Some few years ago, the main sewers, having their outlets on the river
side, were completely open, so that any person desirous of exploring
their dark and uninviting recesses might enter at the river side, and
wander away, provided he could withstand the combination of villanous
stenches which met him at every step, for many miles, in any direction.
At that time it was a thing of very frequent occurrence, especially
at the spring tides, for the water to rush into the sewers, pouring
through them like a torrent, and then to burst up through the gratings
into the streets, flooding all the low-lying districts in the vicinity
of the river, till the streets of Shadwell and Wapping resembled a
Dutch town, intersected by a series of muddy canals. Of late, however,
to remedy this defect, the Commissioners have had a strong brick wall
built within the entrance to the several sewers. In each of these brick
walls there is an opening covered by a strong iron door, which hangs
from the top and is so arranged that when the tide is low the rush of
the water and other filth on the inner side, forces it back and allows
the contents of the sewer to pass into the river, whilst when the tide
rises the door is forced so close against the wall by the pressure of
the water outside that none can by any possibility enter, and thus the
river neighbourhoods are secured from the deluges which were heretofore
of such frequent occurrence.
Were it not a notorious fact, it might perhaps be thought impossible,
that men could be found who, for the chance of obtaining a living of
some sort or other, would, day after day, and year after year, continue
to travel through these underground channels for the offscouring of
the city; but such is the case even at the present moment. In former
times, however, this custom prevailed much more than now, for in those
days the sewers were entirely open and presented no obstacle to any
one desirous of entering them. Many wondrous tales are still told
among the people of men having lost their way in the sewers, and of
having wandered among the filthy passages--their lights extinguished
by the noisome vapours--till, faint and overpowered, they dropped down
and died on the spot. Other stories are told of sewer-hunters beset
by myriads of enormous rats, and slaying thousands of them in their
struggle for life, till at length the swarms of the savage things
overpowered them, and in a few days afterwards their skeletons were
discovered picked to the very bones. Since the iron doors, however,
have been placed on the main sewers a prohibition has been issued
against entering them, and a reward of 5_l._ offered to any person
giving information so as to lead to the conviction of any offender.
Nevertheless many still travel through these foul labyrinths, in search
of such valuables as may have found their way down the drains.
The persons who are in the habit of searching the sewers, call
themselves “shore-men” or “shore-workers.” They belong, in a certain
degree, to the same class as the “mud-larks,” that is to say,
they travel through the mud along shore in the neighbourhood of
ship-building and ship-breaking yards, for the purpose of picking
up copper nails, bolts, iron, and old rope. The shore-men, however,
do not collect the lumps of coal and wood they meet with on their
way, but leave them as the proper perquisites of the mud-larks. The
sewer-hunters were formerly, and indeed are still, called by the name
of “Toshers,” the articles which they pick up in the course of their
wanderings along shore being known among themselves by the general
term “tosh,” a word more particularly applied by them to anything made
of copper. These “Toshers” may be seen, especially on the Surrey side
of the Thames, habited in long greasy velveteen coats, furnished with
pockets of vast capacity, and their nether limbs encased in dirty
canvas trowsers, and any old slops of shoes, that may be fit only for
wading through the mud. They carry a bag on their back, and in their
hand a pole seven or eight feet long, on one end of which there is
a large iron hoe. The uses of this instrument are various; with it
they try the ground wherever it appears unsafe, before venturing on
it, and, when assured of its safety, walk forward steadying their
footsteps with the staff. Should they, as often happens, even to the
most experienced, sink in some quagmire, they immediately throw out the
long pole armed with the hoe, which is always held uppermost for this
purpose, and with it seizing hold of any object within their reach,
are thereby enabled to draw themselves out; without the pole, however,
their danger would be greater, for the more they struggled to extricate
themselves from such places, the deeper they would sink; and even with
it, they might perish, I am told, in some part, if there were nobody
at hand to render them assistance. Finally, they make use of this
pole to rake about the mud when searching for iron, copper, rope, and
bones. They mostly exhibit great skill in discovering these things in
unlikely places, and have a knowledge of the various sets of the tide,
calculated to carry articles to particular points, almost equal to the
dredgermen themselves. Although they cannot “pick up” as much now as
they formerly did, they are still able to make what they call a fair
living, and can afford to look down with a species of aristocratic
contempt on the puny efforts of their less fortunate brethren the
“mudlarks.”
To enter the sewers and explore them to any considerable distance is
considered, even by those acquainted with what is termed “working
the shores,” an adventure of no small risk. There are a variety of
perils to be encountered in such places. The brick-work in many
parts--especially in the old sewers--has become rotten through the
continual action of the putrefying matter and moisture, and parts have
fallen down and choked up the passage with heaps of rubbish; over these
obstructions, nevertheless, the sewer-hunters have to scramble “in
the best way they can.” In such parts they are careful not to touch
the brick-work over head, for the slightest tap might bring down an
avalanche of old bricks and earth, and severely injure them, if not
bury them in the rubbish. Since the construction of the new sewers, the
old ones are in general abandoned by the “hunters;” but in many places
the former channels cross and re-cross those recently constructed,
and in the old sewers a person is very likely to lose his way. It is
dangerous to venture far into any of the smaller sewers branching
off from the main, for in this the “hunters” have to stoop low down
in order to proceed; and, from the confined space, there are often
accumulated in such places, large quantities of foul air, which, as
one of them stated, will “cause instantious death.” Moreover, far from
there being any romance in the tales told of the rats, these vermin are
really numerous and formidable in the sewers, and have been known, I am
assured, to attack men when alone, and even sometimes when accompanied
by others, with such fury that the people have escaped from them with
difficulty. They are particularly ferocious and dangerous, if they
be driven into some corner whence they cannot escape, when they will
immediately fly at any one that opposes their progress. I received a
similar account to this from one of the London flushermen. There are
moreover, in some quarters, ditches or trenches which are filled as the
water rushes up the sewers with the tide; in these ditches the water is
retained by a sluice, which is shut down at high tide, and lifted again
at low tide, when it rushes down the sewers with all the violence of a
mountain torrent, sweeping everything before it. If the sewer-hunter be
not close to some branch sewer, so that he can run into it, whenever
the opening of these sluices takes place, he must inevitably perish.
The trenches or water reservoirs for the cleansing of the sewers are
chiefly on the south side of the river, and, as a proof of the great
danger to which the sewer-hunters are exposed in such cases, it may
be stated, that not very long ago, a sewer on the south side of the
Thames was opened to be repaired; a long ladder reached to the bottom
of the sewer, down which the bricklayer’s labourer was going with a
hod of bricks, when the rush of water from the sluice, struck the
bottom of the ladder, and instantly swept away ladder, labourer, and
all. The bricklayer fortunately was enjoying his “pint and pipe” at
a neighbouring public-house. The labourer was found by my informant,
a “shore-worker,” near the mouth of the sewer quite dead, battered,
and disfigured in a frightful manner. There was likewise great danger
in former times from the rising of the tide in the sewers, so that it
was necessary for the shore-men to have quitted them before the water
had got any height within the entrance. At present, however, this is
obviated in those sewers where the main is furnished with an iron door
towards the river.
The shore-workers, when about to enter the sewers, provide themselves,
in addition to the long hoe already described, with a canvas apron,
which they tie round them, and a dark lantern similar to a policeman’s;
this they strap before them on their right breast, in such a manner
that on removing the shade, the bull’s-eye throws the light straight
forward when they are in an erect position, and enables them to
see everything in advance of them for some distance; but when they
stoop, it throws the light directly under them, so that they can then
distinctly see any object at their feet. The sewer-hunters usually
go in gangs of three or four for the sake of company, and in order
that they may be the better able to defend themselves from the rats.
The old hands who have been often up (and every gang endeavours to
include at least one experienced person), travel a long distance, not
only through the main sewers, but also through many of the branches.
Whenever the shore-men come near a street grating, they close their
lanterns and watch their opportunity of gliding silently past
unobserved, for otherwise a crowd might collect over head and intimate
to the policeman on duty, that there were persons wandering in the
sewers below. The shore-workers never take dogs with them, lest their
barking when hunting the rats might excite attention. As the men go
along they search the bottom of the sewer, raking away the mud with
their hoe, and pick, from between the crevices of the brick-work,
money, or anything else that may have lodged there. There are in many
parts of the sewers holes where the brick-work has been worn away,
and in these holes clusters of articles are found, which have been
washed into them from time to time, and perhaps been collecting there
for years; such as pieces of iron, nails, various scraps of metal,
coins of every description, all rusted into a mass like a rock, and
weighing from a half hundred to two hundred weight altogether. These
“conglomerates” of metal are too heavy for the men to take out of
the sewers, so that if unable to break them up, they are compelled
to leave them behind; and there are very many such masses, I am
informed, lying in the sewers at this moment, of immense weight, and
growing larger every day by continual additions. The shore-men find
great quantities of money--of copper money especially; sometimes they
dive their arm down to the elbow in the mud and filth and bring up
shillings, sixpences, half-crowns, and occasionally half-sovereigns
and sovereigns. They always find the coins standing edge uppermost
between the bricks in the bottom, where the mortar has been worn away.
The sewer-hunters occasionally find plate, such as spoons, ladles,
silver-handled knives and forks, mugs and drinking cups, and now and
then articles of jewellery; but even while thus “in luck” as they call
it, they do not omit to fill the bags on their backs with the more
cumbrous articles they meet with--such as metals of every description,
rope and bones. There is always a great quantity of these things to be
met with in the sewers, they being continually washed down from the
cesspools and drains of the houses. When the sewer-hunters consider
they have searched long enough, or when they have found as much as they
can conveniently take away, the gang leave the sewers and, adjourning
to the nearest of their homes, count out the money they have picked
up, and proceed to dispose of the old metal, bones, rope, &c.; this
done, they then, as they term it, “whack” the whole lot; that is, they
divide it equally among all hands. At these divisions, I am assured,
it frequently occurs that each member of the gang will realise from
30_s._ to 2_l._--this at least _was_ a frequent occurrence some few
years ago. Of late, however, the shore-men are obliged to use far more
caution, as the police, and especially those connected with the river,
who are more on the alert, as well as many of the coal-merchants in the
neighbourhood of the sewers, would give information if they saw any
suspicious persons approaching them.
The principal localities in which the shore-hunters reside
are in Mint-square, Mint-street, and Kent-street, in the
Borough--Snow’s-fields, Bermondsey--and that never-failing locality
between the London Docks and Rosemary-lane which appears to be a
concentration of all the misery of the kingdom. There were known to be
a few years ago nearly 200 sewer-hunters, or “toshers,” and, incredible
as it may appear, I have satisfied myself that, taking one week with
another, they could not be said to make much short of 2_l._ per week.
Their probable gains, I was told, were about 6_s._ per day all the year
round. At this rate the property recovered from the sewers of London
would have amounted to no less than 20,000_l._ per annum, which would
make the amount of property lost down the drains of each house amount
to 1_s._ 4_d._ a year. The shore-hunters of the present day greatly
complain of the recent restrictions, and inveigh in no measured terms
against the constituted authorities. “They won’t let us in to work the
shores,” say they, “’cause there’s a little danger. They fears as how
we’ll get suffocated, at least they tells us so; but they don’t care if
we get starved! no, they doesn’t mind nothink about that.”
It is, however, more than suspected that these men find plenty of means
to evade the vigilance of the sewer officials, and continue quietly to
reap a considerable harvest, gathered whence it might otherwise have
rotted in obscurity.
The sewer-hunters, strange as it may appear, are certainly smart
fellows, and take decided precedence of all the other “finders” of
London, whether by land or water, both on account of the greater amount
of their earnings, and the skill and courage they manifest in the
pursuit of their dangerous employment. But like all who make a living
as it were by a game of chance, plodding, carefulness, and saving
habits cannot be reckoned among their virtues; they are improvident,
even to a proverb. With their gains, superior even to those of the
better-paid artizans, and far beyond the amount received by many
clerks, who have to maintain a “respectable appearance,” the shore-men
might, with but ordinary prudence, live well, have comfortable homes,
and even be able to save sufficient to provide for themselves in
their old age. Their practice, however, is directly the reverse. They
no sooner make a “haul,” as they say, than they adjourn to some low
public-house in the neighbourhood, and seldom leave till empty pockets
and hungry stomachs drive them forth to procure the means for a fresh
debauch. It is principally on this account that, despite their large
gains, they are to be found located in the most wretched quarter of the
metropolis.
It might be supposed that the sewer-hunters (passing much of their time
in the midst of the noisome vapours generated by the sewers, the odour
of which, escaping upwards from the gratings in the streets, is dreaded
and shunned by all as something pestilential) would exhibit in their
pallid faces the unmistakable evidence of their unhealthy employment.
But this is far from the fact. Strange to say, the sewer-hunters are
strong, robust, and healthy men, generally florid in their complexion,
while many of them know illness only by name. Some of the elder men,
who head the gangs when exploring the sewers, are between 60 and 80
years of age, and have followed the employment during their whole
lives. The men appear to have a fixed belief that the odour of the
sewers contributes in a variety of ways to their general health;
nevertheless, they admit that accidents occasionally occur from the air
in some places being fully impregnated with mephitic gas.
I found one of these men, from whom I derived much information, and
who is really an active intelligent man, in a court off Rosemary-lane.
Access is gained to this court through a dark narrow entrance, scarcely
wider than a doorway, running beneath the first floor of one of the
houses in the adjoining street. The court itself is about 50 yards
long, and not more than three yards wide, surrounded by lofty wooden
houses, with jutting abutments in many of the upper stories that
almost exclude the light, and give them the appearance of being about
to tumble down upon the heads of the intruders. This court is densely
inhabited; every room has its own family, more or less in number; and
in many of them, I am assured, there are two families residing, the
better to enable the one to whom the room is let to pay the rent. At
the time of my visit, which was in the evening, after the inmates had
returned from their various employments, some quarrel had arisen among
them. The court was so thronged with the friends of the contending
individuals and spectators of the fight that I was obliged to stand
at the entrance, unable to force my way through the dense multitude,
while labourers and street-folk with shaggy heads, and women with dirty
caps and fuzzy hair, thronged every window above, and peered down
anxiously at the affray. There must have been some hundreds of people
collected there, and yet all were inhabitants of this very court, for
the noise of the quarrel had not yet reached the street. On wondering
at the number, my informant, when the noise had ceased, explained the
matter as follows: “You see, sir, there’s more than 30 houses in this
here court, and there’s not less than eight rooms in every house; now
there’s nine or ten people in some of the rooms, I knows, but just say
four in every room, and calculate what that there comes to.” I did, and
found it, to my surprise, to be 960. “Well,” continued my informant,
chuckling and rubbing his hands in evident delight at the result, “you
may as well just tack a couple a hundred on to the tail o’ them for
make-weight, as we’re not werry pertikler about a hundred or two one
way or the other in these here places.”
In this court, up three flights of narrow stairs that creaked and
trembled at every footstep, and in an ill-furnished garret, dwelt the
shore-worker--a man who, had he been careful, according to his own
account at least, might have money in the bank and be the proprietor of
the house in which he lived. The sewer-hunters, like the street-people,
are all known by some peculiar nickname, derived chiefly from some
personal characteristic. It would be a waste of time to inquire for
them by their right names, even if you were acquainted with them, for
none else would know them, and no intelligence concerning them could
be obtained; while under the title of Lanky Bill, Long Tom, One-eyed
George, Short-armed Jack, they are known to every one.
My informant, who is also dignified with a title, or as he calls it
a “handle to his name,” gave me the following account of himself: “I
was born in Birmingham, but afore I recollects anythink, we came to
London. The first thing I remembers is being down on the shore at
Cuckold’s P’int, when the tide was out and up to my knees in mud, and a
gitting down deeper and deeper every minute till I was picked up by one
of the shore-workers. I used to git down there every day, to look at
the ships and boats a sailing up and down; I’d niver be tired a looking
at them at that time. At last father ’prenticed me to a blacksmith in
Bermondsey, _and then I couldn’t git down to the river when I liked,
so I got to hate the forge and the fire, and blowing the bellows, and
couldn’t stand the confinement no how,--at last I cuts and runs_. After
some time they gits me back ag’in, but I cuts ag’in. I was determined
not to stand it. I wouldn’t go home for fear I’d be sent back, so I
goes down to Cuckold’s P’int and there I sits near half the day, when
who should I see but the old un as had picked me up out of the mud when
I was a sinking. I tells him all about it, and he takes me home along
with hisself, and gits me a bag and an o, and takes me out next day,
and shows me what to do, and shows me the dangerous places, and the
places what are safe, and how to rake in the mud for rope, and bones,
and iron, and that’s the way I comed to be a shore-worker. Lor’ bless
you, I’ve worked Cuckold’s P’int for more nor twenty year. I know
places where you’d go over head and ears in the mud, and jist alongside
on ’em you may walk as safe as you can on this floor. But it don’t do
for a stranger to try it, he’d wery soon git in, and it’s not so easy
to git out agin, I can tell you. I stay’d with the old un a long time,
and we used to git lots o’ tin, specially when we’d go to work the
sewers. I liked that well enough. I could git into small places where
the old un couldn’t, and when I’d got near the grating in the street,
I’d search about in the bottom of the sewer; I’d put down my arm to my
shoulder in the mud and bring up shillings and half-crowns, and lots
of coppers, and plenty other things. I once found a silver jug as big
as a quart pot, and often found spoons and knives and forks and every
thing you can think of. Bless your heart the smells nothink; it’s a
roughish smell at first, but nothink near so bad as you thinks, ’cause,
you see, there’s sich lots o’ water always a coming down the sewer,
and the air gits in from the gratings, and that helps to sweeten it a
bit. There’s some places, ’specially in the old sewers, where they say
there’s foul air, and they tells me the foul air ’ill cause instantious
death, but I niver met with anythink of the kind, and I think if there
was sich a thing I should know somethink about it, for I’ve worked the
sewers, off and on, for twenty year. When we comes to a narrow-place
as we don’t know, we takes the candle out of the lantern and fastens
it on the hend of the o, and then runs it up the sewer, and if the
light stays in, we knows as there a’n’t no danger. We used to go up
the city sewer at Blackfriars-bridge, but that’s stopped up now; it’s
boarded across inside. The city wouldn’t let us up if they knew it,
’cause of the danger, they say, but they don’t care if we hav’n’t got
nothink to eat nor a place to put our heads in, while there’s plenty
of money lying there and good for nobody. If you was caught up it and
brought afore the Lord Mayor, he’d give you fourteen days on it, as
safe as the bellows, so a good many on us now is afraid to wenture in.
We don’t wenture as we used to, but still it’s done at times. There’s
a many places as I knows on where the bricks has fallen down, and that
there’s dangerous; it’s so delaberated that if you touches it with your
head or with the hend of the o, it ’ill all come down atop o’ you. I’ve
often seed as many as a hundred rats at once, and they’re woppers in
the sewers, I can tell you; them there water rats, too, is far more
ferociouser than any other rats, and they’d think nothink of tackling
a man, if they found they couldn’t get away no how, but if they can
why they runs by and gits out o’ the road. I knows a chap as the rats
tackled in the sewers; they bit him hawfully: you must ha’ heard on it;
it was him as the watermen went in arter when they heard him a shouting
as they was a rowin’ by. Only for the watermen the rats would ha’ done
for him, safe enough. Do you recollect hearing on the man as was found
in the sewers about twelve year ago?--oh you must--the rats eat every
bit of him, and left nothink but his bones. I knowed him well, he was a
rig’lar shore-worker.
“The rats is wery dangerous, that’s sartain, but we always goes three
or four on us together, and the varmint’s too wide awake to tackle us
then, for they know they’d git off second best. You can go a long way
in the sewers if you like; I don’t know how far. I niver was at the
end on them myself, for a cove can’t stop in longer than six or seven
hour, ’cause of the tide; you must be out before that’s up. There’s a
many branches on ivery side, but we don’t go into all; we go where we
know, and where we’re always sure to find somethink. I know a place
now where there’s more than two or three hundred weight of metal all
rusted together, and plenty of money among it too; but it’s too heavy
to carry it out, so it ’ill stop there I s’pose till the world comes
to an end. I often brought out a piece of metal half a hundred in
weight, and took it under the harch of the bridge, and broke it up with
a large stone to pick out the money. I’ve found sovereigns and half
sovereigns over and over ag’in, and three on us has often cleared a
couple of pound apiece in one day out of the sewers. But we no sooner
got the money than the publican had it. I only wish I’d back all the
money I’ve guv to the publican, and I wouldn’t care how the wind blew
for the rest of my life. I never thought about taking a hammer along
with me into the sewer, no; I never thought I’d want it. You can’t go
in every day, the tides don’t answer, and they’re so pertikler now,
far more pertikler than formerly; if you was known to touch the traps,
you’d git hauled up afore the beak. It’s done for all that, and though
there _is_ so many eyes about. The “Johnnys” on the water are always
on the look out, and if they sees any on us about, we has to cut our
lucky. We shore workers sometimes does very well other ways. When we
hears of a fire anywheres, we goes and watches where they shoots the
rubbish, and then we goes and sifts it over, and washes it afterwards,
then all the metal sinks to the bottom. The way we does it is this
here: we takes a barrel cut in half, and fills it with water, and then
we shovels in the siftings, and stirs ’em round and round and round
with a stick; then we throws out that water and puts in some fresh, and
stirs that there round ag’in; arter some time the water gets clear,
and every thing heavy’s fell to the bottom, and then we sees what it
is and picks it out. I’ve made from a pound to thirty shilling a day,
at that there work on lead alone. The time the Parliament Houses was
burnt, the rubbish was shot in Hyde Park, and Long J---- and I goes
to work it, and while we were at it, we didn’t make less nor three
pounds apiece a day; we found sovereigns and half sovereigns, and lots
of silver half melted away, and jewellery, such as rings, and stones,
and brooches; but we never got half paid for them. I found two sets
of bracelets for a lady’s arms, and took ’em to a jeweller, and he
tried them jist where the “great” heat had melted the catch away, and
found they was only metal double plated, or else he said as how he’d
give us thirty pounds for them; howsomever, we takes them down to a
Jew in Petticoat-lane, who used to buy things of us, and he gives us
7_l._ 10_s._ for ’em. We found so many things, that at last Long J----
and I got to quarrel about the “whacking;” there was cheatin’ a goin’
on; it wasn’t all fair and above board as it ought to be, so we gits
to fightin’, and kicks up sich a jolly row, that they wouldn’t let us
work no more, and takes and buries the whole on the rubbish. There’s
plenty o’ things under the ground along with it now, if anybody could
git at them. There was jist two loads o’ rubbish shot at one time in
Bishop Bonner’s-fields, which I worked by myself, and what do you think
I made out of that there?--why I made 3_l._ 5_s._ The rubbish was got
out of a cellar, what hadn’t been stirred for fifty year or more, so I
thinks there ought to be somethink in it, and I keeps my eye on it, and
watches where it’s shot; then I turns to work, and the first thing I
gits hold on is a chain, which I takes to be copper; it was so dirty,
but it turned out to be all solid goold, and I gets 1_l._ 5_s._ for it
from the Jew; arter that I finds lots o’ coppers, and silver money, and
many things besides. _The reason I likes this sort of life is, ’cause
I can sit down when I likes, and nobody can’t order me about. When I’m
hard up, I knows as how I must work, and then I goes at it like sticks
a breaking_; and tho’ the times isn’t as they was, I can go now and
pick up my four or five bob a day, where another wouldn’t know how to
get a brass farden.”
There is a strange tale in existence among the shore-workers, of
a race of wild hogs inhabiting the sewers in the neighbourhood of
Hampstead. The story runs, that a sow in young, by some accident got
down the sewer through an opening, and, wandering away from the spot,
littered and reared her offspring in the drain, feeding on the offal
and garbage washed into it continually. Here, it is alleged, the breed
multiplied exceedingly, and have become almost as ferocious as they
are numerous. This story, apocryphal as it seems, has nevertheless
its believers, and it is ingeniously argued, that the reason why none
of the subterranean animals have been able to make their way to the
light of day is, that they could only do so by reaching the mouth of
the sewer at the river-side, while, in order to arrive at that point,
they must necessarily encounter the Fleet ditch, which runs towards the
river with great rapidity, and as it is the obstinate nature of a pig
to swim _against_ the stream, the wild hogs of the sewers invariably
work their way back to their original quarters, and are thus never to
be seen. What seems strange in the matter is, that the inhabitants
of Hampstead never have been known to see any of these animals pass
beneath the gratings, nor to have been disturbed by their gruntings.
The reader of course can believe as much of the story as he pleases,
and it is right to inform him that the sewer-hunters themselves have
never yet encountered any of the fabulous monsters of the Hampstead
sewers.