People had to walk more in those days, as there was no riding to your
employment. I know the first employment I obtained was at the London
Docks as checker to the landing of goods, and I had to get there by eight
and leave at four. No time for meals, which I had to eat behind the desk
flap. I had to stand all day on a wheeled platform, with a desk in
front, that was moved along the quay wherever it was wanted. It used to
take one and a half hours to get there; it was a long drag, but as I got
twelve shillings per week I thought it an important post. I could
sometimes if the tide served, get a ride home by taking a scull and
dropping up with the tide; they were generally glad of a hand. I should
think the dock labourer was very much worse off in those days than at
present, as there appeared plenty of labourers, and they were only taken
on as wanted and discharged as soon as done with, many of the jobs
lasting only three hours, and the pay being fourpence per hour. They got
their shilling and were done with till they got the next job.
I recollect the way one tail brawny Scotchman, over six feet high, named
Macdonald, used to select his gangs; he would go to the dock gates where
the crowd was waiting, and not say a word but plunge in and take those he
wanted by the collar and swing them round behind him just like you would
select from a drove of ponies, and his attendant would give them a ticket
with a number on it. From thence the engaged commenced the walk from
Chelsea to the docks, through the College Walk, up Ebury Street, and
through Elliot's, the Stag Brewery, always having a look in at the
stables at several of the most beautiful black dray horses, splendidly
kept and as well cared for as in a nobleman's stables. Then up Castle
Lane to Palmer's Village, where I would meet a companion who was employed
in Thames Street, and then along York Street and Tuttle Street, next out
in the open space by Westminster Hospital, close to Palace Yard, up the
steps to the high pavement, and through a passage by a public house to
Westminster Bridge, through Pedler's acre, along Stangate and Bankside,
through the Brewery, and come over the new Bridge just opened, and out by
the water wheel, along Thames Street, over Tower Hill to the docks. I
got my appointment through the interest of an old Quaker gentleman who
lived at No. 5 Paradise Row, with his two sisters. I had to go of an
evening to get instructions in my duties, and he was very particular to
impress upon me that neatness was the most important point in
bookkeeping, and that the red ink lines in their proper place was the
beauty of a ledger, and never to erase a mistake, but draw the red lines
across it and enter the correction in red ink on the margin, which I hear
is still held good to the present day. I have often walked from Chelsea
to the Robin Hood at Kingston Bottom and back after I had done my day's
work, to do my courting and see the young lady, the daughter of the head
gardener at Park House, who lived at the lodge by the entrance gates. I
was not a recognized suitor, and had to do the courting under
difficulties; I would go along the road past the lawn and shrubbery to
where the peacock roosted in the big trees, and imitate its screech as a
signal that I was there, and then come along the road to where the fence
and the hedge met and squeeze through into the kitchen garden, and sit
down on the trunk of an old walnut tree and wait. It was here that most
of our courting was done.
This went on for some time, till the young lady was sent away as
companion to an old lady at Bath, but correspondence was both difficult
and expensive. As every letter cost eightpence for postage it was too
expensive to last long. I would sometime be able to get them franked,
which was a privilege allowed Members of Parliament and certain persons
in an official position to send them free of charge. I could generally
get a couple sent off in this way by meeting the manservant of an old
officer in the hospital, and treating him to a four of hot rum at the
Phoenix Tavern, in Smith Street.