When the system of sewer cleansing first became general, as I have
detailed, the number of flushermen employed, I am assured, on good
authority, was about 500. The sewers were, when this process was first
resorted to, full of deposit, often what might be called “coagulated”
deposit, which could not be affected except by constantly repeated
efforts. There are now only about 100 flushermen, for the more
regularly flushing is repeated, the easier becomes the operation.
Until about 18 months ago, the flushermen were employed directly by the
Court of Sewers, and were paid (“in Mr. Roe’s time,” one man said,
with a sigh) from 24_s._ to 27_s._ a week; now the work is _all done
by contract_. There are some six or seven contractors, all builders,
who undertake or are responsible for the whole work of flushing in the
metropolitan districts (I do not speak of the City), and they pay the
working flushermen 21_s._ a week, and the gangers 22_s._ This wage is
always paid in money, without drawbacks, and without the intervention
of any other middleman than the contractor middleman. The flushermen
have no perquisites except what they may chance to find in a sewer.
Their time of labour is 6-1/2 hours daily.
The state of the tide, however, sometimes, as a matter of course,
compels the flushermen to work at every hour of the day and night. At
all times they carry lights, common oil lamps, with cotton wicks; only
the inspectors carry Davy’s safety-lamp. I met no man who could assign
any reason for this distinction, except that “the Davy” gave “such a
bad light.”
The flushermen wear, when at work, strong blue overcoats, waterproofed
(but not so much as used to be the case, the men then complaining of
the perspiration induced by them), buttoned close over the chest, and
descending almost to the knees, where it is met by huge leather boots,
covering a part of the thigh, such as are worn by the fishermen on
many of our coasts. Their hats are fan-tailed, like the dustmen’s. The
flushermen are well-conducted men generally, and, for the most part,
fine stalwart good-looking specimens of the English labourer; were they
not known or believed to be temperate, they would not be employed.
They have, as a body, no benefit or sick clubs, but a third of them, I
was told, or perhaps nearly a third, were members of general benefit
societies. I found several intelligent men among them. They are engaged
by the contractors, upon whom they call to solicit work.
“Since Mr. Roe’s time,” and Mr. Roe is evidently the popular man among
the flushermen, or somewhat less than four years ago, the flushermen
have had to provide their own dresses, and even their own shovels to
stir up the deposit. To contractors, the comforts or health of the
labouring men must necessarily be a secondary consideration to the
realization of a profit. New men can always be found; safe investments
cannot.
The wages of the flushermen therefore have been not only decreased, but
their expenses increased. A pair of flushing-boots, covering a part of
the thigh, similar to those worn by sea-side fishermen, costs 30_s._ as
a low price, and a flusherman wears out three pairs in two years. Boot
stockings cost 2_s._ 6_d._ The jacket worn by the men at their work in
the sewers, in the shape of a pilot-jacket, but fitting less loosely,
is 7_s._ 6_d._; a blue smock, of coarse common cloth (generally), worn
over the dress, costs 2_s._ 6_d._; a shovel is 2_s._ 6_d._ “Ay, sir,”
said one man, who was greatly dissatisfied with this change, “they’ll
make soldiers find their own regimentals next; and, may be, their
own guns, a’cause they can always get rucks of men for soldiers or
labourers. I know there’s plenty would work for less than we get, but
what of that? There always is. There’s hundreds would do the work for
half what the surveyors and inspectors gets; but it’s all right among
the nobs.”
Nor is the labour of the flushermen at all times so easy or of such
circumscribed hours as I have stated it to be in the regular way of
flushing. When small branch-sewers have to be flushed, the deposit must
first be loosened, or the water, instead of sweeping it away, would
flow over it, and in many of these sewers (most frequent in the Tower
Hamlets) the height is not more than 3 feet. Some of the flushermen are
tall, bulky, strong fellows, and cannot stand upright in less than from
5 feet 8 inches to 6 feet, and in loosening the deposit in low narrow
sewers, “we go to work,” said one of them, “on our bellies, like frogs,
with a rake between our legs. I’ve been blinded by steam in such sewers
near Whitechapel Church from the brewhouses; I couldn’t see for steam;
it was a regular London fog. You must get out again into a main sewer
on your belly; that’s what makes it harder about the togs, they get
worn so.”