There is another class who may be termed river-finders, although their
occupation is connected only with the shore; they are commonly known by
the name of “mud-larks,” from being compelled, in order to obtain the
articles they seek, to wade sometimes up to their middle through the
mud left on the shore by the retiring tide. These poor creatures are
certainly about the most deplorable in their appearance of any I have
met with in the course of my inquiries. They may be seen of all ages,
from mere childhood to positive decrepitude, crawling among the barges
at the various wharfs along the river; it cannot be said that they
are clad in rags, for they are scarcely half covered by the tattered
indescribable things that serve them for clothing; their bodies are
grimed with the foul soil of the river, and their torn garments
stiffened up like boards with dirt of every possible description.
Among the mud-larks may be seen many old women, and it is indeed
pitiable to behold them, especially during the winter, bent nearly
double with age and infirmity, paddling and groping among the wet mud
for small pieces of coal, chips of wood, or any sort of refuse washed
up by the tide. These women always have with them an old basket or
an old tin kettle, in which they put whatever they chance to find.
It usually takes them a whole tide to fill this receptacle, but when
filled, it is as much as the feeble old creatures are able to carry
home.
[Illustration: THE MUD-LARK.
[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]
The mud-larks generally live in some court or alley in the
neighbourhood of the river, and, as the tide recedes, crowds of
boys and little girls, some old men, and many old women, may be
observed loitering about the various stairs, watching eagerly for the
opportunity to commence their labours. When the tide is sufficiently
low they scatter themselves along the shore, separating from each
other, and soon disappear among the craft lying about in every
direction. This is the case on both sides of the river, as high up as
there is anything to be found, extending as far as Vauxhall-bridge,
and as low down as Woolwich. The mud-larks themselves, however, know
only those who reside near them, and whom they are accustomed to meet
in their daily pursuits; indeed, with but few exceptions, these people
are dull, and apparently stupid; this is observable particularly among
the boys and girls, who, when engaged in searching the mud, hold but
little converse one with another. The men and women may be passed and
repassed, but they notice no one; they never speak, but with a stolid
look of wretchedness they plash their way through the mire, their
bodies bent down while they peer anxiously about, and occasionally
stoop to pick up some paltry treasure that falls in their way.
The mud-larks collect whatever they happen to find, such as coals,
bits of old-iron, rope, bones, and copper nails that drop from ships
while lying or repairing along shore. Copper nails are the most
valuable of all the articles they find, but these they seldom obtain,
as they are always driven from the neighbourhood of a ship while being
new-sheathed. Sometimes the younger and bolder mud-larks venture on
sweeping some empty coal-barge, and one little fellow with whom I
spoke, having been lately caught in the act of so doing, had to undergo
for the offence seven days’ imprisonment in the House of Correction:
this, he says, he liked much better than mud-larking, for while he
staid there he wore a coat and shoes and stockings, and though he had
not over much to eat, he certainly was never afraid of going to bed
without anything at all--as he often had to do when at liberty. He
thought he would try it on again in the winter, he told me, saying, it
would be so comfortable to have clothes and shoes and stockings then,
and not be obliged to go into the cold wet mud of a morning.
The coals that the mud-larks find, they sell to the poor people of the
neighbourhood at 1_d._ per pot, holding about 14 lbs. The iron and
bones and rope and copper nails which they collect, they sell at the
rag-shops. They dispose of the iron at 5 lbs. for 1_d._, the bones at
3 lbs. a 1_d._, rope a 1/2_d._ per lb. wet, and 3/4_d._ per lb. dry,
and copper nails at the rate of 4_d._ per lb. They occasionally pick up
tools, such as saws and hammers; these they dispose of to the seamen
for biscuit and meat, and sometimes sell them at the rag-shops for a
few halfpence. In this manner they earn from 2-1/2_d._ to 8_d._ per
day, but rarely the latter sum; their average gains may be estimated
at about 3_d._ per day. The boys, after leaving the river, sometimes
scrape their trousers, and frequent the cab-stands, and try to earn a
trifle by opening the cab-doors for those who enter them, or by holding
gentlemen’s horses. Some of them go, in the evening, to a ragged
school, in the neighbourhood of which they live; more, as they say,
because other boys go there, than from any desire to learn.
At one of the stairs in the neighbourhood of the pool, I collected
about a dozen of these unfortunate children; there was not one of
them over twelve years of age, and many of them were but six. It
would be almost impossible to describe the wretched group, so motley
was their appearance, so extraordinary their dress, and so stolid and
inexpressive their countenances. Some carried baskets, filled with the
produce of their morning’s work, and others old tin kettles with iron
handles. Some, for want of these articles, had old hats filled with
the bones and coals they had picked up; and others, more needy still,
had actually taken the caps from their own heads, and filled them with
what they had happened to find. The muddy slush was dripping from their
clothes and utensils, and forming a puddle in which they stood. There
did not appear to be among the whole group as many filthy cotton rags
to their backs as, when stitched together, would have been sufficient
to form the material of one shirt. There were the remnants of one or
two jackets among them, but so begrimed and tattered that it would
have been difficult to have determined either the original material
or make of the garment. On questioning one, he said his father was
a coal-backer; he had been dead eight years; the boy was nine years
old. His mother was alive; she went out charing and washing when she
could get any such work to do. She had 1_s._ a day when she could get
employment, but that was not often; he remembered once to have had
a pair of shoes, but it was a long time since. “It is very cold in
winter,” he said, “to stand in the mud without shoes,” but he did not
mind it in summer. He had been three years mud-larking, and supposed he
should remain a mud-lark all his life. What else could he be? for there
was nothing else that he knew _how_ to do. Some days he earned 1_d._,
and some days 4_d._; he never earned 8_d._ in one day, that would have
been a “jolly lot of money.” He never found a saw or a hammer, he
“only wished” he could, they would be glad to get hold of them at the
dolly’s. He had been one month at school before he went mud-larking.
Some time ago he had gone to the ragged-school; but he no longer went
there, for he forgot it. He could neither read nor write, and did not
think he could learn if he tried “ever so much.” He didn’t know what
religion his father and mother were, nor did know what religion meant.
God was God, he said. He had heard he was good, but didn’t know what
good he was to him. He thought he was a Christian, but he didn’t know
what a Christian was. He had heard of Jesus Christ once, when he went
to a Catholic chapel, but he never heard tell of who or what he was,
and didn’t “particular care” about knowing. His father and mother were
born in Aberdeen, but he didn’t know where Aberdeen was. London was
England, and England, he said, was in London, but he couldn’t tell in
what part. He could not tell where he would go to when he died, and
didn’t believe any one could tell _that_. Prayers, he told me, were
what people said to themselves at night. _He_ never said any, and
didn’t know any; his mother sometimes used to speak to him about them,
but he could never learn any. His mother didn’t go to church or to
chapel, because she had no clothes. All the money he got he gave to
his mother, and she bought bread with it, and when they had no money
they lived the best way they could.
Such was the amount of intelligence manifested by this unfortunate
child.
Another was only seven years old. He stated that his father was a
sailor who had been hurt on board ship, and been unable to go to sea
for the last two years. He had two brothers and a sister, one of them
older than himself; and his elder brother was a mud-lark like himself.
The two had been mud-larking more than a year; they went because they
saw other boys go, and knew that they got money for the things they
found. They were often hungry, and glad to do anything to get something
to eat. Their father was not able to earn anything, and their mother
could get but little to do. They gave all the money they earned to
their mother. They didn’t gamble, and play at pitch and toss when they
had got some money, but some of the big boys did on the Sunday, when
they didn’t go a mud-larking. He couldn’t tell why they did nothing on
a Sunday, “only they didn’t;” though sometimes they looked about to
see where the best place would be on the next day. He didn’t go to the
ragged school; he should like to know how to read a book, though he
couldn’t tell what good it would do him. He didn’t like mud larking,
would be glad of something else, but didn’t know anything else that he
could do.
Another of the boys was the son of a dock labourer,--casually employed.
He was between seven and eight years of age, and his sister, who was
also a mud-lark, formed one of the group. The mother of these two was
dead, and there were three children younger than themselves.
The rest of the histories may easily be imagined, for there was a
painful uniformity in the stories of all the children: they were either
the children of the very poor, who, by their own improvidence or some
overwhelming calamity, had been reduced to the extremity of distress,
or else they were orphans, and compelled from utter destitution to seek
for the means of appeasing their hunger in the mud of the river. That
the majority of this class are ignorant, and without even the rudiments
of education, and that many of them from time to time are committed to
prison for petty thefts, cannot be wondered at. Nor can it even excite
our astonishment that, once within the walls of a prison, and finding
how much more comfortable it is than their previous condition, they
should return to it repeatedly. As for the females growing up under
such circumstances, the worst may be anticipated of them; and in proof
of this I have found, upon inquiry, that very many of the unfortunate
creatures who swell the tide of prostitution in Ratcliff-highway, and
other low neighbourhoods in the East of London, have originally been
mud-larks; and only remained at that occupation till such time as they
were capable of adopting the more easy and more lucrative life of the
prostitute.
As to the numbers and earnings of the mud-larks, the following
calculations fall short of, rather than exceed, the truth. From
Execution Dock to the lower part of Limehouse Hole, there are 14 stairs
or landing-places, by which the mud-larks descend to the shore in order
to pursue their employment. There are about as many on the opposite
side of the water similarly frequented.
At King James’ Stairs, in Wapping Wall, which is nearly a central
position, from 40 to 50 mud-larks go down daily to the river; the
mud-larks “using” the other stairs are not so numerous. If, therefore,
we reckon the number of stairs on both sides of the river at 28,
and the average number of mud-larks frequenting them at 10 each, we
shall have a total of 280. Each mud-lark, it has been shown, earns on
an average 3_d._ a day, or 1_s._ 6_d._ per week; so that the annual
earnings of each will be 3_l._ 18_s._, or say 4_l._, a year, and hence
the gross earnings of the 280 will amount to rather more than 1000_l._
per annum.
But there are, in addition to the mud-larks employed in the
neighbourhood of what may be called the pool, many others who work down
the river at various places as far as Blackwall, on the one side, and
at Deptford, Greenwich, and Woolwich, on the other. These frequent the
neighbourhoods of the various “yards” along shore, where vessels are
being built; and whence, at certain times, chips, small pieces of wood,
bits of iron, and copper nails, are washed out into the river. There
is but little doubt that this portion of the class earn much more than
the mud-larks of the pool, seeing that they are especially convenient
to the places where the iron vessels are constructed; so that the
presumption is, that the number of mud-larks “at work” on the banks
of the Thames (especially if we include those above bridge), and the
value of the property extracted by them from the mud of the river, may
be fairly estimated at double that which is stated above, or say 550
gaining 2000_l._ per annum.
As an illustration of the doctrines I have endeavoured to enforce
throughout this publication, I cite the following history of one of the
above class. It may serve to teach those who are still sceptical as to
the degrading influence of circumstances upon the poor, that many of
the humbler classes, if placed in the same easy position as ourselves,
would become, perhaps, quite as “respectable” members of society.
The lad of whom I speak was discovered by me now nearly two years ago
“mud-larking” on the banks of the river near the docks. He was a quick,
intelligent little fellow, and had been at the business, he told me,
about three years. He had taken to mud-larking, he said, because his
clothes were too bad for him to look for anything better. He worked
every day, with 20 or 30 boys, who might all be seen at daybreak with
their trowsers tucked up, groping about, and picking out the pieces of
coal from the mud on the banks of the Thames. He went into the river
up to his knees, and in searching the mud he often ran pieces of glass
and long nails into his feet. When this was the case, he went home and
dressed the wounds, but returned to the river-side directly, “for
should the tide come up,” he added, “without my having found something,
why I must starve till next low tide.” In the very cold weather he and
his other shoeless companions used to stand in the hot water that ran
down the river side from some of the steam-factories, to warm their
frozen feet.
At first he found it difficult to keep his footing in the mud, and he
had known many beginners fall in. He came to my house, at my request,
the morning after my first meeting with him. It was the depth of
winter, and the poor little fellow was nearly destitute of clothing.
His trousers were worn away up to his knees, he had no shirt, and his
legs and feet (which were bare) were covered with chilblains. On being
questioned by me he gave the following account of his life:--
He was fourteen years old. He had two sisters, one fifteen and the
other twelve years of age. His father had been dead nine years. The man
had been a coal-whipper, and, from getting his work from one of the
publican employers in those days, had become a confirmed drunkard. When
he married he held a situation in a warehouse, where his wife managed
the first year to save 4_l._ 10_s._ out of her husband’s earnings;
but from the day he took to coal-whipping she had never saved one
halfpenny, indeed she and her children were often left to starve. The
man (whilst in a state of intoxication) had fallen between two barges,
and the injuries he received had been so severe that he had lingered in
a helpless state for three years before his death. After her husband’s
decease the poor woman’s neighbours subscribed 1_l._ 5_s._ for her;
with this sum she opened a greengrocer’s shop, and got on very well for
five years.
When the boy was nine years old his mother sent him to the Red Lion
school at Green-bank, near Old Gravel-lane, Ratcliffe-highway; she
paid 1_d._ a week for his learning. He remained there for a year; then
the potato-rot came, and his mother lost upon all she bought. About
the same time two of her customers died 30_s._ in her debt; this loss,
together with the potato-disease, completely ruined her, and the whole
family had been in the greatest poverty from that period. Then she was
obliged to take all her children from their school, that they might
help to keep themselves as best they could. Her eldest girl sold fish
in the streets, and the boy went to the river-side to “pick up” his
living. The change, however, was so great that shortly afterwards the
little fellow lay ill eighteen weeks with the ague. As soon as the boy
recovered his mother and his two sisters were “taken bad” with a fever.
The poor woman went into the “Great House,” and the children were taken
to the Fever Hospital. When the mother returned home she was too weak
to work, and all she had to depend on was what her boy brought from the
river. They had nothing to eat and no money until the little fellow
had been down to the shore and picked up some coals, selling them for
a trifle. “And hard enough he had to work for what he got, poor boy,”
said his mother to me on a future occasion, sobbing; “still he never
complained, but was quite proud when he brought home enough for us to
get a bit of meat with; and when he has sometimes seen me down-hearted,
he has clung round my neck, and assured me that one day God would see
us cared for if I would put my trust in Him.” As soon as his mother was
well enough she sold fruit in the streets, or went out washing when she
could get a day’s work.
The lad suffered much from the pieces of broken glass in the mud. Some
little time before I met with him he had run a copper nail into his
foot. This lamed him for three months, and his mother was obliged to
carry him on her back every morning to the doctor. As soon, however,
as he could “hobble” (to use his mother’s own words) he went back to
the river, and often returned (after many hours’ hard work in the mud)
with only a few pieces of coal, not enough to sell even to get them a
bit of bread. One evening, as he was warming his feet in the water that
ran from a steam factory, he heard some boys talking about the Ragged
School in High-street, Wapping.
“They was saying what they used to learn there,” added the boy. “They
asked me to come along with them for it was great fun. They told me
that all the boys used to be laughing and making game of the master.
They said they used to put out the gas and chuck the slates all about.
They told me, too, that there was a good fire there, so I went to have
a warm and see what it was like. When I got there the master was very
kind to me. They used to give us tea-parties, and to keep us quiet they
used to show us the magic lantern. I soon got to like going there, and
went every night for six months. There was about 40 or 50 boys in the
school. The most of them was thieves, and they used to go thieving
the coals out of barges along shore, and cutting the ropes off ships,
and going and selling it at the rag-shops. They used to get 3/4_d._ a
lb. for the rope when dry, and 1/2_d._ when wet. Some used to steal
pudding out of shops and hand it to those outside, and the last boy
it was handed to would go off with it. They used to steal bacon and
bread sometimes as well. About half of the boys at the school was
thieves. Some had work to do at ironmongers, lead-factories, engineers,
soap-boilers, and so on, and some had no work to do and was good boys
still. After we came out of school at nine o’clock at night, some of
the bad boys would go a thieving, perhaps half-a-dozen and from that
to eight would go out in a gang together. There was one big boy of the
name of C----; he was 18 years old, and is in prison now for stealing
bacon; I think he is in the House of Correction. This C---- used to go
out of school before any of us, and wait outside the door as the other
boys came out. Then he would call the boys he wanted for his gangs on
one side, and tell them where to go and steal. He used to look out in
the daytime for shops where things could be ‘prigged,’ and at night he
would tell the boys to go to them. He was called the captain of the
gangs. He had about three gangs altogether with him, and there were
from six to eight boys in each gang. The boys used to bring what they
stole to C----, and he used to share it with them. I belonged to one of
the gangs. There were six boys altogether in my gang; the biggest lad,
that knowed all about the thieving, was the captain of the gang I was
in, and C---- was captain over him and over all of us.
“There was two brothers of them; you seed them, sir, the night you
first met me. The other boys, as was in my gang, was B---- B----, and
B---- L----, and W---- B----, and a boy we used to call ‘Tim;’ these,
with myself, used to make up one of the gangs, and we all of us used
to go a thieving every night after school-hours. When the tide would
be right up, and we had nothing to do along shore, we used to go
thieving in the daytime as well. It was B---- B----, and B---- L----,
as first put me up to go thieving; they took me with them, one night,
up the lane [New Gravel-lane], and I see them take some bread out of a
baker’s, and they wasn’t found out; and, after that, I used to go with
them regular. Then I joined C----’s gang; and, after that, C---- came
and told us that his gang could do better than ourn, and he asked us
to join our gang to his’n, and we did so. Sometimes we used to make
3_s._ or 4_s._ a day; or about 6_d._ apiece. While waiting outside the
school-doors, before they opened, we used to plan up where we would go
thieving after school was over. I was taken up once for thieving coals
myself, but I was let go again.”
I was so much struck with the boy’s truthfulness of manner, that I
asked him, _would_, he really lead a different life, if he saw a
means of so doing? He assured me he would, and begged me earnestly to
try him. Upon his leaving me, 2_s._ were given him for his trouble.
This small sum (I afterwards learned) kept the family for more than a
fortnight. The girl laid it out in sprats (it being then winter-time);
these she sold in the streets.
I mentioned the fact to a literary friend, who interested himself
in the boy’s welfare; and eventually succeeded in procuring him a
situation at an eminent printer’s. The subjoined letter will show how
the lad conducted himself while there.
“Whitefriars, April 22, 1850.
“Messrs. Bradbury and Evans beg to say that the boy J. C. has
conducted himself in a very satisfactory manner since he has been in
their employment.”
The same literary friend took the girl into his service. She is in a
situation still, though not in the same family.
The boy now holds a good situation at one of the daily newspaper
offices. So well has he behaved himself, that, a few weeks since, his
wages were increased from 6_s._ to 9_s._ per week. His mother (owing to
the boy’s exertions) has now a little shop, and is doing well.
This simple story requires no comments, and is narrated here in the
hope that it may teach many to know how often the poor boys reared
in the gutter are thieves, merely because society forbids them being
honest lads.