I now approach the only remaining part of this subject, viz. the
conveyance of goods and communications by means of the porters,
messengers, and errand-boys of the metropolis. The number of
individuals belonging to this class throughout Great Britain in 1841
amounted to 27,552, of whom 24,092 were located in England; 3,296 in
Scotland; 113 in Wales; and 51 in the British isles. Of the 27,500
porters, messengers, and errand-boys in Great Britain, very nearly
one-fifth, or 4,965, were lads under 20 years of age. The number of
individuals engaged in the same occupation in the metropolis was, in
1841, no less than 13,103, or very nearly half the number of porters,
&c. throughout Great Britain. Of this number 2,726, or more than a
fifth of the class, may be considered to represent the errand-boys,
these being lads under 20 years of age.
At present, however, I purpose dealing solely with the public porters
of the metropolis. Those belonging to private individuals appear to
partake (as I said of the carmen’s assistants) more of the character
of servants paid out of the profits of the trade than labourers whose
wages form an integral portion of the prime cost of a commodity.
The metropolitan porters are, like the carmen, of two classes; the
ticketed, and unticketed. I shall begin with the former.
The privileged porters of the city of London were at one period, and
until within these twenty years, a numerous, important, and tolerably
prosperous class. Prescriptive right, and the laws and by-laws of
the corporation of the city of London, have given to them the sole
privilege of porterage of every description, provided it be carried
on in the precincts of the city. The only exception to this exclusive
right is, that any freeman may employ his own servants in the porterage
of his own goods, and even that has been disputed. The first mention of
the privileged porters is in the early part of the 16th century.
[Illustration: STREET PORTER WITH KNOT.
[_From a Photograph._]]
It is almost impossible to classify the especial functions of the
different classes of porters; for they seem to have become especial
functions through custom and prescriptive right, and they are not
defined precisely in any legitimate or municipal enactment. Even at the
present time, what constitutes the business of a fellowship-porter,
what of a ticket-porter, and on what an unprivileged porter (known as
a foreigner, because a non-freeman) may be employed, are matters of
dispute.
A reference to city enactments, and the aid of a highly intelligent
member of the fraternity of ticket-porters, enables me to give the
following account, which is the more interesting, as it relates
to a class of labourers whose numbers, with the exception of the
fellowship-porters, have been limited since 1838, and who must
necessarily die out from want of renewal. In the earliest common
council enactments (June 27, 1606) on the subject of porterage,
the distinctions given, or rather intimated incidentally,
are--“Tackle-house porter, porter-packer of the gooddes of English
merchants, streete-porter, or porter to the packer for the said
citie for strangers’ goods.” As regards the term ticket porter, not
mentioned in this enumeration, I have to observe that all porters are
necessarily ticket-porters, which means that they can produce a ticket
or a document, showing that they are duly qualified, and have been
“admitted and allowed to use the feate of a porter,” by being freemen
of the city and members of a porter’s company or fellowship. In some
of the older city documents tackle and ticket-porters are mentioned
as if constituting one class; and they did constitute one class when
their labour was identical, as to a great extent it was. In 1712 they
are mentioned or indicated as one body, although the first clause
of the common council enactment sets out that several controversies
and quarrels have lately arisen between the tackle-house porters and
the ticket-porters touching the labour or work to them respectively
belonging, notwithstanding the several acts of this court heretofore
made. As these acts were vague and contradictory, the controversies
were a natural consequence.
The tackle-porters were employed in the weighing of goods for any
purpose of shipping, duty, or sale, which was formerly carried on
in public in the city. But there was a city officer known as the
master-weigher, styled “Mr. Weigher,” in the old acts, and the
profits of the weighing thus carried on publicly in the city went to
the hospitals. In 1607 it was enacted (I give the old orthography,
with its many contractions), “that no p’son or p’sons usinge the
feate of a porter, or being a forreynor, inholder, wharfinger, or
keye-keeper, where any merchaunts’ gooddes are to bee landed or laidd,
or such-like, shall at any time after the making and publishing of
this acte, have, use, keepe, or use within the said citie or l’b’ties
thereof, any manner triangle, with beams, scales, and weightes, or
any other balance, in any sorte, to weigh any the goods, wares, or
merchandize, of any merchant or merchants, p’son or p’sons whatsoever,
within the said citie or lib’ties thereof, whereby the proffyte
cominge and growinge to the hospitals of the said cytie, by weighinge
at the yron beams or at the great beame at the weigh-house, or the
proffytes of the Mr. Weigher and porters of the same weigh-house,
may in anywise be impeached, hindered, or diminished.” The privilege
of “weighinge” fell gradually into desuetude; but there is no record
of the precise periods. However, a vestige of it still remains; as I
shall show in my account of the markets, as it properly comes under
that head. There were 24 tackle-porters appointed; each of the 12
great city companies appointing two. These 12 companies are--the
Mercers’, Grocers’, Drapers’, Fishmongers’, Gold-smiths’, Skinners’,
Ironmongers’, Vintners’, and Clothworkers’. The 24 appointed porters
were known, it appears, as “maister-porters;” but as it was impossible
that they could do all the work required, they called to them the aid
of “fellowes,” freemen of the city, and members of their society,
who in time seem to have been known simply as ticket-porters. If a
sufficiency of these fellows, or ticket-porters, could not be made
available on any emergency, the maisters could employ any “foreign
porter not free of this cyttie, using the feate of a porter-packer of
the goods of English merchants, or the feate of a streete-porter, at
the tyme of the making of this acte (1607), and which at this present
is commemorante in the same citye or suburbes thereof, charged with
familye, or, being a single man, bringing a good certificate in the
wryting, under the handes of the churchwardens of the parish where he
is resident, or other substantiall neighbours, to the number of fower,
of his good conversacon and demeanor.” This employment, however, was
not to be to the prejudice of the privileged porters; and that the
employment of foreigners was resorted to jealously, and only through
actual necessity, is sufficiently shown by the whole tenor of the
enactments on the subject. The very act which I have just cited, as
permitting the employment of foreigners, contains a complaint in its
preamble that the toleration of these men caused many “of badd and
lewde condition daylie to resorte from the most parte of this realme
to the said cytie, suburbs and places adjoining, procuring themselves
small habytacons, namely, one chamber-roome for a poor foreignere and
his familye in a small cottage, with some other as poore as himself,
to the great increase and pestringe of this cyttie with poor people;
many of them provinge shifters, lyvinge by cozeninge, stealinge and
imbeazellinge men’s goods, as opportunity may serve them.” A somewhat
curious precedent as regards the character of the dwellings, being
in “one chamber-roome,” &c., for the abodes of the workmen, for the
slop-tailors and others in our day, as I have shown in my previous
letters.
The ticket-porters in 1846 are described as 3000 persons and upwards,
which sufficiently shows their importance; and in 1712 a Common
Council enactment provides that they shall have and enjoy the work
or labour of unshipping, landing, carrying and housing of pitch,
tar, soap, ashes, clapboards, wainscot, fir-poles, masts, deals,
oars, chests, tables, flax and hemp, brought hither from Dantzic,
Melvyn, or any other part or place of the countries commonly called
the east countries. Also of the imports from Ireland, “from any of
the plantations belonging to Great Britain, and of all manner of
coast-goods, (except lead).” The tackle-house porters were, by the same
enactment, to “have and enjoy the work and labour of the shipping and
all goods imported and belonging to the South Sea Company, or to the
Company of Merchants trading to the East Indies, and of all other goods
and merchandizes coming from other ports not before mentioned.” The
functions of the tackle-house and ticket-porters are by this regulation
in 1712 made identical as to labour, with merely the distinction as
to the place from which the goods were received: and as the number of
tackle-house porters was properly 24, with them must be included, I
presume, all such ticket-porters, but not to the full number; nor is
it likely that they will be renewed in case of death. The tackle-house
porters that are still in existence, I was told, are gentlemen. One
is a wharfinger, and claims and enjoys the monopoly of labour on his
own wharf. “The tackle-house porters, or most of them, were labourers
within these twenty years.” The tackle-house and ticket-porters still
enjoy, by law, the right to man the work, wherever porterage is
required; or, in other words, to execute the labour themselves, or to
engage men to do it, no matter whether the work relate to shipping, to
the markets, or to mere street-porterage, such as the conveyance of
parcels for hire by men’s labour. The number of the ticket-porters was,
20 years ago, about 600. At that time to become free of the company,
which has no hall but assembles at Guildhall, cost upwards of 40_l._,
but soon afterwards the expense was reduced to 6_l._ 3_s._ 4_d._ By
a resolution of the Common Council, no new ticket-porters have been
appointed since 1838. Previously to becoming a ticket-porter a man
must have taken up his freedom, no matter in what character, and must
produce certificates of good character and security of two freemen,
householders of good credit, each in 100_l._, so that the owner of any
articles entrusted to the ticket-porter may be indemnified in case of
loss. The ticket-porters are not the mere labourers people generally
imagine they are, but are, or were, for their number does now not
exceed 100, decayed tradesmen, who resorted to this means of livelihood
when others had failed. They are also the sons of ticket-porters.
Any freeman of the city, by becoming a member of the Tackle-House
and Ticket-Porters’ Company, was entitled to act as a ticket-porter.
They are still recognised at the markets and the wharfs, but their
privileges are constantly, and more and more infringed. From a highly
intelligent member of their body I had the following statement:--
“It may be true, or it may not, that ticket-porters are not wanted now;
but 15 or 16 years ago a committee of the Common Council, the Market
Committee I believe it was, resolved that the ticket-porters ought to
be upheld, and that 50_l._ should be awarded to us; but we never got
it, it was stopped by some after-resolution. Put it this way, sir. To
get bread for myself and my children I became a ticket-porter, having
incurred great expense in taking up my freedom and all that. Well,
for this expense I enjoyed certain privileges, and enjoy them still
to some extent; but that’s only because I’m well known, and have had
great experience in porterage, and quickness, as it is as much art as
strength. But, supposing that railways have changed the whole business
of the times, are the privileges I have secured with my own money,
and under the sanction of all the old laws of the city, to be taken
from me? If the privileges, though they may not be many, of the rich
city companies are not to be touched, why are mine? Every day they
are infringed. A railway-waggon, for instance, carries a load of meat
to Newgate Market. Ticket-porters have the undoubted right to unload
the meat and carry it to its place of sale; but the railway servants
do that, though only freemen employ their own servants in porterage,
and that only with their own goods, or goods they are concerned in. I
fancy that railway companies are not freemen, and don’t carry their
own property to market for sale. If we complain to the authorities, we
are recommended to take the law of the offenders, and we can only take
it of the person committing the actual offence. And so we may sue a
beggar, whom his employers may send down their line an hour after to
Hull or Halifax, as the saying is. If we are of no further use, don’t
sacrifice, but compensate us, and let us make the best of it, though
we are none of us so young as we were; some are very old, and none are
under 40, because no new members have been made for some years. If a
man’s house be a hindrance to public business, he must be paid a proper
price for it before it can be removed, and so ought we. The Palace
Court people were compensated, and ought not we, who work hard for an
honest living, and have bought the right to work in our portering,
according to the laws of the city, that secure the goldsmiths in their
right of assaying, and all the rich companies in possession of their
lands and possessions? and so it ought to be with our labour.”
The porter-packers have been unknown in the business of the city
for some years; their avocation “in the packinge and shippinge of
strangers’ gooddes,” having barely survived the expiring of the East
India Company’s charter in 1834.
The street porters, or men who occupy, or rather did occupy (for they
are not now always to be found there,) the principal business parts of
the city, are of course ticket-porters, and by the law have exclusive
right of all porterage by hire from “aliens or foreigners” in the
streets, (a freeman may employ his own servant), even to the carrying
of a parcel of the burden of which any one may wish to relieve himself.
They usually, but not always, wear white aprons, and display their
tickets as badges. They do not confine themselves to the streets, but
resort to the wharfs in the fruit or any busy season, and to the meat
and fish-markets, whenever they think there is the chance of a job,
and the preference, as is not unfrequently the case, likely to fall
to them, for they are known to be trusty and experienced men. This
shifting of labour from one place to another renders it impossible to
give the number of ticket-porters working in any particular locality.
The fellowship-porters seem to have sprung into existence in
consequence of the misunderstandings of the tackle and ticket-porters,
and in this way, fellowships, or gangs of porters, were confined, or
confined themselves, to the porterage of coal, corn, malt and indeed,
all grain, salt, fruit, and wet fish (conceded to them after many
disputes by the ticket-porters of Billingsgate), and their privileges
are not infringed to any such extent as those of the ticket-porters.
The payments of ticket-porters were settled in 1799.
To or from any of the quays, wharfs, stairs, lanes, or alleys at the
waterside, between the Tower and London Bridge to any part of Lower
Thames-street, Beer-lane, Water-lane, Harp-lane, St. Dunstan’s-hill,
St. Mary-hill, Love-lane, Botolph-lane, Pudding-lane, and
Fish-street-hill: