Let us, however, before entering into a description of the class and number of labourers employed at St. Katherine’s give a brief description of the docks themselves. The lofty walls, which constitute it in the language of the Custom-house a place of special security, enclose an area of 23 acres, of which 11 are water, capable of accommodating 120 ships, besides barges and other craft; cargoes are raised into the warehouses out of the hold of a ship, without the goods being deposited on the quay. The cargoes can be raised out of the ship’s hold into the warehouses of St. Katherine’s in one-fifth of the usual time. Before the existence of docks, a month or six weeks was taken up in discharging the cargo of an East-Indiaman of from 800 to 1200 tons burden, while 8 days were necessary in the summer and 14 in the winter to unload a ship of 350 tons. At St. Katherine’s, however, the average time now occupied in discharging a ship of 250 tons is twelve hours, and one of 500 tons two or three days, the goods being placed at the same time in the warehouse: there have been occasions when even greater despatch has been used, and a cargo of 1100 casks of tallow, averaging from 9 to 10 cwt. each, has been discharged in seven hours. This would have been considered little short of a miracle on the legal quays less than fifty years ago. In 1841, about 1000 vessels and 10,000 lighters were accommodated at St. Katherine’s Dock. The capital expended by the dock company exceeds 2,000,000 of money.
The business of this establishment is carried on by 35 officers, 105 clerks and apprentices, 135 markers, samplers, and foremen, 250 permanent labourers, 150 preferable ticket-labourers, proportioned to the amount of work to be done. The average number of labourers employed, permanent, preferable, and extras, is 1096; the highest number employed on any one day last year was 1713, and the lowest number 515, so that the extreme fluctuation in the labour appears to be very nearly 1200 hands. The lowest sum of money that was paid in 1848 for the day’s work of the entire body of labourers employed was 64l. 7s. 6d., and the highest sum 214l. 2s. 6d., being a difference of very nearly 150l. in one day, or 900l. in the course of the week. The average number of ships that enter the dock every week is 17, the highest number that entered in any one week last year was 36, and the lowest 5, being a difference of 31. Assuming these to have been of an average burden of 300 tons, and that every such vessel would require 100 labourers to discharge its cargo in three days, then 1500 extra hands ought to have been engaged to discharge the cargoes of the entire number in a week. This, it will be observed, is very nearly equal to the highest number of the labourers employed by the company in the year 1848.
The remaining docks are the Commercial Docks and timber ponds, the Grand Surrey Canal Dock at Rotherhithe, and the East Country Dock. The Commercial Docks occupy an area of about 49 acres, of which four-fifths are water. There is accommodation for 350 ships, and in the warehouses for 50,000 tons of merchandise. They are appropriated to vessels engaged in the European timber and corn trades, and the surrounding warehouses are used chiefly as granaries—the timber remaining afloat in the dock until it is conveyed to the yard of the wholesale dealer and builder. The Surrey Dock is merely an entrance basin to a canal, and can accommodate 300 vessels. The East Country Dock, which adjoins the Commercial Docks on the South, is capable of receiving 28 timber-ships. It has an area of 6½ acres, and warehouse-room for 3700 tons.
In addition to these there is the Regent’s Canal Dock, between Shadwell and Limehouse, and though it is a place for bonding timber and deals only, it nevertheless affords great accommodation to the trade of the port by withdrawing shipping from the river.
The number of labourers, casual and permanent, employed at these various establishments is so limited, that, taken altogether, the fluctuations occurring at their briskest and slackest periods may be reckoned as equal to that of St. Katherine’s. Hence the account of the variation in the total number of hands employed, and the sum of money paid as wages to them, by the different dock companies, when the business is brisk or slack, may be stated as follows:—
| At the London Dock the difference between the greatest and smallest number is | 2000 | hands |
| At the East and West India Dock | 2500 | „ |
| At the St. Katherine’s Dock | 1200 | „ |
| At the remaining docks say | 1300 | „ |
| Total number of dock labourers thrown out of employ by the prevalence of easterly winds | 7000 |
| £. | |
| The difference between the highest and lowest amount of wages paid at the London Dock is | 1500 |
| At the East and West India Dock | 1875 |
| At the St. Katherine Dock | 900 |
| At the remaining docks | 975 |
| £5250 |
From the above statement then it appears, that by the prevalence of an easterly wind no less than 7000 out of the aggregate number of persons living by dock labour may be deprived of their regular income, and the entire body may have as much as 5250l. a week abstracted from the amount of their collective earnings, at a period of active employment. But the number of individuals who depend upon the quantity of shipping entering the port of London for their daily subsistence is far beyond this amount. Indeed we are assured by a gentleman filling a high situation in St. Katherine’s Dock, and who, from his sympathy with the labouring poor, has evidently given no slight attention to the subject, that taking into consideration the number of wharf-labourers, dock-labourers, lightermen, riggers and lumpers, shipwrights, caulkers, ships’ carpenters, anchor-smiths, corn-porters, fruit and coal-meters, and indeed all the multifarious arts and callings connected with shipping, there are no less than from 25,000 to 30,000 individuals who are thrown wholly out of employ by a long continuance of easterly winds. Estimating then the gains of this large body of individuals at 2s. 6d. per day, or 15s. per week, when fully employed, we shall find that the loss to those who depend upon the London shipping for their subsistence amounts to 20,000l. per week, and, considering that such winds are often known to prevail for a fortnight to three weeks at a time, it follows that the entire loss to this large class will amount to from 40,000l. to 60,000l. within a month,—an amount of privation to the labouring poor which it is positively awful to contemplate. Nor is this the only evil connected with an enduring easterly wind. Directly a change takes place a glut of vessels enters the metropolitan port, and labourers flock from all quarters; indeed they flock from every part where the workmen exist in a greater quantity than the work. From 500 to 800 vessels frequently arrive at one time in London after the duration of a contrary wind, and then such is the demand for workmen, and so great the press of business, owing to the rivalry among merchants, and the desire of each owner to have his cargo the first in the market, that a sufficient number of hands is scarcely to be found. Hundreds of extra labourers, who can find labour nowhere else, are thus led to seek work in the docks. But, to use the words of our informant, two or three weeks are sufficient to break the neck of an ordinary glut, and then the vast amount of extra hands that the excess of business has brought to the neighbourhood are thrown out of employment, and left to increase either the vagabondism of the neighbourhood or to swell the number of paupers and heighten the rates of the adjacent parishes.
Cheap Lodging-Houses.
I now come to the class of cheap lodging-houses usually frequented by the casual labourers at the docks. It will be remembered, perhaps, that I described one of these places, as well as the kind of characters to be found there. Since then I have directed my attention particularly to this subject; not because it came first in order according to the course of investigation I had marked out for myself, but because it presented so many peculiar features that I thought it better, even at the risk of being unmethodical, to avail myself of the channels of information opened to me rather than defer the matter to its proper place, and so lose the freshness of the impression it had made upon my mind.