“The gin and rum is the worst that can be supplied; but we must
drink it or waste it. We often spill it on the ballast, it’s that
bad”--[“Often, often,” was the response of the other man.] “And that’s
not the worst. When we get a job of putting sixty tons of ballast on
board, we are forced to take six pots of beer with us to our work; but
only four pots are supplied, and we must pay for six. We are robbed on
every side. I cannot describe how bad it is; a man would hardly believe
it; but all will tell you the same--all the men like us.” [So, indeed,
the poor fellows did afterwards.] “When we call to be paid, we are kept
for hours in a cold tap-room, forced to drink cold stuff without being
let have a strike of fire to take the chill off it.”
The other man then made a further statement.
“I’ve been forced to put my sticks in pawn--what I had left--for I was
better off once, though I was always a ballast-heaver and have worked
for the same publican fourteen years. I have 3_l._ in pawn now, I blame
this present system for being so badly off--sorrow a thing else! Now
just look at this: A single man, a lodger, will go into a publican’s
and call for 1_s._ worth of rum, and the publican will call me a scaly
fellow, if I don’t do the same; that will be when I’d rather be without
his rum, if I got it for nothing.” One publican (the men gave me this
account concurrently, and it was fully confirmed by a host of others,)
married the niece of a waterman employed to pull the harbour-master
about the river. He kept a public-house, and carried on the system of
lodgers for ballast-heaving, making a great deal of money out of them;
by this means he got so much work at his command, that the rest of the
publicans complained to the harbour-master, and the man was forced to
give up his public-house. When he had to give it up he made it over
to his niece’s husband, and that man allowed him 1_s._ for every ship
he brought him to ballast. “I’ve known him--that’s the publican that
succeeded the man I’ve been telling you of--have 40 ships in a day: one
week with another he has had 100 ships; that’s 5_l._, and he has them
still. It’s the same now. We’ve both worked for him. His wife’s uncle
(the harbour-master’s waterman) says to the captains, and he goes on
board to see them after the harbour-master’s visit to them,--‘Go to
----; get your ballast of him, and I’ll give you the best berth in the
river.’”
I next obtained an interview with a young man who was the victim of a
double extortion. He made the following statement:--
“I work under a publican, and lodge in his house. I have done so for
five years. I pay 2_s._ 6_d._ a-week, there being ten of us in two
rooms. We’re all single men. These two rooms contain four beds, three
in the larger room and one in the other. We sleep two in a bed, and
should have to sleep three in some; only two of the men don’t occupy
the lodgings they pay for. The bigger room may be 16 feet by 10; the
smaller about a quarter that size. You cannot turn in it--the bed
cannot be brought out of the room without being taken to pieces. We
must cook in the tap-room, which is a room for the purpose; it contains
forms and an old table, with a large grate. We are found fryingpans
and gridirons, and pans, and fire, and candle; but we must find our
own knives and forks. The room is shamefully dirty--I mean the tap
(cooking) room. It looks as if it hadn’t been washed for years. It’s
never been washed to my knowledge. The bed-rooms are very little
better. The bedding is very bad--a flock bed, with a pair of blankets
and quilt, and a sort of sheet clean once a-fortnight. There’s very bad
ventilation and very unpleasant smells. It’s a horrid den altogether.
None of us would stop there if we could help it--but we can’t help
it, for if we leave we get no work. We are forced to find locks for
our rooms, to keep our bits of things from being stolen. One man was
robbed; my clothes was in the box with his; the box was broken open,
but the clothes was left, and a few halfpence put away in the box was
taken. There’s lots of bugs; we can only sleep after hard work, and we
must drink when we’re at work. I’ve poured my beer into the river many
a time, it was so bad--it tasted poisonous. We’ve drank Thames water
rather than the bad beer we’re all forced to drink. To show how we’re
treated I’ll tell you this: I owe so much, and so much a week’s stopped
to pay it; but it never gets less, I am always charged the same. There
it is, the same figures are on the slate, keep paying, paying off as
you will. They won’t rub it off, or if they do rub it off it’s there
again the next time. Only last week a man was discharged for grumbling,
because he objected to paying twice over. He hasn’t had a day’s work
since.”
Then came one who was the _employé_ of a publican and grocer. He said:
“I work under a publican and grocer. I’m any man’s man. I stand with
my fingers in my mouth at Ratcliff-cross watching, and have done it
these last nine years. Half of us is afraid to come and speak to you.
When I volunteered, the big-whiskered and fat-faced men (foremen) were
looking at me and threatening me for coming to you. No matter, I care
for nobody. Worse nor I am I can’t be. No more I can’t. I go to one
publican’s to work 60 tons, and for that I get 4_s._, but 6_s._ is my
rights. The remainder 2_s._ is left--I’m forced to leave it--for me to
drink out on Sunday night. If I was in a fair house the publican would
pay me 7_s._ 6_d._; as it is I get 4_s._ and 2_s._ must be drunk,--it’s
the rule at that house--he’s in opposition and works low. If I was at
liberty it wasn’t to his house I’d go for a drink. The hardest-drinking
man gets work first, and when a man’s drunk he doesn’t care what stuff
he puts into his belly. Before we go to a job the four of us are
expected to drink half-a-pint of rum or gin; the publicans expect it.
If I was a teetotaler I must pay my whack and the other men may drink
it, for the score against the ship is divided among the men equal.
“Suppose two foremen were to meet and have a drop of rum or brandy
together, and a little talk about a ship’s ballast, that’s charged
to us poor fellows--it’s stuck up to us--but we mustn’t say nothing,
though we know we never had a sup of it; but if we say a word it’s all
up--no more work.
“Once on a time I worked for a publican close by here, and when I came
to the house I had nothing to drink. My oldest mate whispered to me as
we were on our way from the London Dock, and told me to speak my mind,
for he knew there was a false score chalked against the ship; and the
others was afraid to say a word. Well, I did speak when I got into the
house, and the foreman was there, and he asked me what business I had
to speak more than another? There was 6_s._ charged to the score for
drink that we never touched or ever saw,--not a sup of it. He--that’s
the foreman--told me I shouldn’t go to finish the ship; I said I would,
in spite of him. I told the missus I expected she wouldn’t give any
more drink but what we had ourselves, or would get when we came home;
and she said she wouldn’t; and that’s two years ago; but I haven’t had
a job from them parties since.
“Suppose I get to the public-house for my money at six in the
evening, I am forced to wait there till eleven, until I am drunk very
often--drunk from vexation; stopt when I’m hungry after five or six
hours’ work on the river, and not let take the money home to my wife
and family, nor let have anything to eat, for I’m waiting for that
money to get a bit of grub; but when I’m half drunk the hunger goes off
just for a time. I must go and drink in a morning if my children go
without breakfast, and starve all day till I come home at night. I can
get nothing from my employers but _drink_. If I ask them for a shilling
I can’t get it. I’ve finished my load of ballast without breaking my
fast but on the beer we’re forced to take with us.
“I’ve found grocers better to work under than publicans,--there’s a
great deal more honesty in them. They charge a middling fair price; but
they’ll have tow-row out of it,--that’s dry money--so much a score.
They’ll stop 6_d._ a score only for giving us a job. I can get as good
sugar as I get of them at 4_d._ for 3-1/2_d._; but then the difference
between the grocer and publican is, that the wife and family can have a
bit of something to eat under the grocer, but not under the publican.
All goes in drink with the publican; but we cannot carry drink home.
When I go home drunk from the publican’s, I tumble on the floor,
perhaps, and say, ‘Is there anything to eat for me?’ and my old woman
says, ‘Where’s the money? give me that and I’ll give you something to
eat.’ Then a man gets mad with vexation, and the wife and children runs
away from him; they are glad to get away with their lives, they’re
knocked about so. It makes a man mad with vexation to see a child
hungry,--it kills me; but what the foreman gives me I _must_ take; I
dare never say no. If I get nothing--if all is gone in drink--I must go
from him with a blithe face to my starving children, or I need never go
back to him for another job.”
I shall now set forth as fully as possible the nature of the system
by which the ballast-heaver is either forced by the fear of losing
all chance of future employment, or induced by the hope of obtaining
the preference of work from the publican, his employer, to spend at
least one half of his earnings every week in intoxicating drinks.
Let me, however, before proceeding directly to the subject of my
present communication, again lay before the reader the conclusions
which I lately drew from the Metropolitan Police returns for 1848,
concerning the intemperance of the labouring classes of London. It is
essential that I should first prove the fact, and show its necessary
consequences. This done, the public will be more ready to perceive
the cause, and to understand that until this and similar social evils
are removed, it is worse than idle to talk of “the elevation of the
masses,” and most unjust, to use the mildest term, to condemn the
working men for sins into which they are positively forced. To preach
about the virtues of teetotalism to the poor, and yet to allow a
system to continue that compels them to be drunk before they can get
work--not to say bread--is surely a mockery. If we would really have
the industrious classes sober and temperate men, we must look first, it
seems, to their _employers_. We have already seen that the intemperance
of the coal-labourer is the fault of the employer, rather than the
man; but we have only to go among the ballast-labourers to find the
demoralization of the working man arising, not from any mere passive
indifference, but from something like a positive conspiracy on the part
of the master.
According to the criminal returns for the metropolis, there were
9197 males and 7264 females, making altogether a total of 16,461
individuals, charged with drunkenness in the year 1848. This makes one
in every 110 individuals in London a drunkard--a proportion which,
large as it seems, is still less than one-half what it was some ten or
fifteen years back.
For the sake of comparison I subjoin, in the following page, a Table,
taken from the Government Report on Drunkenness; being a return of the
number of charges of drunkenness which have been entered upon the books
of the Metropolitan Police in the years 1831, 1832, and 1833, with
the number of officers employed in, and the locality of, each division:
also the amount of population in each, according to the Parliamentary
returns of 1831.
NUMBER OF CHARGES OF DRUNKENNESS EACH YEAR IN THE YEARS 1831, 1832,
1833.
------------------+---------+----------------+--------------------------+
| | Computed | |
| No. of | Population in | 1831. |
|Officers | each Division, | |
|employed |according to the+--------+--------+--------+
Locality of each | in each | Parliamentary | | | |
Division. |Division.| Returns. | Males. |Females.| Total. |
------------------+---------+----------------+--------+--------+--------+
A. Whitehall | 120 | 6,238 | 406 | 230 | 636 |
B. Westminster | 168 | 53,147 | 1,596 | 800 | 2,396 |
C. St. James’s | 188 | 105,862 | 2,290 | 1,127 | 3,417 |
D. St. Marylebone | 166 | 122,206 | 1,375 | 727 | 2,102 |
E. Holborn | 168 | 75,241 | 1,785 | 1,079 | 2,864 |
F. Covent Garden | 168 | 41,010 | 2,238 | 1,555 | 3,793 |
G. Finsbury | 236 | 115,266 | 2,141 | 1,423 | 3,564 |
H. Whitechapel | 191 | 119,042 | 1,253 | 812 | 2,065 |
K. Stepney | 296 | 143,137 | 899 | 574 | 1,473 |
L. Lambeth | 191 | 101,561 | 1,732 | 1,271 | 3,003 |
M. Southwark | 189 | 107,537 | 1,655 | 1,050 | 2,705 |
N. Islington | 269 | 140,407 | 850 | 373 | 1,223 |
P. Camberwell | 243 | 77,825 | 256 | 87 | 343 |
R. Greenwich | 212 | 58,778 | 363 | 137 | 500 |
S. Hampstead | 223 | 112,136 | 573 | 301 | 874 |
T. Kensington | 184 | 70,296 | 124 | 24 | 148 |
V. Wandsworth | 186 | 62,039 | 212 | 35 | 247 |
+---------+----------------+--------+--------+--------+
Total | 3,398 | 1,511,728 | 19,748 | 11,605 | 31,353 |
+------------------------+------------------------+---------------------------+
| | | Public-Houses and |
| 1832. | 1833. | Beer-Shops in |
| | | each Division. |
+-------+--------+-------+-------+--------+-------+-------+-----------+-------+
| | | | | | |Public | | |
|Males. |Females.|Total. |Males. |Females.|Total. |Houses.|Beer-Shops.| Total.|
+-------+--------+-------+-------+--------+-------+-------+-----------+-------+
| 384 | 243 | 627 | 371 | 228 | 599 | 32 | 5 | 37 |
| 1,829 | 831 | 2,660 | 1,864 | 1,193 | 3,057 | 186 | 58 | 244 |
| 2,119 | 1,055 | 3,174 | 2,208 | 1,256 | 3,464 | 302 | 20 | 322 |
| 1,300 | 650 | 1,950 | 1,019 | 605 | 1,624 | 148 | 54 | 202 |
| 1,241 | 897 | 2,138 | 879 | 618 | 1,497 | 249 | 19 | 368 |
| 2,165 | 1,617 | 3,782 | 1,665 | 1,388 | 3,053 | 309 | 28 | 332 |
| 2,192 | 1,440 | 3,632 | 1,916 | 1,270 | 3,186 | 368 | 100 | 468 |
| 1,631 | 1,268 | 2,899 | 1,803 | 1,295 | 3,098 | 359 | 102 | 461 |
| 1,387 | 732 | 2,119 | 1,125 | 762 | 1,887 | 437 | 131 | 568 |
| 1,581 | 1,234 | 2,815 | 1,291 | 944 | 2,235 | 183 | 70 | 153 |
| 1,470 | 982 | 2,452 | 1,284 | 843 | 2,127 | 321 | 66 | 387 |
| 1,165 | 573 | 1,738 | 826 | 409 | 1,235 | 267 | 144 | 311 |
| 201 | 75 | 276 | 203 | 80 | 283 | 138 | 96 | 234 |
| 513 | 240 | 753 | 418 | 210 | 628 | 283 | 51 | 334 |
| 613 | 326 | 939 | 697 | 319 | 1,016 | 138 | 74 | 212 |
| 303 | 109 | 412 | 464 | 137 | 601 | 220 | 93 | 313 |
| 210 | 60 | 270 | 235 | 55 | 290 | 133 | 76 | 209 |
+-------+--------+-------+-------+--------+-------+-------+-----------+-------+
|20,304 | 12,332 |32,636 |18,268 | 11,612 |29,880 | 4,073 | 1,187 | 5,155 |
Now, comparing these returns with those of the year before last, we
find that the decrease of intemperance in the metropolis has been most
extraordinary. In the year 1831, 1 in every 48 individuals was drunk;
in 1832 the number increased to 1 in 46; whereas in 1833 it decreased
to 1 in 50; and in 1848 the average had again fallen to 1 individual to
every 110. This decrease of intemperance was attended with a similar
decrease in the number of metropolitan beer-shops. In 1833 there were
1182, and in 1848 only 779 beer-shops in London. Whether this decrease
preceded or succeeded, and so was the cause or the consequence of the
increased sobriety of the people, it is difficult to say. The number of
public-houses in London, however, had increased during the same period
from 4073 to 4275. Upon the cause and effect of this I leave others to
speculate.
Of the total, 16,461 persons, male and female, who were charged with
being intoxicated in the year 1848, no less than one individual in
every seven belonged to the labouring class: and, excluding the
females from the number, we shall find that, of the males, every
fourth individual that was taken up for drunkenness was a labouring
man. Taking the whole population of London, temperate and intemperate,
only 1 in every 110 is a drunkard; but with the labouring classes the
average is as high as 1 in every 22. Of course, where the habit of
drinking is excessive, we may expect to find also excessive pugnacity.
That it is the tendency of all intoxicating liquors to increase
the irritability of the individual is well known. We might infer
therefore, _à priori_, that the greater number of common assaults
would be committed by the greatest drunkards. In 1848 there were 7780
individuals assaulted in London, and nearly one-fourth of these, or
1882, were attacked by labouring men, one in every 26 of the entire
body of labourers having been charged with this offence. The “simple
larceny,” of which the labouring classes appear, by the same returns,
to be more guilty than any other body of individuals, is also explained
by their inordinate intemperance. When a man’s bodily energy is
destroyed by drink, labour is so irksome to him that he would sooner
peril his liberty than work. What wonder, then, that as many as 1 in
every 28 labourers should be charged with theft? Whereas, of the rest
of the population there are only 1 in every 226 individuals. Thus, of
the labouring classes, 1 in every 22 is charged with being drunk; 1
in every 26 with committing an assault; and 1 in every 28 with being
guilty of simple larceny.
For the truth of the connexion existing between drink, pugnacity, and
theft, I would refer to the statement of one of the most intelligent
and experienced of the coal whippers,--one, indeed, to whose unceasing
and heroic exertions that class principally owe their redemption:--“The
children of the coal-whippers,” he told me, “were, under the old
system, almost reared in the tap-room.” He himself had known as many as
500 youths that were transported; and this, be it remembered, out of a
class numbering only 2000 men.
Such, then, are the proved consequences of an inordinate use of
intoxicating liquors. It becomes, therefore, the duty of every one who
is anxious for the well-being of the people, to diminish the occasions
for drinking wherever possible. To permit the continuance of certain
systems of employment and payment, which are well known, both to tempt
and compel the men to indulge in intoxicating liquors, is at once to
breed the very crimes that it is the office of Government to suppress.
The custom pursued by the coal-merchants of paying the labourers in
their employ in public-houses, as I lately exposed, appeared bad
enough. The “backer,” jaded and depressed with his excessive work
through the day, was entrapped into the public-house in the evening,
under the pretence of receiving his wages. Once inside he was kept
waiting there hour after hour by the publican (who of course was out
of silver, and had to send some distance for it). Beer is called for
by the men in the meantime. Under the influence of the stimulant, the
fatigue and the depression begin to leave the labourers, the burden
that is still on their backs (it will be remembered that such is the
description of the men themselves) is shaken off, and their muscles
no longer ache and are stiff, but relax, while their flagging spirits
gradually revive under the potent charm of the liquor. What wonder,
then, that the poor creatures finding it so easy, and when the habit
is once formed, so pleasant, a cure for their ills, should be led to
follow up one draught with another and another? This system appeared to
me to be vicious enough, and to display a callousness on the part of
the employers that quite startled me. But the system under which the
ballast-labourers are now suffering, is an infamy hardly to be credited
as flourishing in these days. I have, therefore, been at considerable
pains to establish such a mass of evidence upon the subject as shall
make all earnest men look upon the continuance of such a system as a
national dishonour.