By the Rev. Harry Jones. Published by Smith, Elder & Co., 1875
I DIP my pen to write the first line of this book with
a consciousness that it must be rather egoistic if
written at all.
It is a rough impression of my own experience and
opinions; and, do what I will, I cannot help using a
large number of capital I's in its compilation. The
subject is one which ought especially to interest
Londoners; and as I have been repeatedly asked about it
by friends, I fancy that some others may care to read
what is at least an honest record of personal
observation.
Circumstances led me some two years ago to move from a
populous Western district of which I had long had charge
- that of St. Luke's, Berwick Street, in St. James's,
Westminster - to St. George's in the East, a large parish
lying a little beyond the Tower, and containing the
London Docks.
Thus I have the opportunity of bringing the experience
of many years in the West to the observation of the East.
The result hitherto has been the correction of much of
my own ignorance and the dissipation of some prejudice.
As soon as I came I began in an aimless sort of way,
sometimes even as I walked along the street, jotting down
impressions on scraps of paper, just as they occurred,
without any order or connection, and stuffing them into a
large envelope. This has now grown ready to burst, and
after emptying the heap of pencil notes upon my study
table I have tried to assimilate and reproduce them. I
cannot, however, transform this papery jumble into a
severely connected record. Thus, if any one cares to be
my reader, I must ask him to forgive me for the
discursive and colloquial shape of my attempt; for, after
all, I must offer the fruit of my observation much as it
was gathered.
My first impression was, perhaps, of the nearness of
the East of London to the West. The East is, to many who
dwell in the West, an unknown distant land. Anything
beyond the City is indefinitely remote. I lived close to
the Langham Hotel, and on the occasion of my first taking
Sunday duty at St. George's I hailed a crawling cab in
Portland Place and drove there. To my surprise it landed
me at the gate of my new church in twenty-eight minutes.
Of course, it being Sunday, the streets were clear, but I
had not urged the driver to any special speed. The next
week I got the jailor at the Marlborough Street
police-court to go over my course with the fatal wheel
which decides the disputes between cabmen and their
'fares.' The distance from the Oxford Street Circus to
the iron gate of the church at St. George's in the East
turned out to be something under four miles - a verdict
which several cabmen have since heard with much
professional affectation of scepticism; but on my
informing them of my authority they have shown by their
acquiescence that they had drawn upon their faith in the
vaguely exaggerated public conceptions of the remoteness
of the East in attempting to decline half-a-crown for the
journey.
It is not, however, the actual distance so much as the
throng in the City which divides the East of London from
the West.
By day Westminster and Whitechapel are, so to speak,
on the opposite sides of a thick wood; but at night, or
when the road is clear, they are easily joined by a
half-hour's drive. The railways, from whichever side they
approach it, as yet only empty themselves into the rim
round the centre of London; and thus they have hitherto
done little toward bringing the suburbs together.
Wherever you alight there is the same dense core to be
penetrated and passed through before an opposite terminus
can be reached. Presently, however, there will be one
connecting line between at least the East and West.
The East London Railway, which runs through the old
Thames Tunnel and is burrowing under the London Docks,
will, by striking into the Great Eastern Low Level, meet
the extension of the Metropolitan at Liverpool Street,
and thus provide a new way through part of the parishes
of Bethnal Green, Stepney, and St. George's in the East,
from Paddington to the Sydenham district, and so on to
Brighton. This will of course immensely benefit us
Easterners. Now we have no wholly unimpeded road westward
but the river. This in summer-time provides a cheap and
pleasant access to Westminster by the Greenwich boats
which call at various piers above the Tower.
After all, however, the East is very much farther from
the West than the West is from the East.
When I lived near the line of Regent Street, I
intended for years to make an expedition to the Ratcliff
Highway; but I was deterred, I imagine, chiefly by the
supposed length of the trip. Now that I live near the
Highway I find that I can get easily, by three or four
routes, to my old neighbourhood in from half an hour to
forty-five minutes.
The second general impression I received of the East
of London was in respect to its spaciousness. Anyone may
perceive this who penetrates and then traverses the City
from the West, and after passing the 'Butcher's Row' at
Aldgate enters on either of the broad thoroughfares,
traversed by trains, which are called the Commercial Road
or the Mile End Road. These, shortly after leaving the
City, become two of the widest streets in London, and the
pavement in the Mile End Road in particular is
proportionately as wide as the roadway.
They are characteristic of the East, and branching off
from them on either side may be seen long tributaries of
modest houses, many, I may say most of them, only two
stories high, in which rent is low and where the tenants
get plenty of elbow-room.
The Mile End Road dies out into the country - which,
by the way, involves Epping Forest - with a growing
fringe of villas; and the Commercial Road justifies its
name more and more as it goes on and reveals, by the
masts of the ships in the docks, its connection with the
maritime commerce of London.
To recur to that part of the East which is daily
before me, and which lies immediately on the right of the
Commercial Road after passing Whitechapel. It eminently
impresses me with the sense of spaciousness. In this my
present parish presents a remarkable contrast to the
district in which I had worked for some years. There my
church was jammed up so tightly in the centre of a crowd
of courts that a stranger walking down Berwick Street, at
the bottom of which it was placed, might traverse nearly
the whole street and come away without suspecting that it
contained a church at all.
Here the church dominates - in a material sense - the
whole parish, and has a disused church yard of some three
acres at its foot, or, rather, heel. There, at St.
Luke's, we had a densely crowded population. That of the
Berwick Street division of St. James's, Westminster, has
been stated in published statistics to be the most
crowded in the metropolis. My reader may believe me or
not, but I am speaking the truth when I tell him that we
had 10,000 people in 300 yards square. Here the streets
are wider, the houses are less closely packed together,
and poor people especially have more room. There, an
artisan in the receipt of good wages is frequently
obliged to content himself with one apartment, which
serves for all purposes, and for which he pays some five
or six shillings a-week. Here he can get a whole house of
four rooms, with a commodious yard at its back, for about
the same sum.
Many people entertain a vaguely erroneous idea of the
crowded 'slums' of the East. For the worst or most
frequent specimens of 'slums' they should go to some
parts of central London, or even some portions of St.
James's, Westminster, and its contiguous parishes. Of
course there are not a few vile corners and courts in the
East; but, on the whole, the working classes are much
better lodged here at St. George's than in those parts of
the West of which I know most. And our neighbouring
parishes of Stepney and Limehouse have fewer crowded
corners than we have. Then, too - I speak of the
districts which skirt the river - an enormous sense of
space is afforded by the docks. These give us, moreover,
something beyond a sense of space - a touch of
catholicity or cosmopolitanism which is hard to be
defined, though very real. It was a new sensation to me
when walking down a street to see its whole width
gradually filled up by, say, a full-rigged tea-ship from
China, which, after months of plunging in tropical seas,
was now creeping through the last few yards of its
progress to some calmest nook within the docks, and, like
a monster vessel in a play, crossed the stage silently
with even keel.
All sorts of ships thus traverse St. George's, and, as
may be supposed, contribute to the stream in its streets
as well as to the crowd in its waters. You hear many
languages on its pavements, and see men in all colours of
skin and dress. This passing contact and contrast of
races, this mixture of land and water, of homely trucks
and foreign traders, of horse-vans and steam-vessels; the
tier of huge ocean-going ships, brought so close to the
shore that can touch their long black sides you with your
stick or umbrella as you pace the edge of the docks,
produces that sentiment of proximity to the ends of the
world of which I have spoken, and which adds to the sense
of space that characterises this part of the East of
London. And I must remark, in passing, that this evidence
of relationship with other parts of the earth seems to me
to have its effect on the wits of the residents in St.
George's.
Education has been somewhat neglected here - more of
this presently - but the people are, it strikes me,
eminently shrewd and colloquially intelligent. Their
acquaintance with distant commerce must, I think, account
for a certain freedom from that local exclusiveness of
sentiment and information which characterises many dense
communities. Fresh points are given to the many-sided
sharpness of London life by familiarity with distant
interests.
Another phase of spaciousness appears in the interest
which many of the working classes here take in the
keeping of animals. I do not now refer to Mr. Jamrach,
whose beasts are my parishioners - though the fact of St.
George's being notoriously the central market of the
world for lions, bears, tigers, elephants, monkeys, and
parrots, must create a sentiment of cosmopolitanism among
those who can hear them howl and chatter - but to tamer
tastes, exhibited in the possession of pigeons, fowls,
and dogs. I appreciated the opportunities for this
myself, and, being fond of most live things, soon had a
company of cocks and hens, which resulted in abundance of
fresh eggs throughout the year...
There is a sentiment of elbow-room and manifold life
at St. George's which is felt and reflected by its
natives. Not that they do not work, and work hard. No one
can live in the East without perceiving this. Life has a
very severe and importunate side in these parts. The air
is heavily charged with the sentiment of toil, and there
is little to stir it. We seem not only to be always at
work, but we hardly ever have a glimpse of the unoccupied
side of London life. Every one appears either to have
something to do or to be seeking work. I except, of
course, the phase of relaxation, often grossly offensive,
exhibited by sailors ashore, who crowd as much coarse
indulgence as possible into the few hours at their
disposal. Otherwise, all are obviously about some
business. No one dreams of a carriage airing in this part
of the East. Here I have never seen a coachman in a wig,
or a footman in powder. I have never met a lady on
horseback, or a 'Victoria;' and, though we go much about
on foot, such a luxury as a crossing-sweeper is unknown.
I tax my memory but I do not recollect ever to have seen
a 'Punch' at St. George's. As I think about it I perceive
that here the strain of work and sentiment of toil is
continuous. It is unbroken by the exhibition of equipages
and pleasure seekers that marks the 'London Season.' Here
our only 'seasons' are summer and winter. We are hot or
cold, but we are always at work. September is marked by
no difference in the aspect of our streets. We have no
fixed busy time, for all times are the same. We do not
know when London is 'full' or 'empty,' When Parliament
meets or disperses. The only annual event which makes a
distinct impression on the neighbourhood is the Cambridge
and Oxford boat-race. Then the smallest little draper's
shop down the loneliest and dullest street breaks out in
blue ribands, and the van horses toiling up Old Gravel
Lane from the Docks wear their colour. The papers tell
those who please to read such information, of Gun Clubs,
Polo Clubs, Four-in Hand Gatherings, Lord's
Cricket-matches, Garden Parties, Annual Exhibitions, and
all the machinery of pleasure and play, whose wheels are
set going from Easter till August, but no echo of this
yearly stir reaches us here.
We live much from hand to mouth. Every farthing has to
be earned, and a sixpence is severely perceived to be
worth six pennies. True there is some pretext for
relaxation associated with Victoria Park and the Bethnal
Green Museum, but here we sorely want some mollifying
influence, some commentary of ornament. The strain of
toil is too importunate. An illustration of the general
acceptance of the prevailing necessity of work in these
parts appears in the use that is made of the big bell of
our church - a use of it which, I fancy, would not be
tolerated in the West of London.
The parish is proud of its peal of bells. There are
eight of them, and at a little distance, or on Sunday
before service, they sound well; though practices and
rehearsals fill every room, within the radius of some
hundred yards or so, with a tremendous din. We have, too,
a sonorous clock, which chimes the quarters and strikes
the hours with a will. Besides ordinary marking of time
by the clock, the curfew is regularly rung; and so is the
morning alarum.
St. George's is the only place I know of in which the
curfew fulfils some of its original purpose. Directly the
clock has done striking eight it tolls for a quarter of
an hour; and I am informed that it gives the signal for
the cessation of work and the turning-off of the gas in
divers workshops.
But the tolling of the day is preeminently in the
morning. Then the big bell is rung for fifteen minutes
before six, with irregular clang. Sometimes a few strokes
are less vigorous than others, but they are never
equidistant, and they are always strong. The purpose of
this peal or metal monologue is not so much to herald the
hour at which work should begin as to awaken the workers,
and as it has been so rung for years by the same man he
has become an expert in the business. The sleeping ear
might survive an even unvarying sound, such as the
striking of a clock, but it could hardly outsleep the
strain of our alarum.
Did Mr. Fleming, our awakener, toll the bell with the
same regularity and force as that which announces the
hour, I believe that many might sleep through the
summons, though he sounded it for a quarter of an hour.
It is remarkable how soon the ear learns to accommodate
itself to a recurrent sound, when it is simply and evenly
repeated. But Mr. Fleming knows better than merely to
reproduce his message. He never precisely repeats his
morning performance; sometimes he tolls rapidly and
loudly for a minute, then pausing for some fifty seconds,
he gives a couple of clangs which seem to discharge an
accumulated store of sound. Then, after another silence,
he lets off an other big bang; to wait again during a
parenthesis which is broken by a score of strokes, that
increase in loudness, and crowd so closely on each other,
that one wonders how he can get the heavy clapper to obey
his tugs with sufficient rapidity. But his great and
expiring effort arrives when the chimes begin to precede
the striking of six o'clock. Then, stimulated by the
additional perception that he can produce a
discord as well as a noise, he pulls with a will, and
produces a tocsin so complicated and vehement,
that if the sleeper has outslept even the summons of the
previous fifteen minutes, he must awake, at least if he
lives anywhere near the church. My house adjoins it. Its
tower is so close that I can hear the rattle of the rope
and the groan of the wheel before each metal 'boom.' And
when the last stroke of six has been struck in a storm of
accompanying clangour from the heavy alarum bell, the air
long remains filled with an angry hum, as if the emperor
of all the hornets was flying around the room.
And this is done summer and winter, wet and dry. No
wonder, if I have not finally contracted a habit of early
rising, that I frequently find myself in my study at six
o'clock.
Here, in this tocsin, this alarum, which is meant to
be intolerable, and so borne with, we have remarkable
witness to the general acceptance of the necessity of
work in these parts. A great feature of the business here
is cartage. The goods brought into dock from over the
seas are incessantly being dispersed by wheel and axle.
When the tocsin ceases you presently begin to hear a
dull, distant rumble of wheels as the vans start for
their day's work.
Barring the bells, however, which really represent
'noise' only to those who live close to them, this,
though a populous and busy part of London, is tolerably
quiet. The rectory, which stands a little off the street,
is remarkably free from the usual London noises. Though I
can discern the dull grind of wheels down Cannon Street
Road, most of our vehicles move slowly. They are heavily
laden. There is hardly any of the sharp penetrating
rattle which is made by swift carriages and cabs; and the
disturbance, lasting into the small hours of the morning,
created by a contiguous late 'party' in the season is, of
course, unknown.
The route of the Blackwall Railway, which traverses
the parish, is distantly indicated by its whistles, but I
hear little of the trains. Late at night, when the
public-houses are emptied, there is an accession of
shouts and singing, mostly from sailors abusing their
liberty ashore by getting more or less drunk. But,
curiously enough, to us this clamour seems to come from
the church, which ' corners' on the rectory. The west
front of its tower catches and reflects the noises that
arise from the street. When I first heard these I fancied
that some riotous party had made its way into the
churchyard, but I soon found that they were strictly the
echoes of that nocturnal dissipation \vhich may be heard
everywhere in the neighbourhood of publicans, especially
when they turn their customers out of doors. There is
another sound, too, which is more constant in the
evenings, and which for a long time I could not make out.
I thought several times that somebody had upset a chair
or table in the next room but one. It was as if a visitor
was announcing his call by kicking intermittently at the
outer gate with his shoes off. At last I found that these
dull thuds came from a covered skittle-alley some fifty
yards off. What I heard was that from the successful
shots of the players. The sounds we hear are, however,
altogether less than what one might expect from Ratcliff
Highway. Most of the other streets are usually quiet
enough, the liquor houses being chiefly congregated in
our main thoroughfares.
As to the street organs and bands which plague the
West End, I cannot say that I have heard one while
sitting indoors at St. George's. There are a few to be
met with sometimes, but very few. I seem never to hear
them. Nor is there anything like the commercial row which
costermongers used to make under my windows a few yards
from Portland Place. There they incessantly proceeded,
two to a barrow, day after day, offering onions, rhubarb,
what not, in a yell, hour after hour, without ever, as
far as I could perceive, meeting with any response to
their tremendous proposals. Here, too, we have no roaring
liars or frozen-out gardeners.
Indeed, barring the bells, our chief household noises
arise from our own cocks and hens, which - record their
domestic events with more cackling than I ever heard in
connection with them. The vividness with which these are
heard says much for the general quiet of our
surroundings. When I am saying the daily morning service
in the church hard by, I can distinctly note the
advertisement of another egg...
TRADES
AND INDUSTRIES
I SUPPOSE there is no part of London without its
special trade or manufacture. Some callings, associated
with constant immediate and universal demand - such as
those of the baker, butcher, and publican - are, of
course, spread evenly over the whole of the metropolis.
Daily bread, meat and drink, must be easily accessible.
But with the exception of bread, I am (for the moment) at
a loss to think of anything in large and constant use
which is not produced at special centres of industry, and
then widely dispersed. This dispersal from the centres is
continuous and conspicuous. But your baker is generally
local, he goes mostly on foot; or if he has two wheels,
drags his own load, and produces behind his shop the
commodity which he sells. Meanwhile his neighbours - the
butchers, grocers, linendrapers and publicans of his
district - bring their goods from a distance. With some
partial exceptions the articles in commonest demand are
manufactured wholesale, and then distributed to be
retailed.
It would, however, be difficult to determine the
causes of the selection of various parts of London for
the production or storage of some articles of commerce.
There is historical cause for the presence of
silk-weavers in Bethnal Green and Spitalfields. Possibly
there may be some equally good reason for the prevalence
of watchmakers in Clerkenwell. The chemical manufactories
at Bow were placed there I suppose, originally, to be
beyond the range of the metropolitan nose. The crowd of
minutely precise trades, such as those of dressing-case
makers, hand bookbinders, engravers, &c. &c.,
located in Soho, are probably drawn there by the high
pressure of the demand for the immediate supply of
artificial wants which characterises the region of shops
that minister to condensed and luxurious civilisation.
Soho exhibits the fringe of skilled high class manual
workers which has floated up from the centre and East of
London towards the long-pursed territory of the West. The
neighbourhood of the River and the Docks displays the
paraphernalia of the sea and shore. Slops and sextants,
deck-boots and telescopes, are offered in what, to an
outsider, appears a superfluous abundance along the bank
of the Thames east of the Tower. There, too, may be found
rope-walks and sail-lofts. Many of the manufactures and
trades associated with seafaring life are carried on in
our part of the city. They are indeed common to all
seaports; but of these London is the largest, and thus
they abound among us.
Sugar bakeries
In or near to St. George's, however, we provide things
for which there is the widest and narrowest market. If
anyone were to ask me what were the two articles most
characteristic of the commerce of this neighbourhood, I
should say sugar and wild beasts. We are, or rather were,
conspicuous for our bakeries of sugar; and we hope we
shall be again. Out of some five-and-twenty in the whole
of London and its suburbs, you might count the chimneys
of more than two-thirds from the tower of our church; and
the factory which produces the best English loaf sugar
stands within a few hundred yards of the church gate. The
raw material is landed hard by, in a shape unattractive
to any but flies and greedy little boys, who cannot keep
their hands from picking at anything sweet however
coarse, and, especially after school hours, buzz round
any sugary waggon in which there is a leaky parcel.
Hereabouts we have transformed the coarsest brown
stuff into loaf sugar. But this trade is now very much
depressed. Indeed, there are some who think it wellnigh
destroyed. I am informed that in 1864 there were
twenty-three producers of loaf sugar in London. Since
then their trade has shrunk very seriously. A short time
ago I believe only three survived, and the chief of them,
in St. George's in the East, has ceased operations in the
course of this year. The action of the French Government
in encouraging, chiefly by a bonus, the exportation of
home made sugar, has, at present, made it impossible for
the British manufacturers to compete with the French. But
as this advantage is given to a special branch of
industry in France by the taxing of its whole nation, it
is to be hoped that French eyes will be opened to the
matter, and that the cloud will pass away from the
British trade. Especially is this desired at St. George's
in the East, for, as I have said, sugar refining is,
perhaps, the most 'conspicuous' trade of these parts. I
have thus let my reference to it stand uncorrected,
though at present our furnaces are cold.
Jamrach's
In respect to the other article to which I have
referred as characteristic of the trade of St. George's,
and which may be considered peculiar to it, I suppose
that there is no other place in the world where a
domesticated parson could ring his bell and send his
servant round the corner to buy a lion. Had I a domestic
capable of discharging such an errand, and a proper
receptacle in which to put the article when brought home,
I could indulge the whim for a lion at five minutes'
notice. My near neighbour, Mr. Jamrach, always keeps a
stock of wild beasts on hand. Anyhow, if he happened to
be out of lions, I should be sure of getting a wild beast
of some sort at his store. A little time ago one of our
clergy, who knows of almost everything going on in the
parish, happened to remark to me that Mr. Jamrach's stock
was low. He had just looked in, and the proprietor said
he had nothing particularly fresh then, only four young
elephants and a camelopard, beside the usual supply of
mon keys, parrots, and such small deer.
The wild beasts are kept in Betts Street, within a bow
shot of my door, but the shop in Ratcliff Highway is
always full of parrots and other birds. The attitudes and
gestures of those exposed for sale are always curious and
sometimes comical. I was much struck the other day with
the pose and expression of a posse of owls on view. They
sat side by side full of thoughtful silent wisdom, with
just a twinkle of possible humour in their eyes, like
judges in banco; while in an oblong recess within
the shop beyond them there were twenty-four large and
perfectly white cockatoos standing in two precise rows,
shoulder to shoulder, and giving out their best notes,
exactly like a surpliced choir. In another room were two
thousand parroquets flying loosely about, or clustering
like flies upon the window frames in ineffectual attempts
to get out. The incessant flutter of this multitude of
captives filled the air of the apartment so thickly with
tiny floating feathers that they settled on our coats
like flakes of snow. We came out powdered. The twitter in
the room was, of course, incessant and importunate. There
is a great demand for talking parrots. Mr. Jamrach always
has orders in his books for more than he can supply. The
parrots kept in stock are all young and unlearned. They
look like the rest, but education marks the difference in
the world of birds as in that of men. The selling value
of wild beasts varies very much. You must pay about £200
for a royal tiger, and £300 for an elephant, while I am
informed you may possibly buy a lion for £70, and a
lioness for less. But a first-rate lion sometimes runs to
a high figure, say even £300. Ourang-outangs come to
£20 each, but Barbary apes range from £3 to £4 apiece.
Mr. Jamrach, however, keeps no priced catalogue of
animals, but will supply a written list of their cost if
needed. He does not, moreover, 'advertise,' so much as
royally 'announce' his arrivals. Certain papers in
London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, occasionally contain a
bare statement that such and such beasts and birds are at
'Jamrach's,' no address being given. He has customers in
all the Zoological Museums in Europe, and the Sultan has
been one of the largest buyers of his tigers and parrots.
Once, some long time ago, a disastrous and distressing
accident happened in connection with this store of wild
beasts. One of the tigers in transit escaped from his
cage in the neighbourhood of the Commercial Road. Finding
himself free, he picked up a little boy and walked off
with him, intending probably, when he found a convenient
retreat, to eat him. Of course, the spectacle of a tiger
walking quietly along with a little boy in his mouth (he
had him only by the collar) attracted the notice of
residents and wayfarers. Presently the bravest spectator,
armed with a crowbar, approached the tiger, and striking
vehemently and blindly at him, missed the beast and
killed the boy. The tiger was then secured.
Mr. Jamrach has great and, I suppose one might say,
mystic power with beasts. His business, though, is not
confined to the animals of the earth and the air. You may
find curious products of the water in Mr. Jamrach's
back-room. I especially recollect a vessel of telescope
fish from Shanghai, queer little creatures with eyes
starting out of their heads like the horns of a snail.
These were on their way to the Brighton Aquarium.
Besides the store of birds, beasts, and fishes, there
is a collection of all sorts of heterogeneous things from
all parts of the world -armour, china, inlaid furniture,
shells, idols, implements of savage warfare, and what
not. Mr. Jamrach not only collects in comparative detail,
but does not overlook the promising purchase of a whole
museum. Some time ago he brought one in the lump from
Paris. No wonder that the Ratcliff Highway is visited by
many with money in their pockets for the purchase of
antiquities and curiosities. From. what I have seen I
fancy that sometimes a good judge of these things can
pick up a bargain here.
Beside that of Mr. Jamrach's, we have divers shops for
the sale of birds, especially parrots, and I imagine that
many a sailor turns his collection of foreign curiosities
into money within the limits of St. George's.
London and St.
Katharine's Docks
Of course, one main feature of the catholicity which I
have noticed as characterising the trade of these parts
is exhibited in the London and St. Katharine's Docks,
which are situated mainly in the parish of St. George's.
People must be impressed with a sense of things being
done on a large scale, when we have in one cellar six
acres, of port, sherry, and madeira, and under one roof
6o,ooo large casks of brandy, worth on an average, say,
some £70 apiece. Besides the cellar just mentioned,
there are eight others, not so large, but immense. I
believe that almost all the wine that enters the port of
London pauses here, and most of the brandy. The greater
portion of the rum is received in the West India Docks.
Of course, with such alcoholic temptations and
opportunities, the greatest care is exercised to employ
none but trustworthy men. Sometimes, however, appetite
gets the better of conscience in the dock attendants. On
one occasion this appetite was terribly avenged in the
case of a greedy subordinate, who thrusting his head into
a newly opened vessel of spirits with the intention of a
drunken gulp, was thus choked and killed. The most
strenuous pains are taken to prevent official
intemperance. Indeed, I am informed that to be drunk on
duty involves an ipso facto excommunication of any
servant, however long he may have served, or however good
his previous character. The question does not arise
whether he shall be discharged; if he transgresses he
discharges himself.
The vaults or cellars in which the wine is stored are
accounted one of the sights of London. They are, however,
no more to be appreciated by a visit than London itself,
inasmuch as the whole of a cellar cannot possibly be seen
at once. You are provided with a round squat lamp at the
end of a short flat stick, like a spoonful of fire, and
are tramped, if you please, through miles of under ground
streets, on either sides of which are piles of casks. In
the largest vault - which, like others, has its countless
alleys laid with iron rails on which the casks are rolled
- I am informed that they altogether reach the incredible
distance of twenty-one miles. The alleys are, however,
narrow. While in the midst of them you see only a little
at a time. All along the route the ceiling is black with
fungus, like that which is supposed to distinguish and
commend a bottle of old port. Here wine is racked and
blended. Great funnels like jellybags are filled with,
say, port, which trickles brightly down from the tips of
the bags, leaving the lees behind it. And very nasty they
look.
Talking of unpleasant looking material in connection
with eating and drinking, I may remark that the sugar,
molasses, and treacle stores in the Docks are anything
but appetising. One day I was walking through the huge
sheds on the ground floor where all this sweetstuff is
lodged, and saw a parcel of men scraping the floor with
hoes, much in the same way as the scavengers do the
streets. And the mud they scraped up was very black. On
my asking what they did with it, one of the
superintendents told me it was going to be made into
lollipops. Looking further, one could see many casks
filled with this uninviting substance. However, whether
it passes through the processes of the sugar refinery or
not, the saccharine matter in the mess is made up into
shapes nice-looking enough to children. Nothing is wasted
from which sweets can be made. There is, though, one form
of waste here which seems to me needless. One day I was
standing on the church steps, and became conscious of
what seemed to be an unusual descent of huge smuts. The
air was full of them. They spotted the church path and
the street. It was a fall of black snow. I never saw such
a murky downpour. We asked one another whence these dark
flakes came. No chimney in the neighbourhood seemed to be
smoking enough to account for them, and indeed they were
unlike the usual London smuts. Presently, I found that
they came from the Queen's Pipe, as it is called - a
fierce furnace in which contraband tobacco is destroyed,
and which just then was engaged in the destruction of
some condemned tea. The atmosphere was still, and the
result of this incremation powdered the neighbourhood.
One of the Queen's Pipes - for there are two or three -
is in the middle of St. George's, and such of my readers
as are smokers can understand the pathetic air with which
the man who tends it once told me he had consumed in a
single smoking bout some five or six thousand pounds of
shag tobacco. 'And ever so many cigarettes and cigars,'
he added.
I asked him, in reference to the black storm I have
mentioned, how he ever came to burn so much tea, and why
it made such smuts? ' Tea, Sir,' he said, 'is a
numb-burning thing; one can't get the fire into it.' That
which is destroyed is such as has been mildewed, or is so
bad that it is not worth having the duty paid on it.
This, I am told, goes into the Queen's Pipe; but we use
our own pipe seldom now.
The Docks abound with rats, and an army of about three
hundred cats is employed to keep them down. Besides these
you find dogs. Some little time ago I came on a famous
one with her litter of puppies, close by the 'bowl' of
our Queen's Pipe. Her owner volunteered a record of some
of her performances in the rat-killing way, and fondly
enumerated the number she had slain. But, like a true
Englishman, he had his grievance. I learned that the
Company does not pay for or provide the keep of the dogs,
while it seems to be at the expense of extensive orders
for cat's meat. I should have thought dogs would have
needed food, while cats could have kept themselves. Some
of these dogs are very sharp. I was one day walking
through the Docks with my big black retriever, 'Jem,'
when he was furiously attacked by a cur just outside the
Brandy Delivery Office. Poor Jem is always unlucky in
these encounters, since he is never prepared for an
assault, and indeed is hopelessly penetrated with the
belief that his size, weight, and general respectability
of appearance ought to protect him. On this occasion he
had been much exercised by the investigation of a
quantity of treacle which had escaped on the quay from
some burst cask, and which he was quite unable to analyse
or account for. He had obviously met with nothing really
resembling it before. It looked like some of the results
obtained in connection with the killing of a pig, and as
such he thought it well worth pausing to examine, but it
made his nose and paws sticky. Thus he could not bring
his mind to realise the charge of a dog much smaller than
himself and expressed his concern at the sudden change of
the subject by tumbling over on his back and howling
shame fully.
Beside the dogs and cats, there are men who get their
living by clearing freshly unladen ships of rats. I
believe that the charge for ratting a ship is £1. The
rats are taken alive, and then sold for 2d. apiece
to such as find amusement in killing them with dogs. As a
couple of hundred rats are sometimes caught in one ship,
the contracting catcher occasionally makes a good thing
out of it.
Besides wine and brandy we land huge stores of ivory.
In the early part of this year the result of discoveries
of old accumulations of tusks by Livingstone made its
appearance in a display of them, which at one sale
realised, it is said, some £70,000. Divers of them were
pronounced to be hundreds of years old. They covered a
huge floor, and buyers came from all parts to secure
them.
The wind is watched with much concern here by the
dock-labourers, since upon it depends the due arrival of
the ships, by the unlading of which they live. After a
spell of east wind, which detains vessels in the Channel,
the Docks are remarkably bare, while on its shifting,
especially into the west, our waters are crowded as if by
magic. And then the work presses. All sorts of cargoes,
special and general, need to be bundled out as soon as
the big ocean-going ships have crept slowly to their
places alongside the quays. From my study-window I can
see them, or at least their masts, towering above the
roofs of some of the houses in the Ratcliff Highway, and
moving towards their final berths, one after another,
with a motion which from a little distance is hardly
perceptible. What a change from some portions of their
course! Talking of the arrival of ships and the
diversities of sentiment in their voyage, I happened to
be in the Docks when the 'Jefferson Borden' came in, on
board of which a famous or infamous mutiny occurred on
the high seas in April last. She was an American
three-masted fore and aft schooner, deep in the water,
being heavily laden with oilcake, which seemed to have
saturated her deck. Indeed it was so greasy that I
noticed several persons who traversed it carelessly slip
down and have severe falls, which called forth an
unsympathising laugh from the fringe of rough spectators
who were not allowed to tread her planks. When she came
alongside the quay I stepped on board. There, in the
deck-house, lay the mutineers, wounded and ironed, with
the marks around them of the bullets from the revolver
with which the captain had protected his wife and
himself. He was a quiet, slim, gentle spoken man, with a
brown beard, and I had some conversation with him. The
ship seemed certainly to have been undermanned, since
there were only four men who, properly speaking,
constituted the crew. Besides them were two mates, one
the brother and the other the cousin of the captain; and
a steward, cook, and boy. One night three of the crew,
after having gagged the boy, fell upon the two mates,
killed and threw them overboard. Then one, a Finn, tried
to entice the captain out of his cabin but the captain
missing his mates, and seeing that the man had something
in his hand behind him - really the cruel iron bar with
which the captain's. brother had just been murdered -
declined to come out till he had provided himself with a
revolver. Then came the terrible time in which the
captain, first with pistol-shots, which had plainly
pitted the outside of the deck-house, drove the men
within its shelter, and on their refusing to surrender,
eventually fired into it upon them till they submitted to
thrust their hands out of a little window in its. side
and be ironed. As I stood there the Thames Police swarmed
in, and with stretchers and stern tenderness carried them
off to the London Hospital. At that moment another ship
came in, with a crew of negroes, and made fast alongside
the American. They soon crowded the rigging, or peered
over the bulwarks, to see the wounded mutineers borne
off, thus witnessing one phase of a Nemesis which I could
not help thinking, probably with injustice, set a grim
lesson to as unpleasant countenanced a set of companions
as any skipper ever found himself at sea with. But I dare
say they were docile enough.
I was, indeed, struck with the example presented in
the landing of these mutineers, of the severity in
judgment which sometimes pursues failure, or accompanies
a sordid appearance. 'Did you ever see three such
rascally fellows?' said a spectator to me, as the wounded
murderers were being carried ashore. They were
ill-looking, sure enough; but if you were to take the
three Graces and dress them in tarpaulins, and shut them
up in a pigsty, and shoot their legs full of bullets, and
tie their hands together, and lay them uncombed and
unwashed on their backs for ten days, they would look, to
say the least of it, ugly when drawn out into the
sunshine. Pain and fear chiefly marked these poor
fellows, though they were grievous malefactors. One of
them cried out piteously as he was handed up the dock
side. Their landing was a sad item of experience in that
chance walk of mine along the quays.
The Docks are, however, an endless source of
entertainment and instruction to anyone gifted with the
least share of curiosity or observatiion, and I must have
a little more chat about them before I pass on to some
other prominent features in the trade of these parts. It
is difficult to realise the amount of labour and wealth
represented by the square plantations of bare masts upon
which we can look down from the summit of our church
tower. They show like woods or copses in the map of the
estate of London. In a much fuller and more accurate
sense than that in which the phrase is generally used,
the Docks are a world in themselves, since they represent
every corner of the earth into which British enterprise
has thrust itself. Those dull piles of white brick
warehouses, which discard every sentiment of decoration,
and fearlessly exhibit the ugly side of usefulness, are,
within, full of tropical products and appliances and
means of the most luxurious beauty and sumptuous fare.
Here are stores of ivory and ebony. Here are the choicest
cigars, the richest drugs, the brightest dyes, the
sweetest perfumes, and the finest wines. Here are landed
and hence are dispersed the accompaniments of perhaps the
costliest, most curious and exacting civilisation, and
the busiest commerce to be found on the face of the
globe. Here are pines from the West Indies, oranges from
Seville, teas from China, masses of ice from Norway, and
of marbles from. Carrara, along with spices from Ceylon
and ivory from Africa. Here, on these wharves, are heaped
together for the day the most unlike though equally
precious products of the earth, and yet many a man in
walking through them would probably carry away a very
slight impression of the business being carried on around
him. Take our comparatively small docks, such as the
London and St. Katharine's. I say comparatively small, as
there are besides them the West India, Miliwall, Surrey,
&c. You perceive no bustle or prominent strain of
labour within their limits, and would hardly believe that
five or six thousand men are not unfrequently paid their
wages at the close of the day. Their employment is,
however, necessarily uncertain. The great bulk of them do
not live here. Many of them - almost shiftless, without a
trade, reminding one of Falstaff's recruits - come from
all parts of London for the chance of a job; and if the
weather has been against the progress of ships in the
Channel, you may see hundreds of these would-be labourers
standing all the day idle about the various entrances of
the Docks. Then a shift of wind brings in a number of
ships, and the whole machinery of the place is suddenly
in full operation. But it works smoothly, and it is only
after repeated visits that the magnitude and complexity
of the business transacted can be apprehended. I am told
that nothing strikes foreigners more than the quiet
methodical way in which everything moves on here. There
is no shouting, scolding, uproar, or excitement of any
kind, as the riches of the world are unfolded or poured
out. But go round the perfect little dock of St.
Katharine, with its hedge of hydraulic lifts steadily
disembowelling the vessels, which lie so close to the
shore that you might toss a halfpenny into their holds
when you look out of the top storey of the warehouse
which is absorbing the cargo. Go round this little dock.
Mount tier after tier of floors; see even a single
shipload of coffee, consisting of about
10,000 bags or sacks, being repacked and
distributed; or picture, if you can, the presence of,
say, £750,000 worth of indigo - which was the value of
the amount being prepared for show in a single department
when I went over it one day - and you will begin to
perceive the largeness of the work in these parts, and
admire the quietness with which it is carried on.
It must be remembered, however, that the surroundings
of this dock represent but a small proportion of the
storageroom used for merchandise in St. George's alone.
After writing these lines I happened, on my way down to
the Raines Schools on pastoral business, to fall in with
our dock superintendent who remarked that on one side of
the Old Gravel Lane down which I was walking there were
deposited I am afraid to say how many thousand tons of
sugar, and 6o,ooo bags of coffee on the other. It is
difficult to realise these quantities, much less what
they represent; for this bulk of coffee, enough one would
think to keep London awake for a month, is only a passing
deposit under one of divers roofs...
Wapping
My readers will be pleased to know that in connection
with the Docks, at least with the London and St.
Katharine's, there are compulsory night schools for the
boys, and that well-attended readings and entertainments
are given in the winter to the servants of the company.
Moreover, a gradually ascending scale of salary makes the
position of a well-conducted official a comfortable and
encouraging one. Commodious residences are provided for
many of them, and anyone who, not knowing it, fancies
that Wapping is a scene of coarse toil and rude
debauchery, would be surprised to see the quiet pleasant
river-side square which characterises the place. This
square is well planted with trees, and skirted on two
sides by handsome edifices which look on the Thames.
These are mostly occupied by dock officers. In respect to
other residents whose presence might be objectionable,
pains are taken by the vestry of Wapping to discover and
suppress any disorderly house within their jurisdiction.
Beside these official residences there is excellent
accommodation for artisans and others, erected by the
company over which Sir Sydney Waterlow presides, and
there has lately been built a small Board school for
their children. Altogether, Wapping is one of the most
respectable and well-conducted parishes in London.
Curiously enough, the Orton family never lived there.
Their house, which was pulled down this summer, was
situated in St. George's, which extends nearly to the
riverside. It latterly seems to have been used as an
eating-shop, so that, as a man standing by it one day
said to me, quite seriously, visitors might be able to
say that they had dined in the room where 'Sir Roger' was
born - a queer mixture of confused associations. This
house stood near the Wapping entrance of the London
Docks, and adjoined that in which it is said Lord Nelson
got his outfit when he first went to sea. Both are now
demolished to make way for warehouses, which promise to
displace most of the old residences by the river-side in
these parts. Indeed, the High Street of Wapping is
gradually being skirted by enormous piles of these
buildings, and before long few beyond the model
lodging-houses of Sir Sydney Waterlow and the residences
of the dock officers I have alluded to, will be left for
domestic use. Hitherto this neighbourhood, though its
Stairs are celebrated in song, has been supposed to be
very little visited or traversed by the rest of the
London world, especially the Western. Passengers by the
Scotch steamboats have, however, always sailed from
Wapping. And presently many residents in the West of
London, especially those who live in the neighbourhood of
the stations on the Metropolitan Railway, will be
familiar with the railroad now rapidly approaching
completion, which, running under the London Docks and
cutting through St. George's and Wapping, will take them
(possibly without change of carriage) to the Sydenham
district and Brighton. This East London Railway will
provide a very important outlet for the West as soon as
the long-delayed work of boring under the Docks has been
finished. The old Thames Tunnel already supplies a way
for trains under the river, and gives access to
Rotherhithe, which looks at us from the opposite bank. It
is proposed also to provide a steam-ferry between the
shores of the Thames at this spot. This, if provided,
will be able to carry the loaded waggons which are now
obliged to go round by London Bridge, some mile and a
half off.. As it is, I generally like to cross by a
wherry, which provides a pleasant change from the usual
modes of locomotion in London and in this case, when the
place to be reached is Rotherhithe, affords the quickest,
most obvious, though sometimes the least conventional
means of access. The first time I went to dine with my
old acquaintance, the rector of that parish - who is
indeed, a near neighbour, though the Thames lies between
us - I landed on the beach, not far from his house, among
a parcel of naked natives, like Captain Cook. It was high
summer and low tide, and half the boys of Rotherhithe
were bathing there...
Emigrants at
Blackwall Pier
The Blackwall Pier is, I think, the best from which
the Londoner may see the traffic of the Thames. It is
certainly reached by a railway which has some of the
dirtiest and shabbiest stations and carriages to be found
anywhere, and thus the contrast presented when the door
of the Blackwall Terminus has been passed is the more
striking. You exchange in a moment its dingy interior for
the view of a grand bend in the river, alive with a crowd
of red-sailed barges and other craft, through which a few
big ships proceed slowly, like oxen among sheep. To the
right the masts of the vessels in the West India and
Miliwall Docks show like a larch plantation in the winter
time. Both ways there is a long view down the Thames.
This spot was once chosen as a likely site for a
temple of whitebait, but the hotel is now converted into
an Emigrant Depot. With its bow-windows commanding a
finer prospect than 'The Ship' at Greenwich, it is now a
hive of swarming emigrants, at least just before each
shipload of them is despatched. The large balconied
dining-room has exchanged the 'purple and fine linen' of
its white cloths and coloured wineglasses for a number of
plain bare deal tables.
I must say a word about this, as it is indeed in some
measure characteristic of the business that goes on at
this end of London. Not only are we in contact with the
uttermost parts of the earth by means of the merchandise
which we receive from thence, but this depot is our door
of departure for New Zealand. I have frequently to sign
the papers of those who sail hence. The first day I
visited it the dining-room was filled with a crowd of
hungry emigrants waiting for dinner, and the air with the
odour of its advent. They sat in messes of eight or ten,
to each of which was a captain, who kept his nose
steadily pointed towards the door through which the smell
came.
Presently a signal was given, and each disappeared,
receiving a ticket as he passed out. With this he
descended to the kitchen, returning in a minute or two,
mostly grinning, and bearing a large brown oval dish,
divided in the middle. One half was filled with
roast-beef and the other with potatoes. There was enough
and to spare for all. 'They waste a lot,' said one of the
officials. But I don't know; it seemed to be appreciated.
'Ah,' remarked a country-looking fellow to me, with his
cheek bulged with a huge bite, and a twinkle in his eye,
'I wish, sir, they would let me stay here for a month.'
'Rare good victuals,' said another. 'I believe you,'
added a third; 'Tain't allus we've had a bellyful of
cooked meat every day.'
The emigrants are fed and taken to New Zealand free of
charge, excepting £1 each for 'bedding-money' for those
over twelve, and 10s. each for those under that
age. I was struck with the air of confidence displayed by
most. They were leaving the old country with less regret
than I liked to see, though some of the elders looked
sad. The majority were labourers. The officials told me
that on the arrival of the ship at its destination they
were for some time lodged in a depot free of expense, but
that they were generally engaged at once, or soon fetched
away by friends.
The sleeping arrangements at the depot prepare the
emigrants for their inevitable crowding on board-ship.
The married couples have each a berth to themselves, but
dozens of these sleep in what would be called, on shore,
the same apartment. Their discomfort, to use the mildest
word, especially during the first week of the voyage,
must be extreme. The single men and women are of course
kept scrupulously apart, and their berths, especially
those of the former - which were 22 inches wide,
and separated by a wooden division some 6 inches high -
looked unpleasant enough. However, free carriage and food
can hardly be expected to be luxurious. Some of the men
wore red-carpet slippers, which were an odd finish to an
earth-stained suit of fustian or corduroy. Divers,
however, had on their 'Sunday' clothes. The vessels are
fine-looking and roomy. But the 'roominess' of a ship,
like that of any other place, is comparative, being
determined by the number it is made to hold. Several of
them were waiting their turn in the Docks hard by, and
sticking their bowsprits over the quays in that long
masted line which fringes the land in these parts, and to
which the dirty Blackwall Railway ministers with
incessant trains. The depot associated with this at
Plymouth sends emigrants to Sydney, Adelaide, and New
Zealand. This at Blackwall is a point of embarkation for
New Zealand alone, and has seen the departure of
seventeen thousand emigrants from May 11th, 1874, to
August 7th in this year, which gives an average of more
than a thousand a month. I found divers Scotch and German
families awaiting the next ship. It looks as if New
Zealand were filling up fast, since this is only part of
the human stream which is incessantly being poured into
it from Europe.
Reprinted with permission of David Rich, Tower Hamlets History On Line.
