‘Do I mean to say that children are born in these cabins? Indeed I do, sir. What is more, many’s the child that is not only born on board but dies on board too; for as I told you, there’s many that have no other home than the boat, and no friends but what are boatmen too. So what are they to do? with their husbands a-travelling all over the country; Birmingham one week, and Brentford here maybe, the next. Plenty of ’em indeed have got so used to the boats it would be downright cruel if they were to be compelled to live in a house ashore like decent people; because, you see, everything’s so different, and they’ve become so used to making shift in little room, that they’d be regularly lost in a house.
‘How do they get on when they’re sick? Well, you see, it’s mostly a town that we tie up at, at night, and there’s generally a doctor to be found, however late it may be; and they get medicine that way. I once lost a little girl on board. She was taken a little queer on the Sunday night before we were to start on this very same voyage on the Monday morning. It so happened that the master couldn’t get a butty, and so we’d arranged as I should come down with him; though of course we never dreamt as there was anything serious the matter with little Polly, or I wouldn’t have stirred with her. All day Monday and Tuesday the child got so much worse, that when we tied up at night I made the master take her to a doctor and get some medicine for her. Of course we were obliged to go on the next day, with little Polly getting worse and worse every hour, so that at night we were afraid to take her on shore, and had to pay a doctor to come on board and see her. I hardly liked the thought of going on the next day; but we were on a time voyage, by which the master was bound to be in Brentford on a certain day, and so we had to go on. But before night little Polly died. All that evening my master tried to get somebody to take his boat on; but it was a busy time just then, and there wasn’t a boatman to be got for love or money. We had some thoughts of going on ourselves; but almost as soon as it was daylight the next morning a policeman came on board and stopped us, saying, as no doctor had attended the child, there’d have to be an inquest. It was no use me a-shewing him the medicine bottles, and saying as two doctors had seen her; he wouldn’t believe us. Nor it wasn’t till two days afterwards, after my master had been to the last doctor and got him to give him a letter to the coroner, that we could get leave to bury the child; which we did, with not a soul belonging to her following her except my husband in his working clothes, I myself being too poorly to keep the poor man company in seeing the last of her.
‘As for children being born in the cabins, sir, I know several women who have had large families all born on board the boat while it was making its voyage, with perhaps nobody at all to attend on them except their husband, or some woman from another boat which chanced to be working mates with them.
‘Both my lads can read and write; but there’s nine out of ten as you see on the boats can’t tell “A” from a bull’s foot, and on that account the new Act is sure to do good. But my husband can tell you more about that than I can, and he’ll have done for a mile or two when we get through this next lock.’
‘None such easy work after all—is it, sir?’ inquired the husband, as after passing through several locks all within a few score paces of each other, at every one of which he had been very hard at work opening and closing sluices, he stepped on board the barge and took the helm from his wife. ‘There is them as thinks we bargees have nought to do all day except lean our arms on the tiller, smoke our pipes, and chaff anybody we come across. But you can see for yourself, sir, as we have all our work at times.’
Having expressed our conviction that on that point he was right, we requested him to enlighten us on several matters connected with his particular class, which he willingly did somewhat as follows.
‘About our earnings? Well, I suppose we can’t grumble as times go. Take it all the year round, one week with another, I and the lads earn perhaps a couple of pounds. We get paid mostly by the voyage—so much a ton from one place to another; and if we could only get loaded up as soon as we emptied, we shouldn’t make a bad thing of it; but the worst of it is the waiting about for a load when one voyage is finished before we can start on another. The boats the master finds; but the horse is my own; and out of what I make I have to feed him, which must be on the best of corn and hay that can be got for money; otherwise, he’d never be able to get through the tramp, tramp, for five-and-twenty or thirty miles—sometimes more—which he has to do day after day, wet and fine. Look at that corn, sir! Better you won’t find in any gentleman’s stable, I’ll warrant. And I find that in the long-run it comes the cheapest, for where those as feeds their horses on anything, wear out two or three, I don’t use up one. Of course we don’t walk the whole day through, alongside the horse; but we take it turn about, five or six miles at a spell; though sometimes when we are working quick voyages, night and day that is—owners finding relays of horses—we have regular hours to drive, like watches on board ship; but there ain’t much of that kind of work now. Our day’s work is mostly over by dark, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, all depending on the place we choose to tie up at, or the time we have to wait to pass the locks.
‘Do I think that railways will do away with canals in time? No, sir; I don’t. Because, you see, there’s lots of goods as don’t well bear the packing and unpacking as is necessary for railway travelling, as can be put straight on board a barge and never be shaken even, till they are unloaded just at the very place where they are wanted. And lots of other goods there are that we can carry cheaper than the railway, where a day or two more on the road don’t matter. Besides which, there’s plenty of brickfields, collieries, ironworks, and such like just on the canal banks and some distance from railroads, that will always use barges to save the expense of carting; so that I don’t think canals will go out of fashion yet awhile. And that’s why I’m glad to hear as they’re passing an Act to do something for the poor children. You see it’s just this way, sir: our people as a rule don’t know how to read and write themselves, most of ’em having been on the boats since they could remember, and therefore they don’t see why they shouldn’t have the advantage of their children’s assistance in working the barge, the same as their fathers had.
‘There’s another way in which I think the Act will do good, and that is this. It will teach our women perhaps to have a little more decency about them than some of the worst of them have. If you’ll believe me, sir, I see scenes on the canal sometimes, when some of the worst of them have been paid, as I can’t bear to look at, though not nearly so commonly now as I used to. And then again, it doesn’t always follow as because a man and woman work the same boat that they are married. In fact, in my opinion it would be a good thing if the lasses were not allowed on board after they had grown up to be twelve or thirteen, as it stands to reason that they’re nearly sure to grow up bargewomen. And after all’s said and done, it’s no fitting life for a woman to lead. As you’ve seen for yourself, there’s a good deal of hard work attached to it, even on a fine day like this; but in winter-time it’s simply cruel to a woman who has a young baby. However, I suppose when our children are compelled to go to school, as they say this new Act compels them, there’ll be a stop put to a good deal of what’s wrong about us, and perhaps folks may not have so good a reason for looking upon us as something worse than themselves. People seem to think that generally we are a regular bad lot; but I fancy if they knew a little more about us, they’d see that, though there are some bad ones amongst us, take us all in all we are no worse than most of our neighbours. We seem somehow to have got a name for interfering with people as we chance to come across; but you may see for yourself, sir, that we have quite as much as we can do to mind our own business, and a bargeman can no more afford to neglect his business than anybody else, if he means to do any good in the world.
‘What becomes of us when we get old? Well, most of us stick to the barges as long as we can; and when we are obliged to give up, if we haven’t put by enough to keep us comfortable, which I’m sorry to say as there ain’t many of us do, there’s generally a lock to be got or a job of some sort at the docks; all depending on the sort of character we’ve kept.