I was always fairly successful in getting employment, as I was always
ready and willing to earn a few shillings, our circumstances being needy.
I recollect sitting at home one Saturday evening when a friend of
mother's came in who kept an old tavern at the bottom of Church Street,
and was in sad trouble. She had just been to Doctor Philpot at the
corner of the street for advice, and found out the doctor had been
attending her husband for what was then known as the "Blue Devils," after
a drinking bout. The potman who had attended to him had gone to take his
pension and had not come back, and could not be found anywhere, and the
patient was very restless, and there was no one in the house but her, the
servant, and a young girl who served in the bar. She was afraid to be
left, and I was asked if I would mind going home with her, and if she
could get no one else I was to stop there where the young people and I
knew each other well. I consented and started with her. By that time it
was nearly eleven o'clock, and we found the patient quiet, and had been
sleeping; and as soon as we could get the customers out, we closed the
house, and had a good supper. The servant had been sitting with him. It
was then past one o'clock when I went upstairs; it was a beautiful bright
moonlight night, with the moon shining in through the garret casements,
making it almost as light as day. There was very little furniture in the
room; an old three-legged round bedroom table and two or three rush
bottom chairs, a bedroom candlestick, and a tallow dip. I had brought
with me one of the sensational tales that I had been reading at home, and
sat quietly down to finish the tale. It must have been some hours, as it
was just getting daylight, and the patient had not appeared to have
moved, but lay on his back with his eyes wide open and shining like
stars, staring at the ceiling. All of a sudden he appeared to jump clean
on the top of me, and clutch me by the throat, upsetting the table and
candle, and we both fell on the top of it and crushed it like a match
box, and then the struggle commenced. We fought up and down, and in the
struggle I stripped every rag off him, and he appeared to be trying to
get me to the window to throw me out; and how our heels did rattle in
that midnight struggle on the old garret floor, as we danced round in the
shadow of the old Church on that Sunday morning.
He was a little man, and I began to get the better of him, and got him on
his back on the floor and held his arms down, when he made a plunge and
snapped at my nose with his teeth. He just grazed the skin, and looked
up and laughed. Of all the slippery things to handle, a naked man beats
everything. The noise we made brought his wife and the two women in, and
with their assistance we got him on to the bedstead, and with strips of
the sheet we tore up, we tied him down to the bedstead, and he appeared
to be pretty well done up. By that hour it was time to open, as there
were always early customers on a Sunday morning, as it was a noted house
for Dog's Nose and other early drinks at that time. It was then about
seven, and we saw old Kirk, the beadle, going past to dust and prepare
the Church, and as he was a friend we called him in for advice, and he
suggested a straight waistcoat. As he knew the master of the workhouse
in Arthur Street, he promised to go and borrow one, which he did, and
brought one of the old pauper nurses to show how to put it on. It was a
large shirt made of strong bed tick sewn up at the bottoms, with two
holes to put the legs through, and open behind, with strap and buckles
and sleeves a yard long, with large pieces of webbing sewn at the ends.
When we had got the patient comfortably settled, I had some breakfast and
went home with five shillings in my pocket, but I do not think I felt
like taking on another such job.
Funerals on the river in those days were a frequent occurence. I
recollect one in particular. A young man invalided home from the East
India Company Service in an advanced stage of consumption came to stay
with a sister at Chelsea. The husband worked at the malt house on the
river, and there the young man died. He was a native of Mortlake and
they took him there by the river in a boat to bury him. I recollect
their going by our garden, we boys standing with our caps off while the
procession passed. There was one boat rowed by a pair of sculls,
containing the coffin and the mother and sisters as chief mourners,
followed by three or four boats full of friends, most of the women in
white dresses, and the men with white scarves and bows, which was the
usual mourning for an unmarried person.