startling. On October 24, 1886, a census was taken of church attendance.
The results were as follows: Over an area including 909,000 souls there
were 33,266 who attended the Church of England in the morning, and
37,410 who attended in the evening. This means 3.6 per cent. in the
morning and 4.1 per cent. in the evening, so that out of every 100
persons 96 stayed away from church. Taking the nonconformist chapels, it
was found that 3.7 per cent. attended some chapel, while 3.3 per cent.
attended the mission halls in the evening. These mission halls, with
their hearty services, the exhortations of the preacher, and the
enthusiasm of the singing, are crowded. So that, taking all together,
there were between seven and eight per cent. of the population who went
to some religious service in the evening. This leaves about ninety-two
per cent., men and women, boys and girls and infants, who did not attend
any kind of worship. This does not indicate the hatred of religion which
is found among Parisian workmen; it is simply indifference and not
hostility, except in special cases and among certain cranks. And
although he does not go to church the East Londoner is by no means loath
to avail himself of everything that can be got out of the church; he
will cheerfully attend at concerts and limelight shows; his wife will
cheerfully get what she can at a rummage sale; and they will cheerfully
send their children to as many picnics in the country, feasts, and
parties as may be provided for them by the clergy of the parish. But
they will not go to church. To this rule there are certain exceptions,
of which I shall perhaps speak in due time.
These few notes will not, I hope, be thought out of place in a volume
whose object it is to present the reader with some kind of portraiture
of the people of East London, the only study in that city which is
curious and interesting. I want, once more, these facts to be borne in
mind. It is a new city, consisting of many old hamlets whose fields and
gardens have been built upon chiefly during this century. It is a city
without a center, without a municipality, and without any civic or
collective or local pride, patriotism, or enthusiasm. It is a city
without art or literature, but filled with the appliances of science and
with working-men, some of whom have acquired a very high degree of
technical skill. It is a city where all alike, with no considerable
exceptions, live on the weekly wage; it is a city of whose people a
large percentage were born elsewhere; and it is a city which offers, I
suppose, a greater variety and a larger number of crafts and trades than
any other industrial center in the world—greater even than Paris, which
is the home of so many industries. And it is not a city of slums, but of
respectability. Slums there are; no one can deny them; there are also
slums in South London much worse in character, and slums in West London,
where the “Devil’s Acre” occupies a proud preëminence in iniquity; but
East London is emphatically not a city of slums.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
THE POOL AND THE RIVERSIDE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
THE POOL AND THE RIVERSIDE
EAST LONDON, then, is a collection of new towns crammed with people; it
is also a collection of industries; it is a hive of quiet, patient,
humble workers; all its people live by their own labor; moreover, it is
a busy port with a population of sailors, and those who belong to
sailors, and those who make their livelihood out of sailors, and such as
go down to the sea in ships. Its riverside is cut up with docks; in and
about among the houses and the streets around the docks rise forests of
masts; there is no seaport in the country, not even Portsmouth, which is
so charged and laden with the atmosphere of ocean and the suggestion of
things far off as this port of London and its riverside. The port and
the river were here long before East London was begun. The port,
however, was formerly higher up, below London Bridge. It was one of
London’s sturdy mayors who bluntly reminded a king, when he threatened
to take away the trade of London, that, at least, he would have to leave
them the river. For, you see, while the river runs below London Bridge,
it is not much harm that any king, even a mediæval monarch, can do to
London trade.
And now come with me; let us walk quietly about this strange city which
has so little to show except its people and their work.
We will begin with the riverside, the port and the Pool and the
“hamlets” which lie beside the river.
There is one place in London where, at any time of day and all the year
round, except in days of rain and snow, you may find a long line of
people, men and women, boys and girls—people well dressed and people in
rags, people who are halting here on their errands or their business,
and people who have no work to do. They stand here side by side, leaning
over the low wall, and they gaze earnestly and intently upon the river
below. They do not converse with each other; there is no exchange of
reflections; they stand in silence. The place is London Bridge; they
lean against the wall and they look down upon the Pool—that is to say,
upon the reach of the river that lies below London Bridge. I have never
crossed the bridge without finding that long line of interested
spectators. They are not in a hurry; they seem to have nothing to do but
to look on; they are not, apparently, country visitors; they have the
unmistakable stamp of London upon them, yet they never tire of the
prospect before them; they tear themselves away unwillingly; they move
on slowly; when one goes another takes his place. What are they thinking
about? Why are they all silent? Why do they gaze so intently? What is it
that attracts them? They do not look as if they were engaged in mentally
restoring the vanished past; I doubt whether they know anything of any
past. Perhaps their imagination is vaguely stimulated by the mere
prospect of the full flood of river and by the sight of the ships. As
they stand there in silence, their thoughts go forth; on wings invisible
they are wafted beyond the river, beyond the ocean, to far-off lands and
purple islands. At least I hope so; otherwise I do not understand why
they stand there so long, and are so deeply wrapped in thought.
[Illustration: The Water-Gate of London: Tower Bridge Looking Toward St.
Paul’s.]
To those who are ignorant of the fact that London is one of the great
ports of the world the sight of the Pool would not convey that
knowledge. What do we see? Just below us on the left is a long, covered
quay, with a crane upon it. Bales and casks are lying about. Two
steamers are moored beside the quay; above them are arranged barges,
three or four side by side and about a dozen in all; one is alongside
the farther steamer, receiving some of her cargo; on the opposite shore
there are other steamers, with a great many more barges, mostly empty;
two or three tugs fight their way up against the tide; heavily laden
barges with red sails, steered by long sweeps, drop down with the ebb;
fishing smacks lie close inshore, convenient for Billingsgate market;
there is a two-masted vessel, of the kind that used to be called a
ketch, lying moored in midstream—what is she doing there?
The steamers are not the great liners; they are much smaller craft. They
run between London and Hamburg, London and Antwerp, London and Dieppe.
The ships which bring the treasures of the world to London port are all
in the docks where they are out of sight; there is no evidence to this
group of spectators from the bridge of their presence at all, or of the
rich argosies they bear within them.
You should have seen this place a hundred years ago. Try to carry your
imagination so far back. Before you lie the vessels in long lines moored
side by side; they form regular streets, with broad waterways between;
as each ship comes up-stream it is assigned its place. There are no
docks; the ships receive or discharge their cargo by means of barges or
lighters, of which there are thousands on the river; there are certain
quays at which everything is landed, in the presence of custom-house
officers, landing surveyors, and landing masters. All day long and all
the year round, except on Sunday, the barges are going backward and
forward, lying alongside, loading and unloading; all day long you will
hear the never-ending shouting, ordering, quarreling, of the bargees and
the sailors; the Pool is as full of noise as it is full of movement.
Every trade and every country are represented in the Pool; the rig, the
lines, the masts of every ship proclaim her nationality and the nature
of her trade. There are the stately East and West Indiamen, the black
collier, the brig and the brigantine and the schooner, the Dutch
galliot, the three-masted Norwegian, the coaster, and the multitudinous
smaller craft—the sailing barge, the oyster boat, the smack, the
pinnace, the snow, the yacht, the lugger, the hog boat, the ketch, the
hoy, the lighter, and the wherries, and always ships dropping down the
river with the ebb, or making their slow way up the river with the flow.
Steam is a leveller by sea as well as on land; on the latter it has
destroyed the picturesque stage-coach and the post-chaise and the Berlin
and the family coach; by sea it banishes the old sailing craft of all
kinds; one after the other they disappear; how many landsmen are there
who at the present day know how to distinguish between brig and
brigantine, between ketch and snow?
I said that there is no history to speak of in East London. The Pool and
the port must be excepted; they are full of history, could we stop for
some of it—the history of shipbuilding, the expansion of trade, the
pirates of the German Ocean; when one begins to look back the things of
the past arise in the mind one after the other and are acted again
before one’s eyes. For instance, you have seen the Pool in 1800. Look
again in 1400. The Pool is again filled with ships, but they are of
strange build and mysterious rig; they are short and broad and solidly
built; they are not built for speed; they are high in the poop, low in
the waist, and broad in the bow; they roll before the wind, with their
single mast and single sail; they are coasters laden with provisions;
they are heavily built craft from Bordeaux, deep down in the water with
casks of wine; they are weather-beaten ships bringing turpentine,
tallow, firs, skins, from the Baltic. And see, even while we look, there
come sweeping up the river the long and stately Venetian galleys, rowed
by Turkish slaves, with gilded masts and painted bows. They come every
year—a whole fleet of them; they put in first at Southampton; they go on
to Antwerp; they cross the German Ocean again to London. Mark the pious
custom of the time. It is not only the Venetian custom, but that of
every country; when the ship has reached her moorings, when the anchor
is dropped and the galley swings into place, the whole ship’s company
gather together before the mainmast—slaves and all—and so, bareheaded,
sing the Kyrielle, the hymn of praise to the Virgin, who has brought
them safe to port.
Of history, indeed, there is no end. Below us is the custom house. It
has always stood near the same spot. We shall see Geoffrey Chaucer, if
we are lucky, walking about engaged in the duty of his office. And here
we may see, perhaps, Dick Whittington, the ’prentice lad newly arrived
from the country; he looks wistfully at the ships; they represent the
world that he must conquer—so much he understands already; they are to
become, somehow, his own ships; they are to bring home his
treasures—cloth of gold and of silver, velvet, silk, spices, perfumes,
choice weapons, fragrant woods; they are to make him the richest
merchant in all the City; they are to enable him to entertain in his own
house the King and the Queen, and to tear up the King’s bonds, amounting
to a princely fortune. You may see, two hundred years later on, one
Shakspere loitering about the quays; he is a young fellow, with a rustic
ruddiness of countenance, like David; he is quiet and walks about by
himself; he looks on and listens, but says nothing. He learns
everything, the talk of sailors, soldiers, working-men—all, and he
forgets nothing. Later on, again, you may see Daniel Defoe, notebook in
hand, questioning the sailors from every port, but especially from the
plantations of Virginia. He, too, observes everything, notes everything,
and reproduces everything. As to the Pool and the port and their history
one could go on forever. But the tale of London Town contains it all,
and that must be told in another place.
Come back to the Pool of the eighteenth century, because it is there
that we get the first glimpse of the people who lived by the shipping
and the port. They were, first, the sailors themselves; next, the
lightermen, stevedores, and porters; then the boat builders, barge
builders, rope-makers, block-makers, ships’ carpenters, mast- and
yard-makers, shipwrights, keepers of taverns and ale-houses, dealers in
ships’ stores, and many others. Now, in the eighteenth century, the
shipping of London port increased by leaps and bounds; in 1709 there
were only five hundred and sixty ships belonging to this port; in 1740
the number was multiplied by three; this number does not include those
ships which came from other British ports or from foreign ports. With
this increase there was, naturally, a corresponding increase of the
riverside population. Their homes were beyond and outside the
jurisdiction of the City; they outgrew the inefficient county machinery
for the enforcement of order and the prevention and punishment of crime.
As years went on the riverside became more densely populated, and the
people, left to themselves, grew year by year more lawless, more
ignorant, more drunken, more savage; there never was a time, there was
no other place, unless it might have been some short-lived pirate
settlement on a West Indian islet, where there was so much savagery as
on the riverside of London—those “hamlets” marked on my map—toward the
close of the eighteenth century. When one thinks of it, when one
realizes the real nature of the situation and its perils, one is amazed
that we got through without a rising and a massacre.
[Illustration: The Bank of “The Pool.” Looking Toward Tower Bridge.]
The whole of the riverside population, including not only the bargemen
and porters, but the people ashore, the dealers in drink, the
shopkeepers, the dealers in marine stores, were joined and banded
together in an organized system of plunder and robbery. They robbed the
ships of their cargoes as they unloaded them; they robbed them of their
cargoes as they brought them in the barge from the wharf to the ship.
They were all concerned in it—man, woman, and child; they all looked
upon the shipping as a legitimate object of plunder; there was no longer
any question of conscience; there was no conscience left at all; how
could there be any conscience where there was no education, no religion,
not even any superstition? Of course the greatest robbers were the
lightermen themselves; but the boys were sent out in light boats which
pulled under the stern of the vessels, out of sight, and received small
parcels of value tossed to them from the men in the ships. These men
wore leathern aprons which were contrived as water-tight bags, which
they could fill with rum or brandy, and they had huge pockets concealed
behind the aprons which they crammed with stuff. On shore every other
house was a drinking-shop and a “fence” or receiving-shop; the evenings
were spent in selling the day’s robberies and drinking the proceeds.
Silk, velvets, spices, rum, brandy, tobacco—everything that was brought
from over the sea became the spoil of this vermin. They divided the
work, they took different branches under different names, they shielded
each other; if the custom-house people or the wharfingers tried to
arrest one, he was protected by his companions. It was estimated in 1798
that goods to the value of £250,000 were stolen every year from the
ships in the Pool by the men who worked at discharging cargo. The people
grew no richer, because they sold their plunder for a song and drank up
the money every day. But they had, at least, as much as they could
drink.
Imagine, then, the consternation and disgust of this honest folk when
they found that the ships were in future going to receive cargo and to
discharge, not in the open river, but in dock, the new wet docks,
capable of receiving all; that the only entrance and exit for the
workmen was by a gate, at which stood half a dozen stalwart warders;
that the good old leathern apron was suspected and handled; that pockets
were also regarded with suspicion and were searched; and that dockers
who showed bulginess in any portion of their figures were ignominiously
set aside and strictly examined. No more confidence between man and man;
no more respect for the dignity of the working-man. The joy, the pride,
the prizes of the profession, all went out as if at one stroke. I am
sorry that we have no record of the popular feeling on the riverside
when it became at last understood that there was no longer any hope,
that honesty had actually become compulsory. What is the worth of virtue
if it is no longer voluntary? For the first time these poor injured
people felt the true curse of labor. Did they hold public meetings? Did
they demonstrate? Did they make processions with flags and drums? Did
they call upon their fellow-workmen to turn out in their millions and
protest against enforced honesty? If they did, we hear nothing of it.
The riverside was unfortunately considered at that time beneath the
notice of the press. After a few unfortunates had been taken at the dock
gates with their aprons full of rum up to the chin; after these captives
had been hauled before the magistrate, tried at the Old Bailey, without
the least sympathy for old established custom, and then imprisoned and
flogged with the utmost barbarity, I think that a general depression of
spirits, a hitherto unknown dejection, fell upon the quarter and
remained, a cloud that nothing could dispel; that the traders all became
bankrupt, and that the demand for drink went down until it really seemed
as if from Wapping to Blackwall the riverside was becoming sober.
Billingsgate, the great fish-market, is down below us, just beyond the
first wharves and the steamers. This is one of the old harbors of
London; it was formerly square in shape, an artificial port simply and
easily carved out of the Thames foreshore of mud and kept from falling
in by timber piles driven in on three sides. It was very easy to
construct such a port in this soft foreshore; there were two others very
much like this higher up the river. Of these one remains to this day, a
square harbor just as it was made fifteen hundred—or was it two
thousand?—years ago.
[Illustration: In the Docks.]
The first London Bridge, the Roman bridge built of wood, had its north
end close beside this port of Billingsgate. My own theory—I will not
stop to explain it, because you are not greatly interested, friendly
reader, in Roman London—is that the square harbor was constructed with
piles of timber on three sides and wooden quays on the piles, in order
to provide a new port for Roman London when those higher up the river
were rendered useless for sea-going craft by the building of the bridge.
If you agree to accept this theory without question and pending the time
when you may possibly take up the whole subject for yourself, you may
stand with me at the head of the present stairs and see for yourself
what it was like in Roman times, with half a dozen merchantmen lying
moored to the wooden quays; upon them bales of wool, bundles of skins,
bars of iron, waiting to be taken on board; rolls of cloth and of silk
imported, boxes containing weapons, casks of wine taken out of the ships
and waiting to be carried up into the citadel; in one corner, huddled
together, a little crowd of disconsolate women and children going off
into slavery somewhere—the Roman Empire was a big place; beside them the
men, their brothers and husbands, going off to show the Roman ladies the
meaning of a battle, and to kill each other, with all the grim
earnestness of reality, in a sham fight for the pleasure of these gentle
creatures. One does not pity gladiators; to die fighting was the
happiest lot; not one of them, I am sure, ever numbered his years and
lamented that he was deprived of fifty, sixty, seventy, years of life
and sunshine and feasting. Perhaps—in the other world, who knows?—in the
world where live the ghosts whose breath is felt at night, whose forms
are seen flitting about the woods, there might be—who knows?—more
battle, more feasting, more love-making.
They have now filled up most of the old port of Billingsgate, and made a
convenient quay in its place. They have also put up a new market in
place of the old sheds. With these improvements it is said to be now the
finest fish-market in the world. Without going round the whole world to
prove the superiority of Billingsgate, one would submit that it is
really a very fine market indeed. Formerly it was graced by the presence
of the fishwomen—those ladies celebrated in verse and in prose, who
contributed a new noun to the language. The word “Billingsgate” conveys
the impression of ready speech and mother-wit, speech and wit
unrestrained, of rolling torrent of invective, of a rare invention in
abuse, and a give-and-take of charge and repartee as quick and as
dexterous as the play of single stick between two masters of defense.
The fishwomen of the market enjoyed the reputation of being more skilled
in this language than any other class in London. The carmen, the
brewers’ draymen, the watermen, the fellowship porters were all skilled
practitioners,—in fact, they all practised daily,—but none, it was
acknowledged, in fullness and richness of detail, in decoration, in
invention, could rise to the heights reached by the fishwomen of the
market. They were as strong, also, physically, as men, even of their own
class; they could wrestle and throw most men; if a visitor offended one
of them she ducked him in the river; they all smoked pipes like men, and
they drank rum and beer like men; they were a picturesque part of the
market, presiding over their stalls. Alas! the market knows them no
more. The fish-woman has been banished from the place; she lingers still
in the dried-fish market opposite, but she is changed; she has lost her
old superiority of language; she no longer drinks or smokes or exchanges
repartee. She is sad and silent; we all have our little day; she has
enjoyed her’s, and it is all over and past.
If you would see the market at its best you must visit it at five in the
morning, when the day’s work begins—the place is then already crowded;
you will find bustle and noise enough over the sale of such an enormous
mass of fish as will help you to understand something of hungry London.
Hither come all the fishmongers to buy up their daily supplies. If you
try to connect this vast mass of fish with the mouths for which it is
destined you will feel the same kind of bewilderment that falls upon the
brain when it tries to realize the meaning of millions.
Next to Billingsgate stands the custom house, with its noble terrace
overlooking the river and its stately buildings. This is the fifth or
sixth custom house; the first of which we have any record, that in which
Chaucer was an officer, stood a little nearer the Tower. After keeping
the King’s accounts and receiving the King’s customs all day, it was
pleasant for him to sit in the chamber over the Gate of Ald, where he
lived, and to meditate his verses, looking down upon the crowds below.
Next to the custom house you see the Tower and Tower Hill. I once knew
an American who told me that he had been in London three years and had
never once gone to see even the outside of the Tower of London. There
are, you see, two varieties of man—perhaps they are the principal
divisions of the species. To the first belongs the man who understands
and realizes that he is actually and veritably compounded of all the
generations which have gone before. He is consciously the child of the
ages. In his frame and figure he feels himself the descendant of the
naked savage who killed his prey with a club torn from a tree; in his
manners, customs, laws, institutions, and religion, he enjoys,
consciously, the achievements of his ancestors; he never forgets the
past from which he has sprung; he never tires of tracing the gradual
changes which made the present possible; like the genealogist, he never
tires of establishing a connection. I am myself one of this school. I do
not know any of my ancestors by sight, nor do I know whether to look for
them among the knights or among the men at arms, but I know that they
were fighting at Agincourt and at Hastings, beside Henry and beside
Harold. If I consider the man of old, the average man, I look in the
glass. When I sit upon a jury I am reminded of that old form of trial in
which a prisoner’s neighbors became his compurgators and solemnly swore
that a man with such an excellent character could not possibly have done
such a thing. When I hear of a ward election I remember the Ward Mote of
my ancestors. I think that I belong more to the past than to the
present; I would not, if I could, escape from the past.
[Illustration: The Tower of London.]