chance of anything else. The character with the bill transaction was very much against me: so, being unable to obtain employment in a wholesale house, or anywhere else, I applied to the docks. They require no character at all there. I think I may sometimes have had 7 or 8 days altogether. Then I was out for a fortnight or three weeks perhaps; and then we might get a day or two again, and on some occasion such a thing as—well, say July, August, September, and October. I was in work one year almost the whole of those months—three years ago I think that was. Then I did not get anything, excepting now and then, not more than about three days’ work until the next March; that was owing to the slack time. The first year I might say that I might have been employed about one-third of the time. The second year I was employed six months. The third year I was very unfortunate. I was laid up for three months with bad eyes and a quinsey in the throat, through working in an ice ship. I’ve scarcely had anything to do since then. That is nearly 18 months ago; and since then I have had casual employment, perhaps one, and sometimes two days a-week. It would average 5s. a-week the whole year. Within the last few weeks I have, through a friend, applied at a shipping-merchant’s, and within the month I have had five days’ work with them, and nothing else, except writing a letter, which I had 2d. for—that’s all the employment I’ve met with myself. My wife has been at employment for the last three months, she has a place she goes to work at. She has 3s. a-week for washing, for charing, and for mangling: the party my wife works for has a mangle, and I go sometimes to help; for if she has got 6d. worth of washing to do at home, than I go to turn the mangle for an hour instead of her,—she’s not strong enough.”

“We buy most bread,” said the wife, “and a bit of firing, and I do manage on a Saturday night to get them a bit of meat for Sunday if I possibly can; but what with the soap, and one thing and another, that’s the only day they do get a bit of meat, unless I’ve a bit given me. As for clothing, I’m sure I can’t get them any unless I have that given me, poor little things.”

“Yes, but we have managed to get a little bread lately,” said the man. “When bread was 11d. a loaf, that was the time when we was worse off. Of course we had the seven children alive then. We buried one only three months ago. She was an afflicted little creature for 16 or 17 months: it was one person’s work to attend to her, and was very badly off for a few months then. We’ve known what it was sometimes to go without bread and coals in the depth of winter. Last Christmas two years we did so for the whole day, until the wife came home in the evening and brought it might be 6d. or 9d. according how long she worked. I was looking after them. I was at home ill. I have known us to sit several days and not have more than 6d. to feed and warm the whole of us for the whole of the day. We’ll buy half-a-quartern loaf, that’ll be 4½d. or sometimes 5d., and then we have a penny for coals, that would be pretty nigh all that we could have for our money. Sometimes we get a little oatmeal and make gruel. We had hard work to keep the children warm at all. What with their clothes and what we had, we did as well as we could. My children is very contented; give ’em bread, and they’re as happy as all the world. That’s one comfort. For instance, to-day we’ve had half-a-quartern loaf, and we had a piece left of last night’s after I had come home. I had been earning some money yesterday. We had 2 oz. of butter, and I had this afternoon a quarter of an oz. of tea and a pennyworth of sugar. When I was ill I’ve had two or three of the children round me at a time, fretting for want of food. That was at the time I was ill. A friend gave me half a sovereign to bury my child. The parish provided me with a coffin, and it cost me about 3s. besides. We didn’t have her taken away from here, not as a parish funeral exactly. I agreed that if he would fetch it, and let it stand in an open space that he had got there, near his shop, until the Saturday, which was the time, I would give the undertaker 3s. to let a man come with a pall to throw over the coffin, so that it should not be seen exactly it was a parish funeral. Even the people in the house don’t know, not one of them, that it was buried in that way. I had to give 1s. 6d. for a pair of shoes before I could follow my child to the grave, and we paid 1s. 9d. for rent, all out of the half sovereign. I think there’s some people at the docks a great deal worse off than us. I should say there’s men go down there and stand at that gate from 7 to 12, and then they may get called in and earn 1s., and that only for two or three days in the week, after spending the whole of their time there.”

The scenes witnessed at the London Dock were of so painful a description, the struggle for one day’s work—the scramble for twenty-four hours’ extra-subsistence and extra-life were of so tragic a character, that I was anxious to ascertain if possible the exact number of individuals in and around the metropolis who live by dock labour. I have said that at one of the docks alone I found that 1823 stomachs would be deprived of food by the mere chopping of the breeze. “It’s an ill wind,” says the proverb, “that blows nobody good;” and until I came to investigate the condition of the dock-labourer I could not have believed it possible that near upon 2000 souls in one place alone lived, chameleon-like, upon the air, or that an easterly wind, despite the wise saw, could deprive so many of bread. It is indeed “a nipping and an eager air.” That the sustenance of thousands of families should be as fickle as the very breeze itself; that the weathercock should be the index of daily want or daily ease to such a vast number of men, women, and children, was a climax of misery and wretchedness that I could not have imagined to exist; and since that I have witnessed such scenes of squalor, and crime, and suffering, as oppress the mind even to a feeling of awe.

The docks of London are to a superficial observer the very focus of metropolitan wealth. The cranes creak with the mass of riches. In the warehouses are stored goods that are as it were ingots of untold gold. Above and below ground you see piles upon piles of treasure that the eye cannot compass. The wealth appears as boundless as the very sea it has traversed. The brain aches in an attempt to comprehend the amount of riches before, above, and beneath it. There are acres upon acres of treasure, more than enough, one would fancy, to stay the cravings of the whole world, and yet you have but to visit the hovels grouped round about all this amazing excess of riches to witness the same amazing excess of poverty. If the incomprehensibility of the wealth rises to sublimity, assuredly the want that co-exists with it is equally incomprehensible and equally sublime. Pass from the quay and warehouses to the courts and alleys that surround them, and the mind is as bewildered with the destitution of the one place as it is with the superabundance of the other. Many come to see the riches, but few the poverty, abounding in absolute masses round the far-famed port of London.

According to the official returns, there belonged to this port on the 31st of December, 1842, very nearly 3000 ships, of the aggregate burden of 600,000 tons. Besides that there were 239 steamers, of 50,000 tons burden; and the crews of the entire number of ships and steamers amounted to 35,000 men and boys. The number of British and foreign ships that entered the port of London during the same year was 6400 and odd, whose capacity was upwards of a million and a quarter of tons, and the gross amount of customs duly collected upon their cargoes was very nearly 12,000l. of money. So vast an amount of shipping and commerce, it has been truly said, was never concentrated in any other single port.

Now, against this we must set the amount of misery that co-exists with it. We have shown that the mass of men dependent for their bread upon the business of only one of the docks are, by the shifting of the breeze, occasionally deprived in one day of no less than 220l., the labourers at the London Dock earning as a body near upon 400l. to-day, and to-morrow scarcely 150l. These docks, however, are but one of six similar establishments—three being on the north and three on the south side of the Thames—and all employing a greater or less number of hands, equally dependent upon the winds for their subsistence. Deducting, then, the highest from the lowest number of labourers engaged at the London Dock—the extremes according to the books are under 500 and over 3000—we have as many as 2500 individuals deprived of a day’s work and a living by the prevalence of an easterly wind; and calculating that the same effect takes place at the other docks—the East and West India for instance, St. Katherine’s, Commercial, Grand Surrey, and East Country, to a greater or less extent, and that the hands employed to load and unload the vessels entering and quitting all these places are only four times more than those required at the London Dock, we have as many as 12,000 individuals or families whose daily bread is as fickle as the wind itself; whose wages, in fact, are one day collectively as much as 1500l. and the next as low as 500l., so that 8000 men are frequently thrown out of employ, while the earnings of the class to day amount to 1000l. less than they did yesterday.

It would be curious to take an average number of days that easterly winds prevail in London throughout the year, and so arrive at an estimate of the exact time that the above 8000 men are unemployed in the course of twelve months. This would give us some idea of the amount of their average weekly earnings. By the labourers themselves I am assured that, taking one week with another, they do not gain 5s. weekly throughout the year. I have made a point of visiting and interrogating a large number of them, in order to obtain some definite information respecting the extent of their income, and have found in only one instance an account kept of the individual earnings. In that case the wages averaged within a fraction of 13s. per week, the total sum gained since the beginning of the year being 25l. odd. I should state, however, that the man earning thus much was pointed out to me as one of the most provident of the casual labourers, and one, moreover, who is generally employed. “If it is possible to get work, he’ll have it,” was said of him; “there’s not a lazy bone in his skin.” Besides this he had done a considerable quantity of piece-work, so that altogether the man’s earnings might be taken as the very extreme made by the best kind of “extra hands.”

The man himself gives the following explanation as to the state of the labour-market at the London Dock. “He has had a good turn of work,” he says, since he has been there. “Some don’t get half what he does. He’s not always employed, excepting when the business is in anyway brisk, but when a kind of a slack comes the recommended men get the preference of the work, and the extras have nothing to do. This is the best sumner he has had since he has been in London. Has had a good bit of piece-work. Obliged to live as he does because he can’t depend on work. Isn’t certain of the second day’s work. He’s paid off every night, and can’t say whether or not they’ll want him on the morrow.” The account of his wages was written in pencil on the cover of an old memorandum-book, and ran as follows:

£.s.d.£.s.d.
Earned by day-work from 1st Jan. to 1st Aug. 184916116averaging01110per week
By piece-work in August558„165„
By day-work from 1st Sept. to 1st Oct.387„0171¾„
Total£2559„£2154¾„