Volume 3 — BALLAST-MEN. (continued 2)

I then took, for the sake of avoiding repetition, the statements of two ballast-heavers together—constant men—working under different publicans. The account they gave me of the way in which the publicans contracted to ballast a ship was the same as I have given elsewhere.

“I have been twenty years a ballast-heaver,” said one, “and all that time I have worked for a publican, and haven’t a coat to my back. Twenty years ago the publicans had the same number of hands, but had more work for them, and I might then earn 20s. a-week; but I couldn’t fetch that home from the publican. He expected me to spend one-half of my earnings with him; and when I left his house drunk, I might spend the other half. I’ve drunk gallons of drink against my will. I’ve drunk stuff that was poison to me. I turned teetotaler about six months ago, and the publican, my employer, sacked me when he found it out, saying, ‘He’d be d——d if he’d have such men as me—he didn’t make his living by teetotalers.’”

“Yes,” added the other man, “and so my publican told me; for I turned teetotaler myself somewhere about seven years ago, and took the pledge from Father Mathew in the Commercial-road. The publican told me, that if Father Mathew chose to interfere with me, why Father Mathew might get employment for me, for he—that’s the publican—wouldn’t. So I was forced to break my pledge to live—me and my youngsters—I had six then, and I’ve buried two since.”

“Work,” resumed the man who first gave me the statement, “keeps getting worse. Last week I carried only 8s. home, and if I’d got paid by the captain of the ship for the amount of work I did, and on the same terms as the publican, I should have taken home at the very least 16s. The publican that employs us gives us only 8s. a-score, and receives 10s. from the captain. All the publicans don’t do this; some give what they get from the captain, but some publicans takes two-thirds, and that’s the truth. (The second man assented.) One week with another I’ve taken home, this winter, from 12s. to 13s., and but for this shameful starvation system, having to work for a publican’s profit, and to drink his drink, I’d take home my 20s. every week. It makes a man feel like a slave; indeed, I’m not much better. We should be in heaven if we got away from the publican or butcher either; it’s compulsion one’s life through. Some of the publicans have as many as sixty single men lodging in their houses, paying half-a crown a-week; ay, and men that don’t lodge with them, when the house is full, must pay half-a-crown all the same, to get a job of work, as well as paying for the places where they do lodge.”

The first man continued:—

“The gin and rum is the worst that can be supplied; but we must drink it or waste it. We often spill it on the ballast, it’s that bad”—[“Often, often,” was the response of the other man.] “And that’s not the worst. When we get a job of putting sixty tons of ballast on board, we are forced to take six pots of beer with us to our work; but only four pots are supplied, and we must pay for six. We are robbed on every side. I cannot describe how bad it is; a man would hardly believe it; but all will tell you the same—all the men like us.” [So, indeed, the poor fellows did afterwards.] “When we call to be paid, we are kept for hours in a cold tap-room, forced to drink cold stuff without being let have a strike of fire to take the chill off it.”

The other man then made a further statement.

“I’ve been forced to put my sticks in pawn—what I had left—for I was better off once, though I was always a ballast-heaver and have worked for the same publican fourteen years. I have 3l. in pawn now, I blame this present system for being so badly off—sorrow a thing else! Now just look at this: A single man, a lodger, will go into a publican’s and call for 1s. worth of rum, and the publican will call me a scaly fellow, if I don’t do the same; that will be when I’d rather be without his rum, if I got it for nothing.” One publican (the men gave me this account concurrently, and it was fully confirmed by a host of others,) married the niece of a waterman employed to pull the harbour-master about the river. He kept a public-house, and carried on the system of lodgers for ballast-heaving, making a great deal of money out of them; by this means he got so much work at his command, that the rest of the publicans complained to the harbour-master, and the man was forced to give up his public-house. When he had to give it up he made it over to his niece’s husband, and that man allowed him 1s. for every ship he brought him to ballast. “I’ve known him—that’s the publican that succeeded the man I’ve been telling you of—have 40 ships in a day: one week with another he has had 100 ships; that’s 5l., and he has them still. It’s the same now. We’ve both worked for him. His wife’s uncle (the harbour-master’s waterman) says to the captains, and he goes on board to see them after the harbour-master’s visit to them,—‘Go to ——; get your ballast of him, and I’ll give you the best berth in the river.’”

I next obtained an interview with a young man who was the victim of a double extortion. He made the following statement:—

“I work under a publican, and lodge in his house. I have done so for five years. I pay 2s. 6d. a-week, there being ten of us in two rooms. We’re all single men. These two rooms contain four beds, three in the larger room and one in the other. We sleep two in a bed, and should have to sleep three in some; only two of the men don’t occupy the lodgings they pay for. The bigger room may be 16 feet by 10; the smaller about a quarter that size. You cannot turn in it—the bed cannot be brought out of the room without being taken to pieces. We must cook in the tap-room, which is a room for the purpose; it contains forms and an old table, with a large grate. We are found fryingpans and gridirons, and pans, and fire, and candle; but we must find our own knives and forks. The room is shamefully dirty—I mean the tap (cooking) room. It looks as if it hadn’t been washed for years. It’s never been washed to my knowledge. The bed-rooms are very little better. The bedding is very bad—a flock bed, with a pair of blankets and quilt, and a sort of sheet clean once a-fortnight. There’s very bad ventilation and very unpleasant smells. It’s a horrid den altogether. None of us would stop there if we could help it—but we can’t help it, for if we leave we get no work. We are forced to find locks for our rooms, to keep our bits of things from being stolen. One man was robbed; my clothes was in the box with his; the box was broken open, but the clothes was left, and a few halfpence put away in the box was taken. There’s lots of bugs; we can only sleep after hard work, and we must drink when we’re at work. I’ve poured my beer into the river many a time, it was so bad—it tasted poisonous. We’ve drank Thames water rather than the bad beer we’re all forced to drink. To show how we’re treated I’ll tell you this: I owe so much, and so much a week’s stopped to pay it; but it never gets less, I am always charged the same. There it is, the same figures are on the slate, keep paying, paying off as you will. They won’t rub it off, or if they do rub it off it’s there again the next time. Only last week a man was discharged for grumbling, because he objected to paying twice over. He hasn’t had a day’s work since.”

Then came one who was the employé of a publican and grocer. He said:

“I work under a publican and grocer. I’m any man’s man. I stand with my fingers in my mouth at Ratcliff-cross watching, and have done it these last nine years. Half of us is afraid to come and speak to you. When I volunteered, the big-whiskered and fat-faced men (foremen) were looking at me and threatening me for coming to you. No matter, I care for nobody. Worse nor I am I can’t be. No more I can’t. I go to one publican’s to work 60 tons, and for that I get 4s., but 6s. is my rights. The remainder 2s. is left—I’m forced to leave it—for me to drink out on Sunday night. If I was in a fair house the publican would pay me 7s. 6d.; as it is I get 4s. and 2s. must be drunk,—it’s the rule at that house—he’s in opposition and works low. If I was at liberty it wasn’t to his house I’d go for a drink. The hardest-drinking man gets work first, and when a man’s drunk he doesn’t care what stuff he puts into his belly. Before we go to a job the four of us are expected to drink half-a-pint of rum or gin; the publicans expect it. If I was a teetotaler I must pay my whack and the other men may drink it, for the score against the ship is divided among the men equal.

“Suppose two foremen were to meet and have a drop of rum or brandy together, and a little talk about a ship’s ballast, that’s charged to us poor fellows—it’s stuck up to us—but we mustn’t say nothing, though we know we never had a sup of it; but if we say a word it’s all up—no more work.

“Once on a time I worked for a publican close by here, and when I came to the house I had nothing to drink. My oldest mate whispered to me as we were on our way from the London Dock, and told me to speak my mind, for he knew there was a false score chalked against the ship; and the others was afraid to say a word. Well, I did speak when I got into the house, and the foreman was there, and he asked me what business I had to speak more than another? There was 6s. charged to the score for drink that we never touched or ever saw,—not a sup of it. He—that’s the foreman—told me I shouldn’t go to finish the ship; I said I would, in spite of him. I told the missus I expected she wouldn’t give any more drink but what we had ourselves, or would get when we came home; and she said she wouldn’t; and that’s two years ago; but I haven’t had a job from them parties since.

“Suppose I get to the public-house for my money at six in the evening, I am forced to wait there till eleven, until I am drunk very often—drunk from vexation; stopt when I’m hungry after five or six hours’ work on the river, and not let take the money home to my wife and family, nor let have anything to eat, for I’m waiting for that money to get a bit of grub; but when I’m half drunk the hunger goes off just for a time. I must go and drink in a morning if my children go without breakfast, and starve all day till I come home at night. I can get nothing from my employers but drink. If I ask them for a shilling I can’t get it. I’ve finished my load of ballast without breaking my fast but on the beer we’re forced to take with us.

“I’ve found grocers better to work under than publicans,—there’s a great deal more honesty in them. They charge a middling fair price; but they’ll have tow-row out of it,—that’s dry money—so much a score. They’ll stop 6d. a score only for giving us a job. I can get as good sugar as I get of them at 4d. for 3½d.; but then the difference between the grocer and publican is, that the wife and family can have a bit of something to eat under the grocer, but not under the publican. All goes in drink with the publican; but we cannot carry drink home. When I go home drunk from the publican’s, I tumble on the floor, perhaps, and say, ‘Is there anything to eat for me?’ and my old woman says, ‘Where’s the money? give me that and I’ll give you something to eat.’ Then a man gets mad with vexation, and the wife and children runs away from him; they are glad to get away with their lives, they’re knocked about so. It makes a man mad with vexation to see a child hungry,—it kills me; but what the foreman gives me I must take; I dare never say no. If I get nothing—if all is gone in drink—I must go from him with a blithe face to my starving children, or I need never go back to him for another job.”

I shall now set forth as fully as possible the nature of the system by which the ballast-heaver is either forced by the fear of losing all chance of future employment, or induced by the hope of obtaining the preference of work from the publican, his employer, to spend at least one half of his earnings every week in intoxicating drinks. Let me, however, before proceeding directly to the subject of my present communication, again lay before the reader the conclusions which I lately drew from the Metropolitan Police returns for 1848, concerning the intemperance of the labouring classes of London. It is essential that I should first prove the fact, and show its necessary consequences. This done, the public will be more ready to perceive the cause, and to understand that until this and similar social evils are removed, it is worse than idle to talk of “the elevation of the masses,” and most unjust, to use the mildest term, to condemn the working men for sins into which they are positively forced. To preach about the virtues of teetotalism to the poor, and yet to allow a system to continue that compels them to be drunk before they can get work—not to say bread—is surely a mockery. If we would really have the industrious classes sober and temperate men, we must look first, it seems, to their employers. We have already seen that the intemperance of the coal-labourer is the fault of the employer, rather than the man; but we have only to go among the ballast-labourers to find the demoralization of the working man arising, not from any mere passive indifference, but from something like a positive conspiracy on the part of the master.

According to the criminal returns for the metropolis, there were 9197 males and 7264 females, making altogether a total of 16,461 individuals, charged with drunkenness in the year 1848. This makes one in every 110 individuals in London a drunkard—a proportion which, large as it seems, is still less than one-half what it was some ten or fifteen years back.

For the sake of comparison I subjoin, in the following page, a Table, taken from the Government Report on Drunkenness; being a return of the number of charges of drunkenness which have been entered upon the books of the Metropolitan Police in the years 1831, 1832, and 1833, with the number of officers employed in, and the locality of, each division: also the amount of population in each, according to the Parliamentary returns of 1831.

NUMBER OF CHARGES OF DRUNKENNESS EACH YEAR IN THE YEARS 1831, 1832, 1833.

Locality of each Division. No. of Officers employed in each Division.Computed Population in each Division, according to the Parliamentary Returns.1831.1832.1833.Public-Houses and Beer-Shops in each Division.

Males.Females.Total.Males.Females.Total.Males.Females.Total.Public Houses.Beer-Shops.Total.

A. Whitehall1206,23840623063638424362737122859932537

B. Westminster16853,1471,5968002,3961,8298312,6601,8641,1933,05718658244

C. St. James’s188105,8622,2901,1273,4172,1191,0553,1742,2081,2563,46430220322

D. St. Marylebone166122,2061,3757272,1021,3006501,9501,0196051,62414854202

E. Holborn16875,2411,7851,0792,8641,2418972,1388796181,49724919368

F. Covent Garden16841,0102,2381,5553,7932,1651,6173,7821,6651,3883,05330928332

G. Finsbury236115,2662,1411,4233,5642,1921,4403,6321,9161,2703,186368100468

H. Whitechapel191119,0421,2538122,0651,6311,2682,8991,8031,2953,098359102461

K. Stepney296143,1378995741,4731,3877322,1191,1257621,887437131568

L. Lambeth191101,5611,7321,2713,0031,5811,2342,8151,2919442,23518370153

M. Southwark189107,5371,6551,0502,7051,4709822,4521,2848432,12732166387

N. Islington269140,4078503731,2231,1655731,7388264091,235267144311

P. Camberwell24377,82525687343201752762038028313896234

R. Greenwich21258,77836313750051324075341821062828351334

S. Hampstead223112,1365733018746133269396973191,01613874212

T. Kensington18470,2961242414830310941246413760122093313

V. Wandsworth18662,03921235247210602702355529013376209

Total3,3981,511,72819,74811,60531,35320,30412,33232,63618,26811,61229,8804,0731,1875,155

Locality of each Division. No. of Officers employed in each Division.Computed Population in each Division, according to the Parliamentary Returns.1831.

Males.Females.Total.

A. Whitehall1206,238406230636

B. Westminster16853,1471,5968002,396

C. St. James’s188105,8622,2901,1273,417

D. St. Marylebone166122,2061,3757272,102

E. Holborn16875,2411,7851,0792,864

F. Covent Garden16841,0102,2381,5553,793

G. Finsbury236115,2662,1411,4233,564

H. Whitechapel191119,0421,2538122,065

K. Stepney296143,1378995741,473

L. Lambeth191101,5611,7321,2713,003

M. Southwark189107,5371,6551,0502,705

N. Islington269140,4078503731,223

P. Camberwell24377,82525687343

R. Greenwich21258,778363137500

S. Hampstead223112,136573301874

T. Kensington18470,29612424148

V. Wandsworth18662,03921235247

Total3,3981,511,72819,74811,60531,353

1832.1833.Public-Houses and Beer-Shops in each Division.

Males.Females.Total.Males.Females.Total.Public Houses.Beer-Shops.Total.

38424362737122859932537

1,8298312,6601,8641,1933,05718658244

2,1191,0553,1742,2081,2563,46430220322

1,3006501,9501,0196051,62414854202

1,2418972,1388796181,49724919368

2,1651,6173,7821,6651,3883,05330928332

2,1921,4403,6321,9161,2703,186368100468

1,6311,2682,8991,8031,2953,098359102461

1,3877322,1191,1257621,887437131568

1,5811,2342,8151,2919442,23518370153

1,4709822,4521,2848432,12732166387

1,1655731,7388264091,235267144311

201752762038028313896234

51324075341821062828351334

6133269396973191,01613874212

30310941246413760122093313

210602702355529013376209

20,30412,33232,63618,26811,61229,8804,0731,1875,155

Now, comparing these returns with those of the year before last, we find that the decrease of intemperance in the metropolis has been most extraordinary. In the year 1831, 1 in every 48 individuals was drunk; in 1832 the number increased to 1 in 46; whereas in 1833 it decreased to 1 in 50; and in 1848 the average had again fallen to 1 individual to every 110. This decrease of intemperance was attended with a similar decrease in the number of metropolitan beer-shops. In 1833 there were 1182, and in 1848 only 779 beer-shops in London. Whether this decrease preceded or succeeded, and so was the cause or the consequence of the increased sobriety of the people, it is difficult to say. The number of public-houses in London, however, had increased during the same period from 4073 to 4275. Upon the cause and effect of this I leave others to speculate.

Of the total, 16,461 persons, male and female, who were charged with being intoxicated in the year 1848, no less than one individual in every seven belonged to the labouring class: and, excluding the females from the number, we shall find that, of the males, every fourth individual that was taken up for drunkenness was a labouring man. Taking the whole population of London, temperate and intemperate, only 1 in every 110 is a drunkard; but with the labouring classes the average is as high as 1 in every 22. Of course, where the habit of drinking is excessive, we may expect to find also excessive pugnacity. That it is the tendency of all intoxicating liquors to increase the irritability of the individual is well known. We might infer therefore, à priori, that the greater number of common assaults would be committed by the greatest drunkards. In 1848 there were 7780 individuals assaulted in London, and nearly one-fourth of these, or 1882, were attacked by labouring men, one in every 26 of the entire body of labourers having been charged with this offence. The “simple larceny,” of which the labouring classes appear, by the same returns, to be more guilty than any other body of individuals, is also explained by their inordinate intemperance. When a man’s bodily energy is destroyed by drink, labour is so irksome to him that he would sooner peril his liberty than work. What wonder, then, that as many as 1 in every 28 labourers should be charged with theft? Whereas, of the rest of the population there are only 1 in every 226 individuals. Thus, of the labouring classes, 1 in every 22 is charged with being drunk; 1 in every 26 with committing an assault; and 1 in every 28 with being guilty of simple larceny.

For the truth of the connexion existing between drink, pugnacity, and theft, I would refer to the statement of one of the most intelligent and experienced of the coal whippers,—one, indeed, to whose unceasing and heroic exertions that class principally owe their redemption:—“The children of the coal-whippers,” he told me, “were, under the old system, almost reared in the tap-room.” He himself had known as many as 500 youths that were transported; and this, be it remembered, out of a class numbering only 2000 men.

Such, then, are the proved consequences of an inordinate use of intoxicating liquors. It becomes, therefore, the duty of every one who is anxious for the well-being of the people, to diminish the occasions for drinking wherever possible. To permit the continuance of certain systems of employment and payment, which are well known, both to tempt and compel the men to indulge in intoxicating liquors, is at once to breed the very crimes that it is the office of Government to suppress. The custom pursued by the coal-merchants of paying the labourers in their employ in public-houses, as I lately exposed, appeared bad enough. The “backer,” jaded and depressed with his excessive work through the day, was entrapped into the public-house in the evening, under the pretence of receiving his wages. Once inside he was kept waiting there hour after hour by the publican (who of course was out of silver, and had to send some distance for it). Beer is called for by the men in the meantime. Under the influence of the stimulant, the fatigue and the depression begin to leave the labourers, the burden that is still on their backs (it will be remembered that such is the description of the men themselves) is shaken off, and their muscles no longer ache and are stiff, but relax, while their flagging spirits gradually revive under the potent charm of the liquor. What wonder, then, that the poor creatures finding it so easy, and when the habit is once formed, so pleasant, a cure for their ills, should be led to follow up one draught with another and another? This system appeared to me to be vicious enough, and to display a callousness on the part of the employers that quite startled me. But the system under which the ballast-labourers are now suffering, is an infamy hardly to be credited as flourishing in these days. I have, therefore, been at considerable pains to establish such a mass of evidence upon the subject as shall make all earnest men look upon the continuance of such a system as a national dishonour.

Meeting of the Ballast-Heavers’ Wives.

Before dealing with the Lumpers, or those who discharge the timber from ships—in contradistinction to the stevedores, or those who stow the cargoes of vessels,—I will give the following report of a meeting of the ballast-heavers’ wives. It is the wife and children who are the real sufferers from the intemperance of the working-man; and being anxious to give the public some idea of the amount of misery entailed upon these poor creatures by the compulsory and induced drunkenness of the husbands, I requested as many as could leave their homes to meet me at the British and Foreign School, in Shakespeare-walk, Shadwell. The meeting consisted of the wives of ballast-heavers and coal-whippers. The wives of the coal-whippers had come there to contrast their present state with their past, with a view of showing the misery they had endured when their husbands were under the same thraldom to the publican as the ballast-heavers are now, and the comparative happiness which they have experienced since they were freed from it. They had attended unsolicited, in the hope, by making their statements public, of getting for the ballast-heavers the same freedom from the control of the publican which the coal-whippers had obtained.

The meeting consisted of the wives of ballast-heavers and coal-whippers, thirty-one were present. Of the thirty-one, nine were the wives of coal-whippers, the remaining twenty-two the wives of ballast-heavers. Many others, who had expressed a desire to attend, were prevented by family cares and arrangements; but, small as the meeting was comparatively, it afforded a very fair representation of the circumstances and characters of their husbands. For instance, those who were coal-whippers’ wives appeared comfortable and “well to do.” They wore warm gowns, had on winter-bonnets and clean tidy caps underneath; the ballast-heavers’ wives, on the contrary, were mostly ragged, dejected, and anxious-looking.

An endeavour was made to ascertain in the first instance how many children each person had. This was done by questioning them separately; and from the answers it appeared that they all had families. Eight had one child each, the rest varied from two to eight, and one woman stated that she had twelve children, all of whom were living, but that only four resided now with her and her husband. Five had infants in their arms, and several had children sick, either at home or in some hospital.

In the next place the ballast-heavers’ wives were asked whether their husbands worked under publicans? “All of them,” was the reply, “work under publicans;” and, said one, “Worse luck for us,”—a sentiment that was very warmly concurred in by all the rest.

This fact having been specifically ascertained from each woman, we proceeded to inquire from them separately how much their husbands earned, and how much of their earnings was spent at the publicans’ houses through which they obtained work, or where they were paid.

“My husband,” said the first woman, “works under a publican, and I know that he earns now 12s. or 13s. a-week, but he brings home to me only half-a-crown, and sometimes not so much. He spends all the rest at a public-house where he gets his jobs, and often comes home drunk.”

“My husband,” exclaimed the second, “will sometimes get from 24s. to 28s. a-week, but I never see anything the likes o’ that money from him. He spends it at the publican’s. And when he has earned 24s. he will sometimes bring home only 2s. or 2s. 6d. We are badly off, you may be sure, when the money goes in this way. But my husband cannot help spending it, for he is obliged to get his jobs at the public-house.”

“Last week,” interposed another, “we had not one penny coming into our house; and the week before—which was Christmas week—my husband got two jobs which would come, he told me, to 8s. or 9s. if he had brought it all home; but he only brought me 1s. This was all the money I had to keep me and my five children for the whole week; and I’m sure I don’t know how we got through. This is all owing to the public-house. And when we go to fetch our husbands at eleven or twelve o’clock at night they shut us out, and say they are not there, though we know very well they are inside in a back place. My husband has been kept in that back place many a time till two or three in the morning—then he has been turned out and come home drunk, without 6d. in his pocket, though the same day he has received 8s. or 9s. at the same public-house.”

“They go to the public-house,” added another woman, “to get jobs, and to curry favour they spend their money there, because if they did not spend their money they would never get a job. The men who will drink the greatest quantity of money will get the most jobs. This leaves their families and their wives miserable, and I am sure me and my poor family are miserable enough.”

“But this,” interposed a quiet, elderly woman, “is the beginning of the tenth week, in all of which my husband has only had four jobs, and all I have received of him during that time is 1s. 3½d. a-week, and we stand in 2s. 6d. a-week rent. I am sure I don’t know how we get along. But our publicans are very civil, for my husband works for two. Still, if he does not drink a good part of it away we know very well he will get no more work.”

“It is very little,” said a female with an infant in her arms, “that my husband earns; and of what little he does earn he does not fetch much to me. He got one job last week, heaving 45 tons, and he fetched me home 1s. 6d. for it. I was then in lodgings at 1s. 6d. a-week, but I could not afford them, but now I’m in lodgings at 9d. a-week. This week he has no work yet. In Christmas week my man told me he earned 25s., and I believe he did, but he only fetched me home 8s. or 9s. on Saturday. My husband works for a publican, and it was at his house he spent his money. One day last week he asked the publican to give him a job, and he said, ‘I cannot give you a job, for there is nothing against you on the slate but 1s.,’ and so he got none there. My infant is six weeks old to-day, and this woman by me (appealing to the female next to her) knows well it is the truth that I tell—that for two nights in last week my child and myself were obliged to go to bed breadless. We had nothing neither of those two days. It was the same in one night the week before Christmas, though my husband received that night 8s., but all was spent at the public-house. On Christmas night we could not get any supper. We had no money, and I took the gown off my back and pawned it for 2s. to provide something for us to eat. I have nothing else to say but this—that whatever my husband earns I get little or nothing of it, for it goes to the public-house where he gets his jobs.”

An infirm woman, approaching fifty years of age, who spoke in a tone of sorrowful resignation, said,—“We have had very little money coming in of late. My husband has been very bad for ten weeks back. He throws up blood; I suppose he has strained himself too much. All the money I have had for six weeks to keep us both has been 8s. If he was earning money he would bring it to me.”

Another woman, “Not without the publican’s allowance, I am sure.”

The first woman, “No; the publican’s allowance would be taken off; but the publican, you see, must have a little—I do not know how much it is, but they must have something if they give us their jobs.”

This woman was here asked if her husband ever came home drunk?

“Yes,” she replied; “many a time he comes home drunk; but he must have the drink to get the jobs.”

A number of other women having made statements confirmatory of the above:—

“Do you think,” the meeting was asked, “your husbands would be sober as well as industrious men if they could be got away from the public-house system of employment and payment of wages?”

“God Almighty bless you!” exclaimed one woman, “they would love us and their families all the better for it! We should all be much the better for it.”

“And so say all of us!” was the next and perfectly unanimous exclamation.

“If we could see that day,” said one who had spoken before, “our families would have little to complain of.”

Another added, “The night-houses ought to be closed. That would be one good thing.”

Some inquiries were then made as to whether these poor women were ill-treated by their husbands when they came home in a state of intoxication. There was a good deal of hesitation before any answers could be obtained. At last one woman said, “her husband did certainly beat her, of course; but then,” she added, “he did not know what he was doing.”

“I,” said another, “should not know what it was to have an angry word with my husband if he was always sober. He is a quiet man—very, when the drink is out of him; but we have many words together when he is tipsy; and——” she stopped without completing the sentence.

Several others gave similar testimony; and many declared that it was the public-house system which led their husbands to drink.

One woman here said that the foremen of gangs, as well as the publican, helped to reduce the ballast-heaver’s earnings; for they gave work to men who took lodgings from them, though they did not occupy them.

This was confirmed by another woman, who spoke with great warmth upon the subject. She said that married men who could not afford to spend with the publican and lodge with the foremen in the manner pointed out, would be sure to have no work. Other men went straight from one job to another, while her own husband and other women’s husbands had been three or four weeks without lifting a shovelful of ballast. She considered this was very hard on men who had families.

A question was here asked, whether any women were present whose husbands, in order to obtain work, were obliged to pay for lodgings which they did not use?

One immediately rose and said, “They do it regularly at a publican’s in Wapping; and I know the men that have paid for them have had six jobs together, when my husband has had none for weeks.” “There are now,” added another, “fourteen at that very place who never lodge there, though they are paying for lodgings.”

They were next asked, who had suffered from want owing to their husbands drinking their earnings, as described at the public-houses in question?

“Starvation has been my lot,” said one. “And mine,” added another. “My children,” said a third, “have often gone to bed at night without breaking their fast the whole length of the day.” “And mine,” said one, “have many a time gone without a bit or sup of anything all the day, through their father working for the publican.”

“I cannot,” exclaimed the next, “afford my children a ha’porth of milk a-day.”

“Many a time,” said one, who appeared to be very much moved, “have I put my four children to bed, when the only meal they have had the whole day has been 1lb. of bread; but it’s of no use opening my mouth.”

“I,” said the last, “have been in London twenty-seven years, and during that time I can safely say I have never taken myself a single glass of spirits or anything else; but in that time I have suffered the martyrdom of forty years—all through my husband and the public-house. I have two children who bring me in, one of them 2s. 6d. and the other 6s. 6d. a-week, which is all we have, for my husband gets nearly nothing. If he could bring his earnings home, instead of spending them at a public-house, we should be very comfortable.”

These questions led to one concerning the late-hour system at the public-houses frequented by the ballast-heavers.

“I often go for my husband,” said one, “at one or two o’clock in the morning, after I know he has been paid; but they have kept him in a back apartment away from me, till I have threatened to smash the windows if they did not let him out. I threatened to smash the windows because my children were wanting the money for bread, which he was spending there. If our husbands were inclined to come home sober there is little chance, for they have cards and bagatelle to keep them till they become heady, and when they are become heady, there is nothing left for their families—then the publicans kick our poor men out, and lock the doors.”

This statement was confirmed, and after several other persons had described their feelings,—

The coal-whippers’ wives were asked whether or not their condition and that of their families had been improved since the system of carrying on the trade had been altered by the Legislature?

The answer was a most decisive affirmative. Their husbands, they said, used to spend all, or very nearly all, their earnings with the publicans; but now, when they got a good ship, they brought home the greatest part of their earnings, which was sufficient to make their families comfortable. Their husbands had become quite different men. They used to ill-treat them when they were paid at a public-house—very much so, because of the drink; but now they were very much altered, because they were become sober men to what they were. None were now distressed to provide for their families, and if there was plenty of work they would be quite happy. The improvement, one woman said, must be very great, otherwise there would not be so many institutions and benefit societies, pension societies, and schools for their children.

This declaration was very warmly applauded by the wives of the ballast-heavers. They declared that similar measures would produce similar benefits in their case, and they hoped the day would soon come when they should be secure in the enjoyment of them.

So terminated the proceedings.