Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/The docks and the dock-gates
THE DOCKS AND THE DOCK-GATES.
Here we are at Aldgate Pump, the Alpha and Omega of English Cockneydom; and soon afterwards we are passing down the Minories in the direction of Tower Hill. On reaching the Mint, we find ourselves in a region which is unmistakeably devoted to Jack. Here we meet him under every possible aspect. Young Jack, just going to sea, marching along with a careless jaunty step, and smiling at every pretty damsel whom he meets; Merchant Jack, with his wife clinging to his arm, a monkey or caged parrot in his tarry hands, and his honest, bluff, big-whiskered, sunburnt features all radiant with good-humoured delight; Shipwrecked Jack, penniless, woe-begone, and miserable, but stout-hearted and hopeful to the last; Man-o’-war Jack, clean, spruce, and jolly; American Jack, bowie-knife in girdle, and asserting his independence by continual expectoration; French Jack, all moustaches, shrugs, and grimace; Italian Jack, padrone-fearing, Garibaldi-loving, and heretic-hating; Spanish Jack, dark-featured, velvet-capped, and breath redolent of onions; Swedish Jack, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and with the old Scandinavian love of the Northern Sea; Russian Jack, brandy-loving, crouching, and cowardly; African Jack, all teeth, grins, and chatter; Australian Jack, Polynesian Jack, Canadian Jack, Arab Jack, Egyptian Jack, Greek Jack—in fact, every conceivable variety of the species. But, take care, we are impeding the traffic which surges along the pavement in front of this dingy, vile-smelling, fusty clothes-shop. A keen, tough old file is the owner. Ikey is quite up to the time of day, so don’t you ask him what o’clock it is. You had better not. Observe him as he warily and patiently gathers himself up—spider-like—in the midst of his artfully-woven web of “Nor’westers,” pea-jackets, linsey-woolseys, bearskins, comforters, oil-cloth capes, fur waistcoats, devil’s-dust unmentionables, and worsted gloves of fabulous thickness. He knows Jack. He can tell you in an instant, despite your fancy yachting-rig and sea-going airs, that you are merely a landlubber “as doesn’t know a ship’s-rope from a marlin-spike,” and he passes you by with supreme contempt; but when he catches sight of Jack—the real salt-water Jack—ah! you should see him.
He instantaneously brightens up, casts a rapid searching glance around him, and marching direct to the unconscious tar, soon wheedles and cajoles him into the purchase of sundry articles for which he has no earthly use, and which are frequently bought by Ikey’s victims at about 100 per cent. above the regular market price. Escaping as he best can from the enemy’s batteries, our poor sailor is immediately espied by Poll and Sue, two smart, roguish, saucy-looking craft, with gay coloured streamers fluttering at the fore. They bear down in full sail on him, pour in a heavy broadside of “soft sawder,” board him, and triumphantly take their prize in tow to the “Jolly Sailor,” where he is cozened, fleeced, and robbed by the merciless crimps into whose hands he falls, and is then turned adrift into the streets.
Evidences of a seafaring population now surround us on every side. Here is a chronometer-maker’s, there a naval book-store; here a ship’s-biscuit-baker’s, there a sail-cloth factory; here a ship’s-chandler’s, and there a curiosity-shop, wherein a multitude of monkeys are chattering all day long, while the din is increased by the incessant screaming, hallooing, combined with not a little swearing, on the part of numberless parrots and cockatoos, whose gorgeous hues of green, blue, yellow, and crimson, scarcely compensate for the deafening noise which they occasion amongst the gongs, shells, stuffed birds, corals, beads, Japanese ware, Chinese slippers, Indian arrows, Mexican idols, West Indian pickle-jars, aloe-plants, tamarind pots, African ivory, dried alligators, hippopotamus teeth, walrus tusks, birds of Paradise, beetles, moths, ostrich eggs, carved cocoanut shells, sponges, Australian boomerangs, Ceylon pearls, and other articles with which the interior of the shop is crowded in most picturesque confusion.
Here is one of those seaport pests, an Emigration Agency Office, where but too frequently the poor intending emigrant is regularly swindled of his last penny, on every possible and impossible pretence, and then hastily bundled on board some unseaworthy, ill-provisioned, under-manned, and anything but A 1 vessel, which generally makes the voyage in about double the advertised time, and ofttimes gets quietly wrecked on some convenient rocks, to the no small profit of the captain and owner.
What a long, dreary expanse of dingy yellow brick wall stretches out on the right of us. It is the boundary wall of the St. Katherine’s Docks, and the huge bonded warehouses tower above it, like sullen giants, frowning on the world of misery, debauchery, and devilry, which exists within their very shadow. And now we come on a scene, which from our infancy we have been accustomed to, yet which has always possessed a strange and fearful degree of interest for us. Large numbers of gaunt-featured, squalid, hungry-looking men, are silently but nervously lounging about the gate which forms the entrance to the London Docks. From morning till night they linger there, with restless eye and hopeless heart, in the vain hope of obtaining employment as an “extra” in unlading the ships. A large number of labourers are employed in the docks, as porters, or to assist in removing the cargoes from the ships to the bonded warehouses; and it frequently happens that a sudden influx of shipping necessitates the employment of additional hands, consequently numbers of unemployed men find their way here, in the hope of obtaining a chance job, for the work, though ill paid and heavy, requires no skill, but merely brute strength. The dock gates are one of the last resources of the poverty-stricken, and the crowd forms a strange medley as it stands in doorways, crouches on pavement curbs, stands at flaunting public-house doors, slouches against greasy walls, or darkens the plate-glass windows of magnificent gin-palaces. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, there it is. True, some of its members gain other employment; many become beggars or criminals; while not a few drag their weary fever-wasted limbs to dark cellars, or miserable windowless lofts, where they lay themselves down to await the death-angel. Still there are hundreds to supply their places, for the ranks of the unemployed are continually recruited by the victims of dissipation, misfortune, or crime; and so the ball whirls ceaselessly round.
We are Social Economists, and, as such, we are perfectly aware that much, if not all, of this misery and suffering is occasioned by the popular disregard, dislike, or neglect of the fundamental principles of social science; but we are human, and cannot gaze on the scene before us without a throb of compassion for the helpless victims of poverty and misfortune, who are the chief actors therein.
But, hark! a stentorian voice shouts “Men wanted.” The effect is magical. The listless demeanour of the crowd changes in a moment to one of bustle and activity; and it speeds with desperate headlong haste to the dock gate, where it blocks up the road, and renders the pavement totally impassable.
Perhaps only a dozen hands are required, but there are already two or three hundred applicants, besieging the sturdy, determined-looking man, to whom is entrusted the unenviable duty of selecting the necessary men, which is instantly done by his practised eye.
The labourers thus picked out, have—despite their energetic and sometimes fistic remonstrances—to fight their way through the dense, heaving mass, which commences a terrific clamour. Shouting, wrestling, struggling, fighting, kicking, and swearing, the disappointed men strive to prevent their successful competitors from approaching the gate, and for a few moments cries, curses, groans, imprecations, and hisses commingle in deafening discord. The strongest dash aside the weakest, all friendship is forgotten, and the animal passions predominate in the breasts of those who compose the crowd; as they push and grapple with each other in the frenzied, savage excitement of disappointment and despair. Then the loud clear voice of the foreman is heard threatening the foremost of the refractory, and instantly the tempest subsides, and all is comparatively silent. The men with scowling, sullen looks, slowly retreat to the old nooks and corners, to await another chance. A few strive to obtain liquor on credit at the beershop, others retreat slowly homewards, while the remainder settle down into the old attitude of listless expectancy; and the careless pedestrian passing by would perceive few traces of the recent agitation occasioned by the “battle for bread” as one of the men graphically described it. So the men wait, wait, and wait, till they drop off, one by one, and leave their places to be filled by others, who in their turn go through the same dismal, heart-crushing routine.
We wish that some of our sturdy building operatives, who are so fond of “striking” on every trivial pretence, could behold the sight. It might possibly induce them to consider whether there are not worse things than toiling ten hours per day, for thirty-three shillings per week.