Section 27 of London Labour and the London Poor Volume 2 by Henry Mayhew. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Gillian Henry. Of the Pure Finders. Dog's Dung is called Pure from its cleansing and purifying properties. The name of Pure Finders, however, has been applied to the men engaged in collecting Dog's Dung from the public streets only, within the last 20 or 30 years. Previous to this period, there appears to have been no men engaged in the business. Old women alone gathered the substance and they were known by the name of Bunters, which signifies properly, gatherers of rags, and thus plainly intimates that the rag gatherers originally added the collecting of Pure to their original and proper vocation. Hence it appears that the Bone Grubbers, rag gatherers and Pure Finders constituted formerly but one class of people, and even now they have, as I have stated, kindred characteristics. The Pure Finders meet with a ready market for all the Dog's Dung they are able to collect at the numerous Tanyards in Bermondsey, where they sell it by the stable bucket full, and get from 8pins to 10pins per bucket, and sometimes a shilling and a shilling tuppence for it, according to its quality. The dry, limey looking sort fetches the highest price at some yards as it is found to possess more of the alkaline or purifying properties. But others are found to prefer the dark, moist quality. Strange as it may appear, the preference for a particular kind has suggested to the Finders of Pure the idea of adulterating it to a very considerable extent. This is effected by means of mortar broken away from old walls, and mixed up with the whole mass, which it closely resembles. In some cases, however, the mortar is rolled into small balls similar to those found. Hence it would appear that there is no business or trade, however insignificant or contemptible, without its own peculiar and appropriate tricks. The Pure Finders are in their habits and mode of proceeding nearly similar to the Bone Grubbers. Many of the Pure Finders are, however, better in circumstances, the men especially, as they earn more money. They are also to a certain extent a better educated class. Some of the regular collectors of this substance have been mechanics and others small tradesmen who have been reduced. Those Pure Finders who have a good connection and have been granted permission to cleanse some kennels, obtain a very fair living at the business, earning from 10 shillings to 15 shillings a week. These, however, are very few. The majority have to seek the article in the streets, and by such means they can obtain only from 6 shillings to 10 shillings a week. The average weekly earnings of this class are thought to be about 7 shilling 6-pence. From all the inquiries I have made on this subject, I have found that there cannot be less than from 200 to 300 persons constantly engaged solely in this business. There are about 30 tanyards, large and small, in Bermondsey, and these all have their regular pure collectors from whom they obtain the article. Leomund and Roberts, Bavingtons, Beaches, Murals, Cheesemans, Powell's, Jones's, Jordan's, Kent's, Moorcroft's and Davis's are among the largest establishments. And some idea of the amount of business done in some of these yards may be formed from the fact that the proprietors severally employ from 300 to 500 tanners. At Leomund and Roberts there are 23 regular streetfinders who supply them with pure, but this is a large establishment and the number supplying them is considered far beyond the average quantity. Moreover, Messrs Leomund and Roberts do more business in the particular branch of tanning in which the article is principally used, namely in dressing the leather for book covers, kid gloves and a variety of other articles. Some of the other tanyards, especially the smaller ones, take the substance only as they happen to want it and others again employ but a limited number of hands. If, therefore, we strike an average and reduce the number supplying each of the several yards to eight, we shall have 240 persons regularly engaged in the business. Besides these, it may be said that numbers of the starving and destitute Irish have taken to picking up the material, but not knowing where to sell it or how to dispose of it, they part with it for tuppence or thruppence the painful to the regular purveyors of it to the tanyards, who of course make a considerable profit by the transaction. The children of the poor Irish are usually employed in this manner, but they also pick up rags and bones and anything else which may fall in their way. I have stated that some of the purefinders, especially the men, earn a considerable sum of money per week. Their gains are sometimes as much as 15 shillings. Indeed, I am assured that seven years ago, when they got from three shillings to four shillings per pail for the pure, that many of them would not exchange their position with that of the best paid mechanic in London. Now, however, the case is altered, for there are 20 now at the business for every one who followed it then, hence each collects so much the less in quantity, and moreover, from the competition gets so much less for the article. Some of the collectors at present do not earn three shillings per week, but these are mostly old women who are feeble and unable to get over the ground quickly. Others make five shillings and six shillings in the course of the week, while the most active and those who clean out the kennels of the dog fanciers may occasionally make nine shillings and ten shillings, and even 15 shillings a week still, but this is off a very rare occurrence. Allowing the finders, one with the other, to earn on an average five shillings per week, it would give the annual earnings of each to be 13 pounds, while the income of the whole 200 would amount to 50 pounds a week, or 2,600 pounds per annum. The kennel pure is not much valued, indeed many of the tanners will not even buy it, the reason is that the dogs of the fanciers are fed on almost anything to save expense. The kennel cleaners consequently take the precaution of mixing it with what was found in the street, previous to offering it for sale. The pure finder may at once be distinguished from the bone grubber and raggatherer. The latter, as I have before mentioned, carries a bag, and usually a stick, armed with a spike, while he is most frequently to be met with in back streets, narrow lanes, yards, and other places where dust and rubbish are likely to be thrown out from the adjacent houses. The pure finder, on the contrary, is often found in the open streets, as dogs wonder where they like. The pure finders always carry a handle basket, generally with a cover to hide the contents, and have their right hand covered with a black leather glove. Many of them, however, dispense with the glove, as they say it is much easier to wash their hands than to keep the glove fit for use. The women generally have a large pocket for the reception of such rags as they may chance to fall in with, but they pick up those only of the very best quality, and will not go out of their way to search even for them. Thus equipped, they may be seen pursuing their avocation in almost every street in and about London, accepting such streets as are now cleansed by the street orderlies, of whom the pure finders grievously complain as being an unwarrantable interference with the privileges of their class. The pure collected is used by leather dressers and tanners, and more especially by those engaged in the manufacture of Morocco and kid leather from the skins of old and young goats, of which skins great numbers are imported, and of the rones and lambskins which are the sham Morocco and kids of the slop leather trade, and are used by the better class of shoemakers, bookbinders and glivers for the inferior requirements of their business. Pure is also used by tanners, as is pigeon's dung, for the tanning of the thinner kinds of leather, such as calf skins, for which purpose it is placed in pits with an admixture of lime and bark. In the manufacture of Morocco's and rones, the pure is rubbed by the hands of the workman into the skin he is dressing.  The dunk has astringent as well as highly alkaline, or to use the expression of my informant, scouring qualities. When the pure has been rubbed into the flesh and grain of the skin, the flesh being originally the interior and the grain the exterior part of the cuticle, and the skin thus purified has been hung up to be dried, the dunk removes as it were all such moisture as, if allowed to remain, would tend to make the leather unsound and imperfectly dressed. This imperfect dressing, moreover, gives a disagreeable smell to the leather, and leather buyers often use both nose and tongue in making their purchases, and would consequently prevent that agreeable odour being imparted to the skin, which is found in some kinds of Morocco and Kid. The peculiar odour of the Russia leather, so agreeable in the libraries of the rich, is derived from the bark of young birch trees, it is now manufactured in Bermondsey. Among the Morocco manufacturers, especially among the old operatives, there is often a scarcity of employment, and they then dress a few ronds, which they hawk to the cheap warehouses, or sell to the wholesale shoemakers on their own account. These men usually reside in small garrets in the poorer parts of Bermondsey, and carry on their trade in their own rooms, using and keeping the pure there, hence the homes of these poor men are peculiarly uncomfortable if not unhealthy. Some of these poor fellows, or their wives, collect the pure themselves, often starting at daylight for the purpose. They more frequently, however, buy it of a regular finder. The number of pure finders I heard estimated by a man well acquainted with the tanning and other departments of the leather trade, at from 200 to 250. The finders I was informed by the same person collected about a pailful a day, clearing six shillings a week in the summer, one shilling and one shilling tuppence being the charge for a pailful. In the short days of winter, however, and in bad weather, they could not collect five pailfuls in a week. In the wretched locality already referred to as lying between the docks and Rosemary Lane, redolent of filth and pregnant with pestilential diseases, and whether all the outcasts of the metropolitan population seem to be drawn, either in the hope of finding fitting associates and companions in their wretchedness, for there is doubtlessly something attractive and agreeable to them in such companionship, or else for the purpose of hiding themselves and their shifts and struggles for existence from the world. In this dismal quarter, and branching from one of the many narrow lanes which interlace it, there is a little court with about half a dozen houses of the very smallest dimensions, consisting of merely two rooms, one over the other. Here, in one of the upper rooms, the lower one of the same house being occupied by another family and apparently filled with little ragged children, I discerned, after considerable difficulty, an old woman, a pure finder. When I opened the door, the little light that struggled through the small window, the many broken panes of which were stuffed with old rags, was not sufficient to enable me to perceive who or what was in the room. After a short time, however, I began to make out an old chair, standing near the fireplace, and then to discover a poor old woman resembling a bundle of rags and filth stretched on some dirty straw in the corner of the apartment. The place was bare and almost naked. There was nothing in it except a couple of old tin kettles and a basket and some broken crockeryware in the recess of the window. To my astonishment, I found the wretched creature to be, to a certain extent, a superior woman. She could read and write well, spoke correctly, and appeared to have been a person of natural good sense, though broken up with age, want, and infirmity, so that she was characterised by all that dull and hardened stupidity of manner which I have noticed in the class. She made the following statement. Quote, I am about sixty years of age. My father was a milkman, and very well off. He had a barn and a great many cows. I was kept at school till I was thirteen or fourteen years of age. About that time my father died, and then I was taken home to help my mother in the business. After a while things went wrong. The cows began to die, and mother, alleging she could not manage the business herself, married again. I soon found out the difference. Glad to get away anywhere out of the house. I married a sailor, and was very comfortable with him for some years, as he made short voyages, and was often at home, and almost left me half his pay. At last he was pressed, went at home with me, and sent away. I forget now where he was sent to, but I never saw him from that day to this. The only thing I know is that some sailors came to me four or five years after, and told me that he deserted from the ship in which he had gone out, and got on board the Neptune, East India man, bound for Bombay, where he acted as boatswains mate. Some little time afterwards he had got intoxicated while the ship was lying in harbour, and going down the side to get into a bum boat, and buy more drink, he had fallen overboard and was drowned. I got some money that was due to him from the India house, and after that was all gone, I went into service in the Myland Road. There I stayed for several years till I met my second husband, who was bred to the water too, but as a waterman on the river. We did very well together for a long time till he lost his health. He became paralysed-like, and was deprived of the use of all one side, and nearly lost the sight of one of his eyes. This was not very conspicuous at first, but when we came to get pinched and to be badly off, then anyone might have seen that there was something the matter with his eye. Then we parted with everything we had in the world, and at last, when we had no other means of living left, we were advised to take to gathering pure. At first I couldn't endure the business, I couldn't bear to eat a morsel, and I was obliged to discontinue it for a long time. My husband kept at it though, for he could do that well enough, only he couldn't walk as fast as he ought. He couldn't lift his hands as high as his head, but he managed to work under him, and so put the pure in the basket. When I saw that he, poor fellow, couldn't make enough to keep us both, I took heart, and went out again, and used to gather more than he did. That's fifteen years ago now. The times were good then, and we used to do very well. If we only gathered a pailful in the day, we could live very well, but we could do much more than that, for there wasn't near so many at the business then, and the pure was easier to be had. For my part, I can't tell where all the poor creatures have come from of late years. The world seems growing worse and worse every day. They have pulled down the prices of pure that certain, but the poor things must do something. They can't starve while there's anything to be got. Why, no later than six or seven years ago, it was as high as three shelling sixpence, and four shelling's, a pailful, and a ready sale for as much of it as you could get. But now you can only get a shelling, and in some places a shelling tuppence, a pailful. And as I said before, there are so many at it that there is not much left for a poor old creature like me to find. The men that are strong and smart get the most of course, and some of them do very well, at least they manage to live. Six years ago, my husband complained that he was ill in the evening, and lay down in the bed. We lived in Whitechapel then. He took a fit of coughing, and was smothered in his own blood. Oh dear. Note, the poor old soul here ejaculated. End note. What troubles I have gone through. I had eight children at one time, and there is not one of them alive now. My daughter lived to thirty years of age, and then she died in childbirth, and since then I have had nobody in the wide world to care for me. None but myself, all alone as I am. After my husband's death, I couldn't do much, and all my things went away one by one, until I've nothing but bare walls, and that's the reason why I was vexed at first that you're coming in, sir. I was yesterday out all day, and went round Oldgate, Whitechapel, St. George's East, Stepney, Bow, and Bromley, and then came home. After that, I went over to Bermondsey, and there I got only six pins for my pains. Today I wasn't out at all. I wasn't well. I had a bad headache, and I'm so much afraid of the fevers that are all about here, though I don't know why I should be afraid of them. I was lying down when you came to get rid of my pains. There's such a dizziness in my head now. I feel as if it didn't belong to me. No, I have earned no money today. I have had a piece of dried bread that I steeped in water to eat. I haven't eaten anything else today, but, pray, sir, don't tell anybody of it. I could never bear the thought of going into the great house. Note, workhouse, end note. I'm so used to the air that I'd sooner die in the street as many I know have done. I've known several of our people who have sat down in the street with their basket alongside them and died. I knew one not long ago who to kill just as she was stooping down to gather up the pure and fell on her face. She was taken to the London hospital and died at three o'clock in the morning. I'd sooner die like them than be deprived of my liberty and be prevented from going about where I liked. No, I'll never go into the workhouse. My master is kind to me. Note, the tanner whom she supplies, end note. When I mill, he sometimes gives me a sixpence. But there's one gentleman has done us great harm by forcing so many into the business. He's a poor law-guardian, and when any poor person applies for relief, he tells them to go and gather pure, and that he'll buy it of them, for he's in the line. And so the parish, you see, don't have to give anything, and that's one way that so many have come into the trade of late, that the likes of me can do little or no good at it. Almost everyone I've ever known engaged at purefinding were people who were better off once. I knew a man who went by the name of Brown, who picked up pure for years before I went to it. He was a very quiet man. He used to lodge in Blue Anchor Yard, and seldom used to speak to anybody. We, too, used to talk together sometimes, but never much. One morning he was found dead in his bed. It was of a Tuesday morning, and he was buried about twelve o'clock on the Friday following. About six o'clock on that afternoon, three or four gentlemen came searching all through this place, looking for a man named Brown, and offering a reward for anyone who would find him out. There was a whole crowd about them when I came up. One of the gentlemen said that the man they wanted had lost the first finger of his right hand, and then I knew that it was the man that had been buried only that morning. Would you believe it? Mr. Brown was a real gentleman all the time, and had a large estate, of I don't know how many thousand pounds, just left him, and the lawyers had advertised and searched everywhere for him, but never found him, you may say, till he was dead. We discovered that his name was not Brown. He had only taken that name to hide his real one, which, of course, he did not want anyone to know. I've often thought of him, poor man, and all the misery he might have been spared if the good news had only come a year or two sooner. End quote. Another informant, a pure collector, was originally in the Manchester cotton trade, and held a lucrative situation in a large country establishment. His salary one year exceeded £250, and his regular income was £150. This, he says, I lost through drink and neglect. My master was exceedingly kind to me, and has even assisted me since I left his employ. He bore with me patiently for many years, but the love of drink was so strong upon me that it was impossible for him to keep me any longer. He has often been drunk, he tells me, for three months together, and he is now so reduced that he is ashamed to be seen. Even at his master's, it was his duty to carve and help the other assistants belonging to the establishment, and his hand is to shake so violently that he has been ashamed to lift the gravy spoon. At breakfast he has frequently waited till all the young men had left the table before he ventured to taste his tea, and immediately, when he was alone, he has bent his head down to his cup to drink, being utterly incapable of raising it to his lips. He says he is a living example of the degrading influence of drink. All his friends have deserted him. He has suffered enough, he tells me, to make him give it up. He earned the week before I saw him five shillings tuppence, and the week before that six shillings. Before leaving me, I prevailed upon the man to take the pledge. This is now 18 months ago, and I have not seen him since. Off the cigar end, finders. There are strictly speaking none who make a living by picking up the ends of cigars thrown away as useless by the smokers in the streets, but there are very many who employ themselves from time to time in collecting them. Almost all the street finders, when they meet with such things, pick them up and keep them in a pocket set apart for that purpose. The men allow the ends to accumulate till the amount to two or three pounds weight, and then some dispose of them to a person residing in the neighbourhood of Rosemary Lane, who buys them all up at from sixpence to tenpence per pound, according to their length and quality. The long ends are considered the best, as I am told there is more sound tobacco in them, un-injured by the moisture of the mouth. The children of the poor Irish in particular, Scarra Ratcliffe Highway, the commercial road, Mile End Road, and all the leading thoroughfares of the East, and every place where cigar smokers are likely to take an evening's promenade. The quantity that each of them collects is very trifling indeed, perhaps not more than a handful during a morning's search. I am informed by an intelligent man living in the midst of them, that these children go out in the morning not only to gather cigar ends, but to pick up out of dustbins, and from among rubbish in the streets, the smallest scraps and crusts of bread, no matter how hard or filthy they may be. These they put into a little bag which they carry for the purpose, and after they have gone their rounds and collected whatever they can, they take the cigar ends to the man who buys them, sometimes getting not more than a hipney or a penny for their morning's collection. With this they buy a hipney or a penny worth of oatmeal, which they mix up with a large quantity of water, and after washing and steeping the hard and dirty crusts, they put them into the pot or kettle and boil all together. Of this mass the whole family partake, and it often constitutes all the food they taste in the course of the day. I have often seen the bone grubbers eat the black and soddened crusts they have picked up out of the gutter. It would indeed be a hopeless task to make any attempt to get at the number of persons who occasionally or otherwise pick up cigar ends with the view of selling them again. For this purpose almost all who ransack the streets of London for a living may be computed as belonging to the class, and to these should be added the children of the thousands of destitute Irish who have inundated the metropolis within the last few years and who are to be found huddled together in all the low neighbourhoods in every suburb of the city. What quantity is collected or the amount of money obtained for the ends there are no means of ascertaining. Let us however make a conjecture. There are in round numbers 300,000 inhabited houses in the metropolis and allowing the married people living in apartments to be equal in number to the unmarried housekeepers we may compute that the number of families in London is about the same as the inhabited houses. Assuming one young or one old gentleman in every ten of these families to smoke one cigar per diem in the public thoroughfares we have 30,000 cigar ends daily or 210,000 weekly cast away in the London streets. Now reckoning 150 cigars to go to a pound we may assume that each end so cast away weighs about the thousandth part of a pound. Consequently the gross weight of the ends flung into the gutter will in the course of the week amount to about 200 weight and calculating that only a sixth part of these are picked up by the finders it follows that there is very nearly a ton of refuse tobacco collected annually in the metropolitan thoroughfares. The aristocratic quarters of the city and the vicinity of theatres and casinos are the best for the cigar end finders. In the Strand, Regent Street and the more fashionable thoroughfares I am told there are many ends picked up but even in these places they do not exclusively furnish a means of living to any of the finders all the collectors sell them to some other person who acts as middleman in the business how he disposes of the ends is unknown but it is supposed that they are resold to some of the large manufacturers of cigars and go to form the component part of a new stock of the best Havana's or in other words they are worked up again to be again cast away and again collected by the finders and so on perhaps till the millennium comes some suppose them to be cut up and mixed with the common smoking tobacco and others that they are used in making snuff there are I am assured five persons residing in different parts of London who are known to purchase the cigarens in Naples the sale of cigarens is a regular street traffic the street seller carrying them in a small box suspended round his neck in Paris also the remasseur de cigars is a well-known occupation the ends thus collected are sold as cheap tobacco to the poor in the low lodging houses of London the ends when dried are cut up and frequently vended by the finders to such of their fellow lodgers as their anxious to enjoy their pipe at the cheapest possible rate of the old wood gatherers all that has been said of the cigar end finders may in a great measure apply to the wood gatherers no one can make a living exclusively by the gathering of wood and those who do gather it gather as well rags bones and bits of metal they gather it indeed as an adjunct to their other findings on the principle that every little helps those however who most frequently look for wood are the very old and feeble and the very young who are both unable to travel far or to carry a heavy burden and they may occasionally be seen crawling about in the neighbourhood of any new buildings in the course of construction or old ones in the course of demolition and picking up small odds and ends of woods and chips swept out amongst dirt and shavings these they deposit in a bag or basket which they carry for that purpose should there happen to be what they call pulling down work that is taking down old houses or palings the place is immediately beset by a number of wood gatherers young and old and in general all the poor people of the locality join with them to obtain their share of the spoil what the poor get they take home and burn but the wood gatherers sell all they procure for some small trifle some short time ago a portion of the wood pavement in the city was being removed a large number of the old blocks which were much worn and of no further use were thrown aside and became the perquisite of the wood gatherers during the repair of the street the spot was constantly besieged by a motley mob of men, women and children who in many instances struggled and fought for the wood rejected as worthless this wood they either sold for a trifle as they got it or took home and split and made into bundles for sale as firewood all the mudlarks of whom I shall treat specially pick up wood and chips on the bank of the river these they sell to poor people in their own neighbourhood they sometimes find large pieces of a greater weight than they can carry in such cases they get some other mudlark to help them with the load and the two go halves in the produce the only parties among the streetfinders who do not pick up wood are the pure collectors and the sewer hunters or as they call themselves shore workers both of whom pass it by as of no value it is impossible to estimate the quantity of wood which is thus gathered or what the amount may be which the collector realises in the course of the year End of Section 27 Section 28 of London Labour and the London Poor Volume 2 by Henry Mayhew this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Gillian Henry of the dredgers or riverfinders the dredger men of the Thames or riverfinders naturally occupy the same place with reference to the streetfinders as the pearl men or river beer sellers do to those who get their living by selling in the streets it would be in itself a curious enquiry to trace the origin of the manifold occupations in which men are found to be engaged in the present day and to note how promptly every circumstance and occurrence was laid hold of as it happened to arise which appeared to have any tendency to open up a new occupation and to mark the gradual progress till it became a regularly established employment followed by a separate class of people fenced round by rules and customs of their own and who at length grew to be both in their habits and peculiarities plainly distinct from the other classes among whom they chanced to be located there has been no historian among the dredgers of the Thames to record the commencement of the business and the utmost that any of the riverfinders can tell is that his father had been a dredger and so had his father before him and that that's the reason why they are dredgers also but no such people as dredgers were known on the Thames in remote days and before London had become an important trading port where nothing was likely to be got for the searching it is not probable that people would have been induced to search in those days the only things searched for in the river were the bodies of persons drowned accidentally or otherwise for this purpose the Thames fishermen of all others appeared to be the best adapted they were on the spot at all times and had various sorts of tackle such as nets, lines, hooks and so on the fishermen well understood everything connected with the river such as the various sets of the tide and the nature of the bottom and they were therefore on such occasions invariably applied to for these purposes it is known to all who remember anything of old London Bridge that at certain times of the tide in consequence of the velocity with which the water rushed through the narrow apertures which the archies then afforded for its passage to bring a boat in safety through the bridge was a feat to be attempted only by the skillful and experienced this feat was known as shooting London Bridge and it was no unusual thing for accidents to happen even to the most expert in fact numerous accidents occurred at this bridge and at such times valuable articles were sometimes lost for which high rewards were offered to the finder here again the fishermen came into requisition the small dragnet which they used while rowing offering itself for the purpose for by fixing an iron frame round the mouth of the dragnet this part of it from its specific gravity sunk first to the bottom and consequently scraped along as they pulled forward collecting into the net everything that came in its way when it was nearly filled which the roar always knew by the weight it was hauled up to the surface its contents examined and the object lost gradually recovered it is thus apparent that the fishermen of the Thames where the men originally employed as dredger men though casually indeed at first and according as circumstances occurred requiring their services by degrees however as the commerce of the river increased and a greater number of articles fell overboard from the shipping they came to be more frequently called into requisition and so they were naturally led to adopt the dredging as part and partial of their business thus it remains to the present day the fishermen all serve a regular apprenticeship as they say themselves duly and truly for seven years during the time of their apprenticeship they are or rather in former times they were obliged to sleep in their master's boat at night to take care of his property and were subject to many other curious regulations which are foreign to this subject I have said that the fishermen of the Thames to the present day unite the dredging to their proper calling by this I mean that they employ themselves in fishing during the summer and autumn either from Barking Creek downwards or from Chelsea Beach upwards catching dabs, flounders, eels and other sorts of fish for the London markets but in winter when the days are short and cold and the weather stormy they prefer stopping at home and dredging the bed of the river for anything they may chance to find there are others however who have started wholly in the dredging line saying no hindrance or impediment to anyone doing so nor any licence required for the purpose these dredge the river winter and summer alike and are in fact the only real dredgermen of the present day living solely by that occupation there are in all about 100 dredgermen at work on the river and these are located as follows from Putney to Vauxhall there are 20 dredgermen from Vauxhall to London Bridge 40 dredgermen from London Bridge to Detford 20 dredgermen and from Detford to Gravesend 20 dredgermen total 100 dredgermen all these reside in general on the south side of the Thames the two places most frequented by them being Lambeth and Rotherith they do not however confine themselves to the neighbourhoods wherein they reside but extend their operations to all parts of the river where it is likely that they may pick up anything and it is perfectly marvellous with what rapidity the intelligence of any accident calculated to afford them employment is spread among them for should a loaded coal barge be sunk overnight by daylight the next morning every dredgerman would be sure to be upon the spot prepared to collect what he could from the wreck at the bottom of the river the boats of the dredgermen are of a peculiar shape they have no stern but are the same for and aft they are called Peter boats but not one of the men with whom I spoke had the least idea as to the origin of the name these boats are to be had at almost all prices according to their condition and age from 30 shillings to 20 pounds the boats used by the fisherman dredgermen are decidedly the most valuable one with the other perhaps the whole may average 10 pounds each and this sum will give 1000 pounds as the value of the entire number a complete set of tackle including drags will cost 2 pounds which comes to 200 pounds for all hands and thus we have the sum of 1200 pounds as the amount of capital invested in the dredging of the Thames it is by no means an easy matter to form any estimate of the earnings of the dredgermen as they are a matter of mere chance in former years when India men and all the foreign shipping lay in the river the river finders were in the habit of doing a good business not only in their own line through the greater quantities of rope bones and other things which then were thrown or fell overboard but they also contrived to smuggle ashore great quantities of tobacco tea, spirits and other contraband articles and thought it a bad day's work when they did not earn a pound independent of their dredging an old dredger told me he had often in those days made 5 pounds before breakfast time after the excavation of the various docks and after the larger shipping had departed from the river the finders were obliged to content themselves with the chances of mere dredging and even then I am informed they were in the habit of earning one week with another throughout the year about 25 shillings per week each or 6,500 pounds per annum among all laterally however the earnings of these men have greatly fallen off especially in the summer for then they cannot get so good a price for the coal they find as in the winter 6 pounds per bushel being the summer price and as they consider 3 bushels a good day's work their earnings at this period of the year amount to only one shilling 6 pounds per day accepting when they happen to pick up some bones or pieces of metal or to find a dead body for which there is a reward in the winter however the dredger men can readily get one shilling per bushel for all the coals they find and far more coals are to be found then than in summer for there are more colliers in the river and far more accidents at that season coal barges are often sunk in the winter and on such occasions they make a good harvest moreover there is the finding of bodies for which they not only get the reward but 5 shillings which they call inquest money together with many other chances such as the finding of money and valuables among the rubbish they bring up from the bottom but as the last mentioned are accidents happening in the year I am inclined to think that they have understated the amount which they are in the habit of realising even in the summer the dredgers as a class may be said to be altogether uneducated not half a dozen out of the whole number being able to read their own name and only one or two to write it this select few are considered by the rest as perfect prodigies said one the ignorance of the dredgerman may be accounted for by the men taking so early to the water the bustle and excitement of the river being far more attractive to them than the routine of a school almost as soon as they are able to do anything the dredgerman's boys are taken by their fathers afloat to assist in picking out the coals bones and other things of any use from the midst of the rubbish brought up in their dragnets or else the lads are sent on board as assistants to one or other of the fisherman during their fishing voyages when once engaged in this way it has been found impossible afterwards to keep the youths from the water and if they have learned anything previously they very soon forget it it might be expected that the dredgers in a manner depending on chance for their livelihood and leading a restless sort of life on the water would closely resemble the costumungers in their habits but it is far otherwise there can be no two classes more dissimilar except in their hatred of restraint the dredgers are sober and steady gambling is unknown amongst them and they are to an extraordinary degree laborious, persevering and patient they are in general men of short stature but square built, strong and capable of enduring great fatigue and have a silent and thoughtful look being almost always alone and studying how they may best succeed and learning what they seek marking the various sets of the tide and the direction in which things falling into the water at a particular place must necessarily be carried they become the very opposite to the other river people especially to the watermen who are brawling and clamorous and delight in continually chaffing each other in consequence of the sober and industrious habits of the dredger men as they say, pretty fair for working men though there is nothing very luxurious to be found in them nor indeed anything beyond what is absolutely necessary after their day's work especially if they have done well these men smoke a pipe over a pint or two of beer at the nearest public house get home early to bed and if the tide answers may be found on the river patiently dredging away at two or three o'clock in the morning whenever a loaded coal barge happens to sink as I have already intimated it is surprising how short a time elapses before that part of the river is alive with the dredgers they flock there from all parts the river on such occasions presents a very animated appearance at first they are all in a group and apparently in confusion crossing and re-crossing each other's course and with their oars pulled in while they examine the contents of their nets and empty the coals into the bottom of their boats others rowing and tugging against the stream to obtain an advantageous position for the next cast and when they consider they have found this down go the dredging nets to the bottom and away they row again with the stream as if pulling for a wager till they find by the weight of their net that it is full they get one stop, haul it up to the surface and commence another course others who have been successful in getting their boats loaded may be seen pushing away from the main body and making towards the shore here they busily employ themselves with what help they can get in emptying the boat of her cargo carrying it ashore in old coal baskets, bushel measures or anything else which will suit their purpose and when this is completed they pull out again to join their comrades and commence afresh they continue working thus till the returning tide puts an end to their labours but these are resumed after the tide has fallen to a certain depth and so they go on working night and day while there is anything to be got the dredger man and his boat may be immediately distinguished from all others there is nothing similar to them on the river the sharp cut water, fore and aft and short rounded appearance of the vessel marks it out at once from the skiff or wary of the waterman there is too always the appearance of labour about the boat like a ship returning after a long voyage dogged and filthy and looking sadly in need of a thorough cleansing the grappling irons are over the bow resting on a coil of rope while the other end of the boat is filled with coals bones and old rope mixed with the mud of the river the ropes of the dredging net hang over the side a short stout figure with a face soiled and blackened with perspiration and surmounted by a tarred sewester the body habited in a soiled check shirt with the sleeves turned up above the elbows and exhibiting a pair of sunburnt brawny arms is pulling at the skulls not with the ease and lightness of the waterman but toiling and tugging away like a galley slave as he scours the bed of the river with his dredging net in search of some hoped for prize the dredgers as was before stated are the men who find almost all the bodies of persons drowned if there be a reward offered for the recovery of a body numbers of the dredgers will at once endeavour to obtain it while if there be no reward there is at least the inquest money to be had beside other chances what these chances are may be inferred from the well-known fact that nobody recovered by a dredgerman ever happens to have any money about it when brought to shore there may indeed be a watch in the fob or waistcoat pocket for that article would be likely to be traced there may too be a purse or pocketbook forthcoming but somehow it is invariably empty the dredgers cannot by any reasoning or arguments be made to comprehend that there is anything like dishonesty in emptying the pockets of a dead man they consider them as their just perquisites they say that anyone who finds a body does precisely the same and that if they did not do so the police would after having had all the trouble and labour they allege that they have a much better right to whatever is to be got than the police who have had nothing whatever to do with it there are also people who shouldly suspect that some of the coals from the barges lying in the river very often find their way into the dredger's boats especially when the dredgers are engaged in night work and there are even some who do not hold them guiltless of now and then when opportunity offers smuggling things ashore from many of the steamers coming from foreign parts but such things I repeat the dredgers consider in the fair way of their business one of the most industrious and I believe one of the most skillful and successful of this peculiar class gave me the following epitome of his history quote almost as soon as I was able to crawl father took me with him in the boat to help him to pick the coals and bones and other things out of the net and to use me to the water when I got bigger and stronger I was sent to the parish school but I didn't like it half as well as the boat and couldn't be got to stay two days together at last I went a buff bridge and went along with a fisherman and used to sleep in the boat every night I like to sleep in the boat I used to be as comfortable as could be Lord bless you, there's a tilt to them boats and no rain can't get at you I used to lie awake of a night in them times and listen to the water slapping again the boat and think it fine fun I might have got bound Prentice but I got aboard a smack where I stayed three or four year and if I'd have stayed there I'd have liked it much better but I heard as how father was ill so I come home and took to the dredging and I'm at it off and on ever since I got no learning how could I there's only one or two of us dredgers as knows anything of learning and they're no better off than the rest learning's no use to a dredger he hasn't got no time to read and if he had why it wouldn't tell him where the holes and furrows is at the bottom of the river and where things is to be found to be sure there's holes and furrows at the bottom I know a good many I know a furrow off Lymus Point no wider nor the dredge and I can go there and when others can't get anything but stones and mud I can get four or five bushels of coal you see they lay there they get in with the set of the tide and can't get out so easy like dredgers don't do so well now as they used to do you know pelican stairs well before the docks was built when the ships lay there pelican pier and pick up four or five shilling off a morning what was that though to father I hear him say he often made five pounds of four breakfast and nobody ever the wiser them were fine times there was a good living to be picked up on the water them days about ten year ago the fisherman at Lambeth them as serves their time dually and truly thought to put us off the water and went to for the lord mayor but they couldn't do nothing after all they do better nor us as they go fishing all the summer when the dredging is bad and come back in the winter summon us down here note Rutherith go a deal portering in the summer or unloading potatoes or anything else we can get when we have nothing else to do we go on the river father don't dredge now he's too old for that it takes a man to be strong to dredge he goes to ship scraping he only sits on a plank outside the ship and scrapes off the old tar with a scraper we does very well for all that why he can make his half a bull a day note two shilling sixpence and note when he gets work but that's not always how some ever I helped the old man at times when I'm able I found a good many bodies I got a many rewards and a tidy bit of inquest money including sixpence inquest money at Rutherith and only a shilling at Depford I can't make out how that is but that's all they give I know I never finds anything on the bodies Lord bless you people don't have anything in their pockets when they get drowned they are not such fools as all that do you see them two marks there on the back of my hand well one day I was only young then I was grappling for old rope in church hole just as I was fixing the rope on his leg to tow him ashore two swells comes down in a skiff and lays hold of the painter of my boat and tows me ashore the hook of the drag went right through the trousers of the drowned man and my hand and I couldn't let go know how and though I roared out like mad the swells didn't care but dragged me into the stairs when I got there my arm and the corpses shoe and trousers were all covered with my blood I think the gents said why they told me as how they had done me good in towing the body in and ran away up the stairs though times ain't near so good as they was my manager's pretty tidy and hasn't got no occasion to holler much but there's some of the dredgers as would holler if they was ever so well off end quote off the sewer hunters some few years ago the main sewers having their outlets on the river side were completely open so that any person desirous of exploring their dark and uninviting recesses might enter at the river side and wander away provided he could withstand the combination of villainous stenches which met him at every step for many miles in any direction at that time it was a thing of very frequent occurrence especially at the spring tides for the water to rush into the sewers pouring through them like a torrent and then to burst up through the gratings into the streets flooding all the low-lying districts in the vicinity of the river till the streets of Shadwell and Wapping resembled a Dutch town intersected by a series of muddy canals of late however to remedy this defect the commissioners have had a strong brick wall built within the entrance to the several sewers in each of these brick walls there is an opening covered by a strong iron door which hangs from the top and is so arranged that when the tide is low the rush of the water and other filth on the inner side porties it back and allows the contents of the sewer to pass into the river whilst when the tide rises the door is forced so close against the wall by the pressure of the water outside that none can by any possibility enter and thus the river neighbourhoods are secured from the deluges which were here to fore of such frequent occurrence where if not a notorious fact it might perhaps be thought impossible that men could be found who for the chance of obtaining a living of some sort or other would day after day and year after year continue to travel through these underground channels for the offscouring of the city but such is the case even at the present moment in former times however this custom prevailed much more than now for in those days the sewers were entirely open and presented no obstacle to anyone desirous of entering them many wondrous tales are still told among the people of men having lost their way in the sewers and of having wandered among the filthy passages their lights extinguished by the noisome vapours till faint and overpowered and down and died on the spot other stories are told of sewer hunters beset by myriads of enormous rats and slaying thousands of them in their struggle for life till at length the swarms of the savage things overpowered them and in a few days afterwards their skeletons were discovered picked to the very bones since the iron doors however have been placed on the main sewers a prohibition has been issued to entering them and a reward of £5 offered to any person giving information so as to lead to the conviction of any offender nevertheless many still travel through these foul labyrinths in search of such valuables as may have found their way down the drains the persons who are in the habit of searching the sewers call themselves shoremen or shore workers they belong in a certain degree as the mudlarks that is to say they travel through the mud along shore in the neighbourhood of ship building and ship breaking yards for the purpose of picking up copper nails, bolts, iron and old rope the shoremen however do not collect the lumps of coal and wood they meet with on their way but leave them as the proper perquisites of the mudlarks the sewer hunters were formally and indeed are still the name of Toshers the articles which they pick up in the course of their wanderings along shore being known among themselves by the general term Tosh a word more particularly applied by them to anything made of copper these Toshers may be seen especially on the Surrey side of the Thames habited in long greasy velveteen coats furnished with pockets of vast capacity and their nether limbs encased in dirty canvas trousers and any old slops of shoes that may be fit only for wading through the mud they carry a bag on their back and in their hand a pole seven or eight feet long on one end of which there is a large iron hole the uses of this instrument are various with it they try the ground wherever it appears unsafe before venturing on it and when assured of its safety their footsteps with the staff should they as often happens even to the most experienced sink in some quagmire they immediately throw out the long pole armed with the hole which is always held uppermost for this purpose and with it seizing hold of any object within their reach are thereby enabled to draw themselves out without the pole however their danger would be greater for the more they struggle to extricate themselves from such places the deeper they would sink and even with it they might perish I am told in some part if there were nobody at hand to render them assistance finally they make use of this pole to rake about the mud when searching for iron, copper, rope and bones they mostly exhibit great skill in discovering these things in unlikely places and have a knowledge of the various sets of the tide calculated to carry articles to particular points almost equal to the dredgermen themselves although they cannot pick up as much now as they formally did they are still able to make what they call a fair living and can afford to look down with a species of aristocratic contempt on the puny efforts of their less fortunate brethren the mudlarks to enter the sewers and explore them to any considerable distance is considered even by those acquainted with what is termed working the shores an adventure of no small risk there are a variety of perils to be encountered in such places the brickwork in many parts especially in the old sewers has become rotten through the continual action of the putrefying matter and moisture and parts have fallen down and choked up the passage with heaps of rubbish over these obstructions nevertheless the sewer hunters have to scramble in the best way they can in such parts they are careful not to touch the brickwork overhead for the slightest tap might bring down an avalanche of old bricks and earth and severely injure them if not bury them in the rubbish since the construction of the new sewers the old ones are in general abandoned by the hunters but in many places the former channels cross and re-cross those recently constructed in the old sewers a person is very likely to lose his way it is dangerous to venture far into any of the smaller sewers branching off from the main for in this the hunters have to stoop low down in order to proceed and from the confined space there are often accumulated in such places large quantities of foul air which as one of them stated will cause instantious death moreover far from there being any romance in the tales told of the rats these vermin are really numerous and formidable in the sewers and have been known I am assured to attack men when alone and even sometimes when accompanied by others with such fury that the people have escaped from them with difficulty they are particularly ferocious and dangerous if they be driven into some corner when they cannot escape they immediately fly at anyone that opposes their progress I received a similar account to this from one of the London flusher men there are moreover in some quarters ditches or trenches which are filled as the washer rushes up the sewers with the tide in these ditches the water is retained by a sluice which is shut down at high tide and lifted again at low tide when it rushes down the sewers with all the violence of a mountain torrent sweeping everything before it if the sewer hunter be not close to some branch sewer so that he can run into it whenever the opening of these sluices takes place he must inevitably perish the trenches or water reservoirs for the cleansing of the sewers are chiefly on the south side of the river and as a proof of the great danger to which the sewer hunters are exposed in such cases it may be stated that not very long ago a sewer on the south side of the Thames was opened to be repaired a long ladder reached to the bottom of the sewer down which the bricklayer's labourer was going with a hod of bricks when the rush of water from the sluice struck the bottom of the ladder and instantly swept away ladder, labourer and all the bricklayer fortunately was enjoying his pint and pipe at a neighbouring public house the labourer was found by my informant a shore worker near the mouth of the sewer, quite dead battered and disfigured in a frightful manner there was likewise great danger in former times from the rising of the tide in the sewers so that it was necessary for the shoremen to have quitted them before the water had got any height within the entrance at present however this is obviated in those sewers the steam is furnished with an iron door towards the river the shore workers when about to enter the sewers provide themselves in addition to the long hole already described with a canvas apron which they tie around them and a dark lantern similar to a policeman's this they strap before them on the right breast in such a manner that on removing the shade the bull's eye throws the light straight forward when they are in a direct position and enables them to see everything in advance of them for some distance but when they stoop it throws the light directly under them so that they can then distinctly see any object at their feet the sewer hunters generally go in gangs of three or four for the sake of company and in order that they may be the better able to defend themselves from the rats the old hands who have been often up gang endeavours to include at least one experienced person travel a long distance not only through the main sewers but also through many of the branches whenever the shoremen come near a street grating they close their lanterns and watch their opportunity of gliding silently past and observed for otherwise a crowd might collect overhead and intimate to the policeman on duty that there were persons wandering in the sewers below the shore workers never take dogs with them lest their barking when hunting the rats might excite attention as the men go along they search the bottom of the sewer raking away the mud from their hole and pick from between the crevices of the brickwork money or anything else that we have lodged there there are in many parts of the sewers holes where the brickwork has been worn away and in these holes clusters of articles are found which have been washed into them from time to time and perhaps been collecting there for years such as pieces of iron nails various scraps of metal coins of every description all rusted into a mass like a rock and weighing from a half hundred to two hundred weight all together these conglomerates of metal are too heavy for the men to take out of the sewers so that they are unable to break them up they are compelled to leave them behind and there are very many such masses I am informed lying in the sewers at this moment of immense weight and growing larger every day by continual additions the shoremen find great quantities of money of copper money especially sometimes they dive their arm down to the elbow in the mud and filth and bring up shillings sixpences, half crowns and occasionally half sovereigns and sovereigns they always find the coins standing edge uppermost between the bricks in the bottom where the mortar has been worn away the sewer hunters occasionally find plate such as spoons, ladles silver handled knives and forks mugs and drinking cups and now and then articles of jewellery but even while thus in luck as they call it they do not omit to fill the bags on their backs with the more cumbrous articles they meet with such as metals of every description rope and bones there is always a great quantity of these things to be met with in the sewers they being continually washed down from the cesspools and drains of the houses when the sewer hunters consider they have searched long enough or when they have found as much as they can conveniently take away the gang leave the sewers and journey to the nearest of their homes count out the money they have picked up and proceed to dispose of the old metal, bones, rope and so on this done they then as they term it quack the whole lot that is they divide it equally among all hands at these divisions I am assured it frequently occurs that each member of the gang will realise from 30 shillings to 2 pounds this at least was a frequent occurrence some few years ago of late however the shoremen are obliged to use far more caution as the police and especially those connected with the river who are more on the alert as well as many of the coal merchants in the neighbourhood of the sewers would give information if they saw any suspicious persons approaching them the principal localities in which the shore hunters reside are in Mint Square Mint Street and Kent Street in the borough Snowsfields, Bermondsy and that never-failing locality between the London docks and Rosemary Lane which appears to be a concentration of all the misery of the kingdom there were known to be a few years ago nearly 200 sewer hunters or Toshers and incredible as it may appear I have satisfied myself that taking one week with another they could not be said to make much short of £2 per week their probable gains I was told were about six shillings per day all the year round at this rate the property recovered from the sewers of London would have amounted to no less than £20,000 per annum which would make the amount of property lost down the drains of each house amount to one shilling forpence a year the shore hunters of the present day greatly complain of the recent restrictions and invade in no measured terms against the constituted authorities they won't let us in to work the shores say they cause there's a little danger they fears is how we'll get suffocated at least they tells us so but they don't care if we get starved no they doesn't mind nothing about that it is however more than suspected that these men find plenty of means to evade the vigilance of the sewer officials and continue quietly to reap a considerable harvest gathered once it might otherwise have rotted in obscurity the sewer hunters strange as it may appear are certainly smart fellows and take decided precedence of all the other finders of London whether by land or water both on account of the greater amount of their earnings and the skill and courage they manifest in the pursuit of their dangerous employment but like all who make a living as it were by a game of chance plodding, carefulness and saving habits cannot be reckoned among their virtues they are improvident even to a proverb with their gains superior even to those of the better paid artisans and far beyond the amount received by many clerks who have to maintain a respectable appearance the show men might with but ordinary prudence live well have comfortable homes and even be able to save sufficient to provide for themselves in their old age their practice however is directly the reverse they no sooner make a haul as they say than they adjourn to some low public house in the neighbourhood and seldom leave till empty pockets and hungry stomachs drive them forth to procure the means fresh to bosh it is principally on this account that despite their large gains they are to be found located in the most wretched quarter of the metropolis it might be supposed that the sewer hunters passing much of their time in the midst of the noisome vapours generated by the sewers the odours of which escaping upwards from the gratings in the streets is dreaded and shunned by all as something pestilential would exhibit in their pallid faces the unmistakable evidence of their unhealthy employment but this is far from the fact strange to say the sewer hunters are strong, robust and healthy men generally florid in their complexion while many of them no illness only by name some of the elder men who head the gangs when exploring the sewers are between 60 and 80 years of age with the employment during their whole lives the men appear to have a fixed belief that the odour of the sewers contributes in a variety of ways to their general health nevertheless they admit that accidents occasionally occur from the air in some places being fully impregnated with mephitic gas I found one of these men from whom I derived much information and who is really an active intelligent man in a court of Rosemary Lane access is gained to this court through a dark narrow entrance scarcely wider than a doorway running beneath the first floor of one of the houses in the adjoining street the court itself is about 50 yards long and not more than 3 yards wide surrounded by lofty wooden houses with jutting abutments in many of the upper stories that almost exclude the light and give them the appearance of being about to tumble down upon the heads of the intruders this court is densely inhabited every room has its own family more or less in number and in many of them I am assured there are two families residing the better to enable the one to whom the room is let to pay the rent at the time of my visit which was in the evening after the inmates had returned from their various employments some quarrel had arisen among them the court was so thronged with the friends of the contending individuals and spectators of the fight that I was obliged to stand at the entrance unable to force my way through the dense multitude while labourers and street folk with shaggy heads and women with dirty caps and fuzzy hair thronged every window above and peered down anxiously at the affray there must have been some hundreds of people collected there that all were inhabitants of this very court for the noise of the quarrel had not yet reached the street on wondering at the number my informant, when the noise had ceased explained the matter as follows you see sir there's more than thirty houses in this year court and there's not less than eight rooms in every house now there's nine or ten people in some of the rooms I know but just say four in every room and calculate what that there comes to I did and found it to my surprise to be nine hundred and sixty well continued my informant chuckling and drumming his hands in evident delight at the result you may as well just tack a couple of hundred onto the tail of them for make-weight as we are not very particular about a hundred or two one way or the other in these year places in this court up three flights of narrow stairs that creaked and trembled at every footstep in an infurnished garret dwelt the shore worker a man who had he been careful according to his own account at least might have money in the bank and be the proprietor of the house in which he lived the sewer hunters like the street people are all known by some peculiar nickname derived chiefly from some personal characteristic it would be a waste of time to inquire for them by their right names even if you were acquainted with them for none else would know them and no intelligence concerning them could be obtained while under the title of lanky bill long tom one eyed george short-armed jack they are known to everyone my informant who is also dignified with a title or as he calls it a handle to his name gave me the following account of himself quote I was born in Birmingham the first thing I remember is being down on the shore at Cuckold's pint when the tide was out and up to my knees in mud and I getting down deeper and deeper every minute till I was picked up by one of the shore workers I used to get down there every day to look at the ships and boats a sailing up and down I'd never be tired of looking at them at that time at last father apprenticed me to a blacksmith in Bermondsey and then I couldn't get down to the river and I couldn't get down to the river and then I couldn't get down to the river when I liked so I got to hate the forge and the fire and blowing the bellows and couldn't stand the confinement know-how at last I cuts and runs after some time they gets me back again but I cuts again I was determined not to stand it I wouldn't go home for fear I'd be sent back so I goes down to Cuckold's pint and there I sits near half the day when who should I see wrap out of the mud when I was a sinking I tells him all about it and he takes me home along with himself and gets me a bag and an o and takes me out next day and shows me what to do and shows me the dangerous places and the places what are safe and how to rake in the mud for rope and bones and iron and that's the way I come to be a shore worker Lord bless you I've worked Cuckold's pint for more than 20 years I know places where you'd go head and ears in the mud and just alongside on them you may walk as safe as you can on this floor but it don't do for a stranger to try it he'd very soon get in and it's not so easy to get out again I can tell you I stayed with the olden a long time and we used to get lots of tin especially when we'd go to work the sewers I like that well enough I can get into small places where the olden couldn't and when I'd got near the grating in the street I'd search about in the bottom of the sewer I'd put down my arm to my shoulder in the mud and bring up shillings and half crowns and lots of coppers and plenty other things I once found a silver jug as big as a quartpot and often found spoons and knives and forks and everything you can think of bless your heart the smell is nothing it's a roguish smell at first but nothing near so bad as you think lots of water always are coming down the sewer and the air gets in from the gratings and that helps to sweeten it a bit there's some places especially in the old sewers where they say there's foul air and they tell me the foul air will cause instantious death but I never met with anything of the kind and I think if there was such a thing I should know something about it for I've worked the sewers off and on for 20 years when we comes to a narrow place as we don't know we takes the candle out of the lantern and fastens it on the head of the owl and then runs it up the sewer and if the light stays in we knows as there ain't no danger we used to go up the city sewer at Black Friars Bridge but that's stopped up now it's boarded across inside the city wouldn't let us up if they knew it cause of the danger they say but they don't care if we haven't got nothing to eat nor a place to put our heads in while there's plenty of money lying there and good for nobody if you was caught up it and brought a fore the Lord Mayor he'd give you 14 days on it as safe as the bellows so a good many on us now is afraid to venture in we don't venture as we used to but still it's done at times there's a many places as I knows on where the bricks has fallen down and that there's dangerous it's so dilaborated that if you touches it with your head or with the bend of the owl it'll all come down atop of you I've often seen as many as 100 rats at once and there are whoppers in the sewers I can tell you them there water rats too is far more ferociouser than any other rats and they'd think nothing of tackling a man if they found they couldn't get away know how but if they can why they runs by and gets out of the road I know the chap as the rats tackled in the sewers they bit him hoffily as I heard on it it was him as the waterman went in after when they heard him a shouting as he was a rowing by only for the waterman the rats would have done for him safe enough do you recollect hearing on the man as was found in the sewers about 12 years ago oh you must the rats eat every bit of him and left nothing but his bones I knowed him well he was a regular shore worker the rats is very dangerous that's certain but we always goes three or four on us together and the varmints too wide awake to tackle us then for they know they'd get off second best you can go a long way in the sewers if you like I don't know how far I never was at the end on them myself for a cove can't stop in longer than six or seven hour cause of the tide you must be out before that's up there's a many branches on every side but we don't go into all we go where we know we're always sure to find something I know a place now where there's more than two or three hundred weight of metal all rusted together and plenty of money among it too but it's too heavy to carry it out so it'll stop there I suppose till the world comes to an end I often brought out a piece of metal half a hundred in weight and took it under the heart of the bridge and broke it up with a large stone to pick out the money I found sovereigns and half sovereigns over and over again and three of us has often cleared a couple of pounds a piece in one day out of the sewers but we no sooner got the money than the publican had it I only wish I'd back all the money I've got to the publican and I wouldn't care how the wind blew for the rest of my life I never thought about taking a hammer along with me into the sewers no I never thought I'd want it you can't go in every day it's so particular now far more particular than formerly if you was known to touch the traps you'd get hauled up before the beak it's done for all that and though there is so many eyes about the johnnies on the water are always on the lookout and if they sees anyone as about we has to cut our lucky we shore workers sometimes does very well other ways when we hears of a fire we goes and watches where they fish and then we goes and sifts it over and washes it afterwards and then all the metal sinks to the bottom the way we does it is this here we takes a barrel cut in half and fills it with water and then shovels in the siftings and stirs them round and round and round with a stick then we throws out that water and puts in some fresh and stirs that there round again after some time the water gets clear and everything heavies fell to the bottom and then we see what it is and picks it out I've made from a pound to thirty shilling a day at that their work on lead alone the time the parliament houses was burnt the rubbish was shot in Hyde Park and Tom Jay and I goes to work it and while we were at it we didn't make less nor three pounds a piece a day we found sovereigns and half sovereigns and lots of silver half melted away and jewellery such as rings and stones and brooches but we never got half paid for them I found two sets of bracelets for a lady's arms and took them to a jeweller and he tried them just where the great heat had melted the catch away and found there was only metal double-plated or else he said as how he'd give us thirty pounds for them how some ever we take them down to a Jew in Petticoat Lane who used to buy things off us and he gives us seven pounds ten shillings for them we found so many things that at last Long Jay and I got to quarrel about the whacking there was cheating going on it wasn't all fair and above-board as it ought to be so he gets to fighting and kicks up such a jolly row that they wouldn't let us work no more and takes and buries the whole on the rubbish there's plenty of things under the ground along with it now if anybody could get at them there was just two loads of rubbish shot at one time in Bishop Bonner's fields which I worked by myself and what do you think I made out of that there why I made three pounds five shillings the rubbish was got out of a cellar what hadn't been stirred for fifty year or more so I think there ought to be something in it and I keeps my eye on it and watches where it's shot then I turns to work and the first thing I gets hold on is a chain which I takes to be copper it was so dirty but it turned out to be all solid gold and I gets one pound five shillings for it from the Jew after that I finds lots of copper and silver money and many things besides the reason I likes this sort of life is cause I can sit down when I likes and nobody can order me about when I'm hard up I knows as how I must work and then I goes at it like sticks are breaking and though the times isn't as they was I can go now and pick up my four or five bob a day where another wouldn't know how to get a brass faran end quote there is a strange tale in existence among the shore workers of a race of wild hogs inhabiting the sewers in the neighbourhood of Hampstead the story runs that a sow in young by some accident got down the sewer through an opening and wondering away from the spot littered and reared her offspring in the drain feeding on the awful and garbage into it continually here it is alleged the breed multiplied exceedingly and have become almost as ferocious as they are numerous this story apocryphal as it seems has nevertheless its believers and it is ingeniously argued that the reason why none of the subterranean animals have been able to make their way to the light of day is that they could only do so by reaching the mouth of the sewer at the riverside while in order to arrive at that point they must necessarily encounter the fleet ditch which runs towards the river with great rapidity and as it is the obstinate nature of a pig to swim against the stream the wild hogs of the sewers invariably work their way back to their original quarters and are thus never to be seen what seems strange in the matter is that the inhabitants of Hampstead never have been known to be any of these animals past beneath the greatings not have been disturbed by their gruntings the reader of course can believe as much of the story as he pleases and it is right to inform him that the sewer hunters themselves have never yet encountered any of the fabulous monsters of the Hampstead sewers End of Section 28 Section 29 of London Labour and the London Poor Volume 2 by Henry Mayhew this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Gillian Henry off the mudlarks there is another class who may be termed river finders although their occupation is connected only with the shore they are commonly known by the name of mudlarks from being compelled in order to obtain the articles they seek to wade sometimes up to their middle through the mud left on the shore the retiring tide these poor creatures are certainly about the most deplorable in their appearance of any I have met with in the course of my inquiries they may be seen of all ages from your childhood to positive decrepitude crawling among the barges at the various wharfs along the river it cannot be said that they are clad in rags for they are scarcely half covered by the tattered indescribable things that serve them for clothing their bodies are grimmed with the foul soil of the river and their torn garments stiffened up like boards with dirt of every possible description among the mudlarks may be seen many old women and it is indeed pitiable to behold them especially during the winter bent nearly double with age and infirmity paddling and groping among the wet mud for small pieces of coal of wood or any sort of refuse washed up by the tide these women always have with them an old basket or an old tin kettle in which they put whatever they chance to find it usually takes them a whole tide to fill this receptacle but when filled it is as much as the feeble old creatures are able to carry home the mudlarks generally live in some court or alley in the neighbourhood of the river and as the tide recedes crowds of boys and little girls some old men and many old women may be observed loitering about the various stairs watching eagerly for the opportunity to commence their labour when the tide is sufficiently low they scatter themselves along the shore separating from each other and soon disappear among the craft lying about in every direction there is a case on both sides of the river as high up as there is anything to be found extending as far as Vauxhall Bridge and as low down as Woolwich the mudlarks themselves however know only those who reside near them and whom they are accustomed to meet in their daily pursuits indeed with but few exceptions these people are dull and apparently stupid this is observable particularly among the boys and girls who when engaged in searching the mud hold out little converse one with another the men and women may be past and repast but they notice no one they never speak but with a stolid look of richness they plash their way through the mire their bodies bent down while they appear anxiously about and occasionally stoop to pick up some paltry treasure that falls in their way the mudlarks collect whatever they happen to find as coals, bits of old iron rope, bones and copper nails that drop from ships while lying or repairing a long shore copper nails are the most valuable of all the articles they find but these they seldom obtain as they are always driven from the neighborhood of a ship while being new sheathed sometimes the younger and bolder mudlarks venture on sweeping some empty coal barge and one little fellow with whom I spoke having been lately caught in the act of so doing had to undergo for the offence seven days imprisonment in the house of correction this he says he liked much better than mudlarking for while he stayed there he wore a coat and shoes and stockings and though he had not over much to eat he certainly was never afraid of going to bed without anything at all as he often had to do when at liberty he thought he would try it on again in the winter he told me saying it would be so comfortable to have clothes and shoes and stockings then than not be obliged to go into the cold wet mud of a morning the coals that the mudlarks find they sell to the poor people of the neighborhood at a penny per pot holding about 14 pounds the iron and bones and rope and copper nails which they collect at the rag shops they dispose of the iron at 5 pounds for a penny the bones at 3 pounds a penny rope at a hatene per pound wet and 3 farlings per pound dry and copper nails at the rate of 4 pounds per pound they occasionally pick up tools such as saws and hammers these they dispose off to the semen for biscuit and meat and sometimes sell them at the rag shops for a few halfpence in this manner they earn from tuppence to 8pence per day but rarely the latter some their average gains may be estimated at about 3pence per day the boys after leaving the river sometimes scrape their trousers and frequent the cab stands and try to earn a trifle by opening the cab doors for those who enter them or by holding gentlemen's horses some of them go in the evening to a ragged school in the neighbourhood of which they live more as they say because other boys go there than from any desire to learn at one of the stairs in the neighbourhood of the pool I collected about a dozen of these unfortunate children there was not one of them over 12 years of age and many of them were but 6 it would be almost impossible to describe the richard group who was their appearance so extraordinary their dress and so stallid and inexpressive their cantonances some carried baskets filled with the produce of their morning's work and others old tin kettles with iron handles some for want of these articles had old hats filled with the bones and coals they had picked up and others more needy still had actually taken the caps from their own heads they had happened to find the muddy slush was dripping from their clothes and utensils and forming a puddle in which they stood there did not appear to be among the whole group as many filthy cotton rags to their backs as when stitched together would have been sufficient to form the material of one shirt there were the remnants of one or two jackets among them but so begrimed and tattered that it would have been difficult to have determined whether the original material or make of the garment on questioning one he said his father was a coalbacker he had been dead 8 years the boy was 9 years old his mother was alive she went out charring and washing when she could get any such work to do she had a shilling a day when she could get employment but that was not often he remembered once to have had a pair of shoes but it was a long time since it is very cold in winter he said to stand in the mud without shoes but he did not mind it in the summer he had been 3 years mudlarking and supposed he should remain a mudlark all his life what else could he be for there was nothing else that he knew how to do some days he earned a penny and some days 4 pence he never earned 8 pence in one day that would have been a jolly lot of money he never found a saw or a hammer he only wished he could they would be glad to get hold of them at the dollies he had been one month at school before he went mudlarking some time ago he had gone to the ragged school but he no longer went there for he forgot it he could neither read nor write and did not think he could learn if he tried ever so much he didn't know what religion his father and mother were nor did know what religion meant God was God he had heard he was good but didn't know what good he was to him he thought he was a Christian but he didn't know what a Christian was he had heard of Jesus Christ once when he went to a Catholic chapel but he never heard tell of who or what he was and didn't particular care about knowing his father and mother were born in Aberdeen but he didn't know where Aberdeen was London was England and England he said was in London but he couldn't tell in what part he could not tell where he would go to when he died and didn't believe anyone could tell that prayers he told me were what people said to themselves at night he never said any and didn't know any his mother sometimes used to speak to him about them but he could never learn any his mother didn't go to church or to chapel because she had no clothes all the money he got he gave to his mother and she bought bread with it and when they had no money they lived the best way they could such was the amount of intelligence manifested by this unfortunate child another was only seven years old he stated that his father was a sailor who had been hurt on board ship and been unable to go to sea for the last two years he had two brothers and a sister one of them older than himself and his elder brother was a mudlark like himself the two had been mudlarking more than a year they went because they saw other boys go and knew that they got money for the things they found they were often hungry and glad to do anything to get something to eat their father was not able to earn anything and their mother could get but little to do they gave all the money they earned to their mother they would gamble and play at pitch and toss when they had got some money but some of the big boys did on the Sunday when they didn't go a mudlarking he couldn't tell why they did nothing on a Sunday only they didn't though sometimes they looked about to see where the best place would be on the next day he didn't go to the ragged school he should like to know how to read a book though he couldn't tell what good it would do him he didn't like mudlarking would be glad of something else but didn't know anything else that he could do another of the boys was the son of a dock labourer casually employed he was between seven and eight years of age and his sister who was also a mudlark formed one of the group the mother of these two was dead and there were three children younger than themselves the rest of the histories may easily be imagined for there was a painful uniformity in the stories of all the children they were either the children of the very poor who by their own in providence or some overwhelming calamity had been reduced to the extremity of distress or else they were orphans and compelled from utter destitution to seek for the means of appeasing their hunger in the mud of the river that the majority of this class are ignorant and without even the rudiments of education and that many of them from time to time are committed to prison for petty theft cannot be wondered at nor can it even excite our astonishment that once within the walls of a prison and finding how much more comfortable it is than their previous condition they should return to it repeatedly as for the females growing up under such circumstances the worst may be anticipated of them and in proof of this I have found upon inquiry that very many of the unfortunate creatures who swelled the tide of prostitution in Ratcliffe highway and other low neighbourhoods in the east of London have originally been mudlarks and only remained at that occupation till such time as they were capable of adopting the more easy and more lucrative life of the prostitute as to the numbers and earnings of the mudlarks the following calculations fall short of rather than exceed the truth from the execution dock to the lower part of Limehouse Hall there are 14 stairs or landing places by which the mudlarks descend to the shore in order to pursue their employment there are about as many on the opposite side of the water similarly frequented at King James's stairs in Wapping Wall which is nearly a central position from 40 to 50 mudlarks go down daily to the river are not so numerous if therefore we reckon the number of stairs on both sides of the river at 28 and the average number of mudlarks frequenting them at 10 each we shall have a total of 280 each mudlark it has been shown earns on an average thruppings a day or one shilling sixpins per week so that the annual earnings of each will be £3 18 shillings or say £4 a year and hence the gross earnings of the 280 will amount to rather more than £1,000 per annum but there are in addition to the mudlarks employed in the neighbourhood of what may be called the pool many others who work down the river at various places as far as Blackwall on the one side and at Detford, Greenwich and Willich on the other these frequent the neighbourhoods of the various yards along shore where vessels are being built and hence at certain times chips, small pieces of wood bits of iron and copper nails are washed out into the river there is but little doubt that this portion of the class earn much more than the mudlarks of the pool seeing that they are especially convenient to the places where the iron vessels are constructed so that the presumption is that the number of mudlarks at work on the banks of the Thames especially if we include those above bridge and the value of the property extracted by them from the mud of the river may be fairly estimated at double that which is stated above or say £550 gaining £2,000 per annum as an illustration of the doctrines I have endeavoured to enforce throughout this publication I cite the following history of one of the above class it may serve to teach those who are still skeptical as to the degrading influence of circumstances upon the poor that many of the humbler classes if placed in the same easy position as ourselves would become perhaps quite as respectable members of society the lad of whom I speak was discovered by me now nearly two years ago mudlarking on the banks of the river near the docks he was a quick intelligent little fellow and had been at the business he told me about three years he had taken to mudlarking he said because his clothes were too bad for him to look for anything better he worked every day with 20 or 30 boys who might all be seen at daybreak with their trousers tucked up groping about and picking out the pieces of coal from the mud on the banks of the Thames he went into the river up to his knees and in searching the mud he often ran pieces of glass and long nails into his feet when this was the case he went home and dressed the wounds but returned to the riverside directly for should the tide come up he added without my having found something why I must starve till the next low tide in the very cold weather he and his other shoeless companions used to stand in the hot water that ran down the riverside from some of the steam factories to warm their frozen feet at first he found it difficult to keep his footing in the mud and he had known many beginners fall in he came to my house at my request the morning after my first meeting with him it was the depth of winter and the poor little fellow was nearly destitute of clothing his trousers were worn away up to his knees he had no shirt legs and feet which were bare were covered with chill blends on being questioned by me he gave the following account of his life he was 14 years old he had two sisters one 15 and the other 12 years of age his father had been dead nine years the man had been a coal whipper and from getting his work from one of the publican employers of those days had become a confirmed drunkard when he married he held a situation in a warehouse where his wife managed the first year to save £4 10 chillings out of her husband's earnings but from the day he took to coal whipping she had never saved one hypny indeed she and her children were often left to starve the man whilst in a state of intoxication had fallen between two barges and the injuries he received had been so severe that he had lingered in a helpless state for three years before his death after her husband's decease the poor women's neighbours subscribed £1.05 chillings for her with this sum she opened a greengrocer's shop and got on very well for five years when the boy was nine years old his mother sent him to the red lion school at Greenbank near old gravel lane Ratcliffe highway she paid a penny a week for his learning he remained there for a year then the potato rot came and his mother lost upon all she bought about the same time two of her customers died 30 chillings in her debt this loss together with the potato disease completely ruined her and the whole family had been in the greatest poverty from that period then she was obliged to take all her children from the school that they might help to keep themselves as best they could her eldest girl sold fish in the streets and the boy went to the riverside to pick up his living the change however was so great that shortly afterwards the little fellow lay ill 18 weeks with the ague as soon as the boy recovered his mother and his two sisters were taken bad with a fever the poor women went into the great house and the children were taken to the fever hospital the mother returned home she was too weak to work and all she had to depend upon was what her boy brought from the river they had nothing to eat and no money until the little fellow had been down to the shore and picked up some coals selling them for a trifle and hard enough he had to work for what he got poor boy said his mother to me on a future occasion sobbing still he never complained he was quite proud when he brought home enough for us to get a bit of meat with and when he has sometimes seen me down hearted he has clung round my neck and assured me that one day God would see as cared for if I would put my trust in him as soon as his mother was well enough she sold fruit in the streets or went out washing when she could get a day's work the lad suffered much from the pieces of broken glass in the mud one time before I met with him he had run a copper nail into his foot this lamed him for three months and his mother was obliged to carry him on her back every morning to the doctor as soon however as he could hobble to use his mother's own words he went back to the river and often returned after many hours hard work in the mud with only a few pieces of coal not enough to sell even to get them a bit of bread when he was warming his feet in the water that ran from a steam factory he heard some boys talking about the ragged school in high street whopping they was saying what they used to learn there I did the boy they asked me to come along with them for it was great fun they told me that all the boys used to be laughing and making game of the master they said they used to put out the gas and chuck the slates all about they told me too that there was a good fire there so I went to have a warm and see what it was like when I got there the master was very kind to me they used to give us tea parties and to keep us quiet they used to show us the magic lantern I soon got to like going there and went every night for six months there was about 40 or 50 boys in the school the most of them was thieves and they used to go feeding the coals out of the barges along shore and cutting the ropes off ships and selling it at the rag shops they used to get three farthings a pound for the rope when dry and a hipney when wet some used to steal pudding out of shops and hand it to those outside and the last boy it was handed to would go off with it they used to steal bacon and bread sometimes as well about half of the boys at the school was thieves some had work to do at ironmongers lead factories, engineers soap boilers and so on they had work to do and was good boys still after we came out of school at nine o'clock at night some of the bad boys would go off eating perhaps half a dozen and from that to eight would go out in a gang together there was one big boy of the name of C he was 18 years old and is in prison now for stealing bacon I think he is in the house of correction this C used to go out of school before any of us and wait outside the door when the boys came out then he would call the boys he wanted for his gangs on one side and tell them where to go and steal he used to look out in the daytime for shops where things could be pricked and at night he would tell the boys to go to them he was called the captain of the gangs he had about three gangs all together with him and there were from six to eight boys in each gang the boys used to bring what they stole to see and he used to share it with them I belong to one of the gangs there were six boys all together in my gang the biggest lad that knowed all about the thieving was the captain of the gang I was in and C was captain over him and over all of us there was two brothers of them you seed them sir the night you first met me the other boys as was in my gang was BB and BL and WB and a boy we used to call Tim these with myself one of the gangs and we all of us used to go a thieving every night after school hours when the tide would be right up and we had nothing to do along shore we used to go thieving in the daytime as well it was BB and BL as first put me up to go thieving they took me with them one night up the lane note you gravel lane and I see them take some bread out of a bakers and they wasn't found out I used to go with them regular then I joined C's gang and after that C came and told us that his gang could do better than ours and he asked us to join our gang to hisen and we did so sometimes we used to make three shillings or four shillings a day or about sixpence a piece while waiting outside the school doors before they opened we used to plan up where we would go thieving after school was over I was taken up once for thieving I was called myself but I was let go again end quote I was so much struck with the boy's truthfulness of manner that I asked him would he really lead a different life if he saw a means of so doing he assured me he would and begged me earnestly to try him upon his leaving me two shillings were given him for his trouble this small sum I afterwards learned kept the family for more than a fortnight the girl laid it out in sprats it's been then wintertime these she sold in the streets I mentioned the fact to a literary friend who interested himself in the boy's welfare and eventually succeeded in procuring him a situation at an eminent printers the sub-joined letter will show how the lad conducted himself while there White Friars April 22nd 1850 Messers Bradbury and Evans beg to say that the boy J.C. has conducted himself in a very satisfactory manner since he has been in their employment the same literary friend took the girl into his service she is in a situation still though not in the same family the boy now holds a good situation at one of the daily newspaper offices so well has he behaved himself that a few weeks since his wages were increased from six shillings to nine shillings per week his mother, owing to the boy's exertions, has now a little shop and is doing well this simple story requires no comments and is narrated here in the hope that it may teach many to know how often the poor boys reared in the gutter our thieves merely because society forbids them being honest lads End of section 29