The “Lumpers” are, if possible, in a more degraded state than the
ballast-heavers; they are not, it is true, under the same amount of
oppression from the publican, but still they are so besotted with the
drink which they are tempted to obtain from the publicans who employ
them, as to look upon the man who tricks them out of their earnings
rather as a friend than an enemy.
The lumpers make, I am informed, during six months in the year, as
much as 24_s._; and during the other six months they have nothing to
do. Of the 24_s._ that they earn in their busy time, 20_s._ it will
be seen is spent in the public-house. One master-lumper, who is a
publican, employs as many as 100 men. This information I have, not
only from the men themselves, but from the managers of the Commercial
Docks, where the greater number of the lumpers are engaged. The 100
men in the publican’s employ, as will be seen from the evidence of
the wives, spend upon an average 1_l._ a-week in the house, taking
generally but 4_s._ home to their wives and families: so that no less
a sum than 100_l._ a-week is squandered in the publican-contractor’s
house by the working men in drink. There is not only a pay-night, but
two “draw-nights” are appointed in the week, as a means of inveigling
the men to their master’s tap-room; and indeed the same system, which
gives the greatest drunkard the best chance of work, prevails among
the lumpers as among the ballast-heavers. The effect of this is, that
the lumpers are the most drunken, debased, and poverty-stricken of all
the classes of labouring men that I have yet seen; for, earning more
than the ballast-heavers, they of course have more to spend in the
public-house.
I made it a point of looking more minutely into the state of these men
on the Sunday, for I have found that on that day it is easy to tell
the habits of men by their external appearance. The greater part that
I saw were either intoxicated, or else reeking of liquor as early as
eleven o’clock on the Sunday morning. One foreman was decently dressed,
it was true; but then he was sent to me, I was credibly informed, by
the master-publican, who had heard of my previous investigations, to
give me a false impression as to the state of the labourers; the rest
of the men that I saw were unwashed and unshaven, even up to five and
six in the afternoon of that day. Their clothes were the same tattered
and greasy garments that I had seen them in the day before; indeed the
wives of the lumpers appeared to be alone alive to the degradation of
their husbands. At one house that I visited late on the Sunday evening,
I found two of the children in one corner of the small close room on
the bare boards, covered with a piece of old carpet, and four more
boys and girls stowed away at the top and bottom of the one bed in
which the rest of the family slept. Dirty wet clothes were hanging
to dry on lines across the room; and the face of the wife, who was
alone, in all her squalid misery, was black and gashed with cuts and
bruises. Not a step I took but I was dogged by some foreman or other,
in the hopes of putting me on the wrong scent. I had arranged with
the men on Saturday morning to have a meeting with them on that night
after their labour, but on going to the appointed place I found not
one labouring man there; and I learnt the next day that the publican
had purposely deferred paying them till a late hour, so that they
might have no chance of meeting me. On Monday morning, while at the
office of the Superintendent of the Commercial Dock Company, one of the
lumpers staggered drunk into the room, intent upon making some insolent
demand or other. That this drunkenness, with all its attendant vices,
is not the fault of the lumpers, but the necessary consequence of the
system under which they are employed, no man who has seen the marked
difference between the coal-whippers and that class of labourers who
still work out of the public-house, can for a moment doubt. The sins
of the labouring man, so far as I have seen, are, in this instance,
most indisputably the sins of his employer. If he is drunken, it is
his master who makes him so: if he is poor, his house bare, his wife
ragged, his children half-clothed, half-fed, and wholly uneducated,
it is mainly because his master tricks him out of his earnings at the
public-house.
Let me now give a description of the lumpers’ labour, and then of their
earnings. The timber-trade is divided by the custom of the trade into
two classes, called timber and deals. By “timber” is meant what is
brought in uncut logs; this is American red pine, yellow pine, elm,
ash, oak, and birch. The teak-trade is more recent, and seems to be
an exception to the classification I have mentioned: it is generally
described as teak; mahogany and dye-woods again are not styled timber.
The deals are all sawn ready for the carpenter or joiner’s use. At
the Custom-house the distinctions are, hewn and sawn woods; that is,
timber and deals. On timber there is now a duty of 1_s._ per load (a
load being fifty cubic feet) and on deals of 2_s._ The deals are sawn
in Canada, where immense steam-mills have been erected for the purpose.
The advantage to the trader in having this process effected in Canada
rather than in this country, seems to be this: the deals brought over
prepared, as I have described, of different lengths, varying from six
feet to twenty, while three inches is a usual thickness, are ready
for the workman’s purpose, and no refuse-matter forms a part of them.
Were the pine brought in logs, the bark and the unevenness of the tree
would add to the freight for what was only valueless. Timber and deals
require about the same time for their discharge. The largest vessels
that enter into this trade in the port of London are to be found in
the West India South Dock, formerly the City Canal. On one occasion in
this dock a vessel of 800 tons, containing 24,000 deals and ends, was
discharged in twenty-six working hours--forty-five men being employed.
I am informed that twenty men would discharge a ship of 600 tons of
timber and deals in seven days. Forty men will do it in four days. In
order to become acquainted with the system of lumping, I went on board
a vessel in the river where a gang of twenty men were at work. She
was a vessel of 600 tons, from Quebec. She lay alongside the Flora, a
Norwegian vessel--the first timber-ship that had reached the port of
London since the change in the Navigation Laws had come into operation.
The Flora’s cargo was 900 pieces of timber, which would be discharged
by her crew, as the lumpers are only employed in British vessels. The
vessel that I visited, and which lay next the Flora, had her hold and
the between-decks (which might be thirty-eight yards in length) packed
closely with deals. She held between 17,000 and 18,000 deals. She was
being lightened in the river before going into dock; twenty men were at
work in two barges, well moored alongside, close to two portholes in
the stern of the ship. There were three men in each barge who received
and packed the deals into the barge as they were thrust out of the
portholes; the larger deals were carried along by two men as soon as
a sufficient clearance had been made to enable them to run along--at
first, bent half-double. The two men who carried the deals ran along in
a sort of jog-trot motion, keeping time, so that the motion relieved
the pressure of the weight; the men all said it was easier to run than
to walk with the deals: the shorter deals (ends) were carried, one by
each man, who trotted on in the same measured steps,--each man, or
each two men employed, delivering his or their deal to one especial
man in the barge, so that a constant communication from the ship to
the barge was kept up, and the work went on without hitch or stoppage.
This same vessel, on a former occasion, was discharged in thirty-six
hours, which shows (as there were between 17,000 and 18,000 carryings
and deliverings of the deals) how rapidly the work is conducted. The
timber is all dragged from the holds or the between-decks of the ship
by machines; the lumpers house it from its place in the ship by means
of winches, tackles, and dogs--which latter are iron links to lay
hold of the logs. Three of these winches and tackles are stationed at
equal distances on each side of a large ship, and thus with the aid of
crowbars the several pieces of timber are dragged along the hold and
then dropped gently into the water, either in the dock or in the river,
and floated in rafts to its destination. All “timber” is floated, as
a rule. Sometimes when the ship is discharged in dock, timber or deals
are let down a slide on to a platform, and so carried to the pile or
the waggon. Contractors are employed by the ship-owners in the West
India Docks, as they will do some ships cheaper by 10_l._ than the
company could afford to do it. The ship-owners bear the expense of
discharging the ship.
The following evidence of a lumper was given unwillingly, indeed it was
only by a series of cross-questionings that any approximation to the
truth could be extracted from him. He was evidently in fear of losing
his work; and the tavern to which I had gone to take his statement was
filled with foremen watching and intimidating him. He said:
“I am a working lumper, or labourer at discharging timber or
deal-ships. I have been sixteen years at the work. I should think that
there are more than two hundred men at Deptford who are constantly
engaged at the work: there are a great many more working lumpers living
at Limehouse, Poplar, and Blackwall. These do the work principally
of the West India Docks; and when the work is slack there and brisk
at the Commercial, East Country, or Grand Surrey Canal Docks, the
men cross the water and get a job on the Surrey side of the river.
In the summer a great many Irish labourers seek for work as lumpers.
They come over from Ireland in the Cork boats. I should say there are
altogether upwards of 500 regular working lumpers; but in the summer
there are at least 200 more, owing to the number of Irish who come to
England to look for work at that time of the year. The wages of the
regular lumpers are not less when the Irish come over in the summer,
nor do the men get a less quantity of work to do. There are more timber
and deal-ships arriving at that season, so more hands are required to
discharge them. The ships begin to arrive in July, and they continue
coming in till January. After that time they lay up till March, when
they sail for the foreign ports. Between January and July the regular
working lumpers have little or nothing to do. During that time there
are scarcely any timber or deal ships coming in; and the working
lumpers then try to fall in with anything they can, either ballasting
a ship, or carrying a few deals to load a timber-carriage, or doing a
little ‘tide work.’ Between July and January the work is very brisk.
We are generally employed every day for those six months. Sometimes we
lose a day after lightening a ship in the river, while the vessel is
going into dock. We call it lightening a ship when she is laden too
heavy, and draws too much water to enter the docks. In such a case we
generally begin discharging the timber or deals in the river, either
off Deptford or Blackwall, according as the ship may be for the docks
on the Middlesex or Surrey side. In the river we discharge the deals
into lighters, whereas when the ship is in the dock we generally
discharge along a stage on to the shore. Timber we put overboard in
both cases, and leave it for the raftsmen to put together into rafts,
and float into the timber-ponds of the different docks. The deals we
merely land. It is our duty to put them ashore and nothing more. After
that the deal-porters take them and sort them, and pile them. They sort
the white from the yellow deals, and each kind into different lengths,
and then arrange them in piles all along the dock.
“Our usual time of working is from six to six in the summer time and
from daylight to dark in the winter. We always work under a foreman.
There are two foremen lumpers to almost every ship that we discharge;
and they engage the men, who work in gangs under them. Each gang
consists of from 4 to 12 men, according as the size of the ship is
large, or she is wanted to be discharged quickly. I have known as many
as 30 lumpers engaged on one ship; she was 1000 tons, and wanted to be
got out quick, so that she might make another voyage before the winter
set in abroad.
“The foreman and men are employed by the master-lumper. Some of the
master-lumpers are publicans; some others keep chandlers’ shops, and
others do nothing else that I know of. The master pays the working men
3_s._ 6_d._ a-day, and the foreman 1_s._ extra. We are settled with
every Saturday night. We have two draw-nights in each week; that is,
the master advances either a part or the whole of our earnings, if we
please, on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I work under a publican. My
master has only gone into the public line very lately. I don’t think
he’s been at it more than eighteen months. He has been a master-lumper
I should say for these 10 or 12 years past. I worked under him
before he had a public-house. Then he paid every Tuesday, Thursday,
and Saturday nights, at the same house he is now proprietor of. The
master-lumper always pays the men he employs at the public-house,
whether they are publicans or not.
“My master employs, I should say, in the spring season, from 80 to
100 hands regularly: and most of these meet at his house on Tuesday
and Thursday nights, and all of them on Saturday night, either to be
settled with in full or have a part of their wages advanced. We are
usually paid at 7 o’clock in the evening. I have been paid as late as 3
o’clock on Sunday morning; but that was some years ago, and I was all
that time in the public-house. We go straight to the public-house after
we have done our work.
“At this time of the year we knock off work at dark, that is, at five
[I am informed at the Commercial Docks that the usual hour is four]
o’clock, and we remain at our master’s until pay-time, that is 7
o’clock. This we do for three nights a-week certain; and after our
work at other nights we mostly meet at our master’s public-house.
The men generally draw from 2_s._ to 4_s._, and on a Thursday night
the same sum is advanced to them. The men are not enforced to spend
anything in the house. Each man has a little beer while the master is
getting ready to pay him on the draw-nights; and he generally remains
in the house after he has received his money some time, as he thinks
proper. On a draw-night in the brisk season many out of the hundred he
employs will stop drinking till 10 o’clock. Some go away immediately
after they have drawn their money. At least half stop for some time,
that is, till 10 o’clock. Some sit there and spend all they draw. All
the beer that the lumpers have on board ship is supplied by the master.
He supplies any quantity that is wanted. The reason why he keeps the
public-house is to have the right of supplying the men with beer. He
wouldn’t, of course, like to see us take beer from any other house than
his; if we did he would give us the sack. Every master-lumper works
out of a public-house, and the men must have their beer from the house
that he works out of; and if they don’t, why they ain’t wanted. We
generally take about two pots per man a-day from the house when we go
to our work in the morning. On a Saturday night we mostly stop longer
than on the draw-nights. Upon an average, the working lumpers I should
say spend about 2_s._ a-day in the season in the public-house. [It
will have been seen, that the lumpers’ wives whom I saw declare that
the men spend 20_s._ out of every 24_s._] After a hard week’s work I
think they have generally 8_s._ or 9_s._ out of the 1_l._ 4_s._ that
they earn at the busiest time of the year. I myself have taken home as
little as 5_s._ [According to this statement, assuming that there are
100 hands--many say that there are more--regularly employed out of this
public-house in the spring season, and spending each upon an average
from 12_s._ to 20_s._, or say 16_s._ a-week, as much as 80_l._ a-week
is squandered in beer.] I should say, taking all the year round, the
men make 10_s._ 6_d._ a-week. For at least four months in the year
there is no work at all; and for two months more it is very slack. I am
a married man with one child: when I am in full work I take home 5_s._
a-week at the least. My wife and child has to suffer for it all.”
Let me now cite the following table, which I have been at considerable
trouble in obtaining, as the only means of arriving at a correct
estimate as to the collective earnings of the “journeymen lumpers,” or
men generally engaged in discharging the cargoes of the British timber
and deal ships. The information has in the three principal instances
been derived directly from the books of the Dock Companies, through the
courtesy and consideration of the superintendents and directors, to
whom I am greatly indebted.