by Henry Mayhew
A visit to any of the large metropolitan dust-yards is far from uninteresting. Near the centre of the yard rises the highest heap, composed of what is called the ‘soil’, or finer portion of the dust used for manure. Around this heap are numerous lesser heaps, consisting of the mixed dust and rubbish carted in and shot down previous to sifting. Among these heaps are many women and old men with sieves made of iron, all busily engaged in separating the ‘brieze’ from the ‘soil’. There is likewise another large heap in some other part of the yard, composed of the cinders or ‘brieze’ waiting to be shipped off to the brickfields. The whole yard seems alive, some sifting and others shovelling the sifted soil on to the heap, while every now and then the dust-carts return to discharge their loads, and proceed again on their rounds for a fresh supply. Cocks and hens keep up a continual scratching and cackling among the heaps, and numerous pigs seem to find great delight in rooting incessantly about after the garbage and offal collected from the houses and markets.
In a dust-yard lately visited the sifters formed a curious sight; they were almost up to their middle in dust, ranged in a semi-circle in front of that part of the heap which was being ‘worked’; each had before her a small mound of soil which had fallen through her sieve and formed a sort of embankment, behind which she stood. The appearance of the entire group at their work was most peculiar. Their coarse dirty cotton gowns were tucked up behind them, their arms were bared above their elbows, their black bonnets crushed and battered like those of fish-women; over their gowns they wore a strong leathern apron, extending from their necks to the extremities of their petticoats, while over this, again, was another leathern apron, shorter, thickly padded, and fastened by a stout string or strap round the waist. In the process of their work they pushed the sieve from them and drew it back again with apparent violence, striking it against the outer leathern apron with such force that it produced each time a hollow sound, like a blow on the tenor drum. All the women present were middle aged, with the exception of one who was very old – 68 years of age she told me – and had been at the business from a girl. She was the daughter of a dustman, the wife, or woman of a dustman, and the mother of several young dustmen – sons and grandsons – all at work at the dust-yards at the east end of the metropolis.
We now come to speak of the labourers engaged in collecting, sifting, or shipping off the dust of the metropolis.
The dustmen, scavengers, and nightmen are, to a certain extent, the
same people. The contractors generally agree with the various parishes to remove both the dust from the houses and the mud from the streets; the men in their employ are indiscriminately engaged in these two diverse occupations, collecting the dust to-day, and often cleansing the streets on the morrow, and are designated either dustmen or scavengers, according to their particular avocation at the moment. The case is somewhat different, however, with respect to the nightmen. There is no such thing as a contract with the parish for removing the nightsoil. This is done by private agreement with the landlord of the premises whence the soil has to be removed. When a cesspool requires emptying, the occupying tenant communicates with the landlord, who makes an arrangement with a dust-contractor or sweep-nightman for this purpose. This operation is totally distinct from the regular or daily labour of the dust-contractor’s men, who receive extra pay for it; sometimes one set go out at night and sometimes another, according either to the selection of the master or the inclination of the men. There are, however, some dustmen who have never been at work as nightmen, and could not be induced to do so, from an invincible antipathy to the employment; still, such instances are few, for the men generally go whenever they can, and occasionally engage in nightwork for employers unconnected with their masters. It is calculated that there are some hundreds of men employed nightly in the removal of the nightsoil of the metropolis during the summer and autumn, and as these men have often to work at dust-collecting or cleansing the streets on the following day, it is evident that the same persons cannot be thus employed every night; accordingly the ordinary practice is for the dustmen to ‘take it in turns’, thus allowing each set to be employed every third night, and to have two nights’ rest in the interim.
The men, therefore, who collect the dust on one day may be cleaning the streets on the next, especially during wet weather, and engaged at night, perhaps, twice during the week, in removing nightsoil; so that it is difficult to arrive at any precise notion as to the number of persons engaged in any one of these branches per se.
But these labourers not only work indiscriminately at the collection of dust, the cleansing of the streets, or the removal of nightsoil, but they are employed almost as indiscriminately at the various branches of the dust business; with this qualification, however, that few men apply themselves continuously to any one branch of the business. The labourers employed in a dust-yard may be divided into two classes: those paid by the contractor; and those paid by the foreman or forewoman of the dust-heap, commonly called hill-man or hill-woman. They are as follows:
I. LABOURERS PAID BY THE CONTRACTORS, OR,
1. Yard foreman, or superintendent. This duty is often performed by the master, especially in small contracts.
2. Gangers or dust-collectors. These are called ‘fillers’ and ‘carriers’, from the practice of one of the men who go out with the cart filling the basket, and the other carrying it on his shoulder to the vehicle.
3. Loaders of carts in the dust-yard for shipment.
4. Carriers of cinders to the cinder-heap, or bricks to the brick-heap.
5. Foreman or forewoman of the heap.
II. LABOURERS PAID BY THE HILL-MAN OR HILL-WOMAN
1. Sifters, who are generally women, and mostly the wives or concubines of the dustmen, but sometimes the wives of badly-paid labourers.
2. Fillers-in, or shovellers of dust into the sieves of the sifters (one man being allowed to every two or three women).
3. Carriers off of bones, rags, metal, and other perquisites to the various heaps; these are mostly children of the dustmen.
A medium-sized dust-yard will employ about twelve collectors, three fillers in, six sifters, and one foreman or forewoman; while a large yard will afford work to about 150 people.
There are four different modes of payment prevalent among the several labourers employed at the metropolitan dust-yards: (1) by the day; (2) by the piece or load; (3) by the lump; (4) by perquisites.
1st. The foreman of the yard, where the master does not perform this duty himself, is generally one of the regular dustmen picked out by the master, for this purpose. He is paid the sum of 2s. 6d. per day, or 15s. per week. In large yards there are sometimes two and even three yard-foremen at the same rate of wages. Their duty is merely to superintend the work. They do not labour themselves, and their exemption in this respect is considered, and indeed looked on by themselves, as a sort of premium for good services.
2nd. The gangers or collectors are generally paid 8d. per load for every load they bring into the yard. This is, of course, piece work, for the more hours the men work the more loads will they be enabled to bring, and the more pay will they receive. There are some yards where the carters get only 6d. per load, as, for instance, at Paddington. The Paddington men, however, are not considered inferior workmen to the rest of their fellows, but merely to be worse paid. In 1826, or 25 years ago, the carters had 1s. 6d. per load; but at that time the contractors were able to get 1l per chaldron for the soil and ‘brieze’ or cinders; then it began to fall in value, and according to the decrease in the price of these commodities, so have the wages of the dust-collectors been reduced. It will be at once seen that the reduction in the wages of the dustmen bears no proportion to the reduction in the price of soil and cinders, but it must be borne in mind that whereas the contractors formerly paid large sums for liberty to collect the dust, they now are paid large sums to remove it. This in some measure helps to account for the apparent disproportion, and tends, perhaps, to equalize the matter. The gangers,
therefore, have 4d. each, per load when best paid. They consider from four to six loads a good day’s work, for where the contract is large, extending over several parishes, they often have to travel a long way for a load. It thus happens that while the men employed by the Whitechapel contractor can, when doing their utmost, manage to bring only four loads a day to the yard, which is situated in a place called the ‘ruins’ in Lower Shadwell, the men employed by the Shadwell contractor can easily get eight or nine loads in a day. Five loads are about an average day’s work, and this gives them 1s. 8½d. per day each, or 10s. per week. In addition to this, the men have their perquisites ‘in aid of wages’. The collectors are in the habit of getting beer or money in lieu thereof, at nearly all the houses from which they remove the dust, the public being thus in a manner compelled to make up the rate of wages, which should be paid by the employer, so that what is given to benefit the men really goes to the master, who invariably reduces the wages to the precise amount of the perquisites obtained. This is the main evil of the ‘perquisite system of payment’ (a system of which the mode of paying waiters may be taken as the special type). As an instance of the injurious effects of this mode of payment in connection with the London dustmen, the collectors are forced, as it were, to extort from the public that portion of their fair earnings of which their master deprives them; hence, how can we wonder that they make it a rule when they receive neither beer nor money from a house to make as great a mess as possible the next time they come, scattering the dust and cinders about in such as manner, that, sooner than have any trouble with them, people mostly give them what they look for? One of the most intelligent men with whom I have spoken, gave me the following account of his perquisites for the last week, viz.: Monday, 5½d.; Tuesday, 6d.; Wednesday, 4½d.; Thursday, 7d.; Friday, 5½d.; and Saturday, 5d. This he received in money, and was independent of beer. He had on the same week drawn rather more than five loads each day, to the yard, which made his gross earnings for the week, wages and perquisites together, to be 14s. 0½d. which he considers to be a fair average of his weekly earnings as connected with dust.
3rd. The loaders of the carts for shipment are the same persons as those who collect the dust, but thus employed for the time being. The pay for this work is by the ‘piece’ also, 2d. per chaldron between four persons being the usual rate, or ½d. per man. The men so engaged have no perquisites. The barges into which they shoot the soil or ‘brieze’, as the case may be, hold from 50 to 70 chaldrons, and they consider the loading of one of these barges a good day’s work. The average cargo is about 60 chaldrons, which gives them 2s. 6d. per day, or somewhat more than their average earnings when collecting.
4th. The carriers of cinders to the cinder heap. I have mentioned that, ranged round the sifters in the dust-yard, are a number of baskets, into which are put the various things found among the dust, some of these being the property of the master, and others the perquisites of the hill man or woman, as the case may be. The cinders and old bricks are the property of the master, and to remove them to their proper heaps boys are employed by him at 1s. per day. These boys are almost universally the children of dustmen and sifters at work in the yard, and thus not only help to increase the earnings of the family, but qualify themselves to become the dustmen of a future day.
5th. The hill-man or hill-woman. The hill-man enters into an agreement with the contractor to sift all the dust in the yard throughout the year at so much per load and perquisites. The usual sum per load is 6d., nor have I been able to ascertain that any of these people undertake to do it at a less price. Such is the amount paid by the contractor for Whitechapel. The perquisites of the hill-man or hill-woman, are rags, bones, pieces of old metal, old tin or iron vessels, old boots and shoes, and one-half of the money, jewellery, or other valuables that may be found by the sifters.
The hill-man or hill-woman employs the following persons, and pays them at the following rates:
1st. The sifters are paid 1s. per day when employed, but the employment is not constant. The work cannot be pursued in wet weather, and the services of the sifters are required only when a large heap has accumulated, as they can sift much faster than the dust can be collected. The employment is therefore precarious; the payment has not, for the last 30 years at least, been more than 1s. per day, but the perquisites were greater. They formerly were allowed one-half of whatever was found; of late years, however, the hill-man has gradually reduced the perquisites ‘first one thing and then another’, until the only one they have now remaining is half of whatever money or other valuable article may be found in the process of sifting. These valuables the sifters often pocket, if able to do so unperceived, but if discovered in the attempt, they are immediately discharged.
2nd. The fillers-in, or shovellers of dust into the sieves of sifters, are in general any poor fellows who may be straggling about in search of employment. They are sometimes, however, the grown-up boys of dustmen, not yet permanently engaged by the contractor. These are paid 2s. per day for their labour, but they are considered more as casualty men, though it often happens, if ‘hands’ are wanted, that they are regularly engaged by the contractors, and become regular dustmen for the remainder of their lives.
3rd. The little fellows, the children of the dustmen, who follow their mothers to the yard, and help them to pick rags, bones, &c., out of the sieve and put them into the baskets, as soon as they are able to carry a basket between two of them to the separate heaps, are paid 3d. or 4d. per day for this work by the hill-man.
The wages of the dustmen have been increased within the last seven years from 6d. per load to 8d. among the large contractors – the ‘small masters’, however, still continue to pay 6d. per load. This increase in the rate of remuneration was owing to the men complaining to the commissioners that they were not able to live upon what they earned at 6d.; an enquiry was made into the truth of the men’s assertion, and the result was that the commissioners decided upon letting the contracts to such parties only as would undertake to pay a fair price to their workmen. The contractors, accordingly, increased the remuneration of the labourers; since then the principal masters have paid 8d. per load to the collectors. It is right I should add, that I could not hear – though I made special enquiries on the subject – that the wages had been in any one instance reduced since Free-trade has come into operation.
The usual hours of labour vary according to the mode of payment. The ‘collectors’, or men out with the cart, being paid by the load, work as long as the light lasts; the ‘fillers-in’ and sifters, on the other hand, being paid by the day, work the ordinary hours, viz., from six to six, with the regular intervals for meals.
The summer is the worst time for all hands, for then the dust decreases in quantity; the collectors, however, make up for the ‘slackness’ at this period by nightwork, and, being paid by the ‘piece’ of load at the dust business, are not discharged when their employment is less brisk.
It has been shown that the dustmen who perambulate the streets usually collect five loads in a day; this, at 8d. per load, leaves them about 1s. 8d. each, and so makes their weekly earnings amount to about 10s. per week. Moreover, there are the ‘perquisites’ from the houses whence they remove the dust; and further, the dust-collectors are frequently employed at the night-work, which is always a distinct matter from the dust-collecting, &c., and paid for independent of their regular weekly wages, so that, from all I can gather, the average wages of the men appear to be rather more than 15s. Some admitted to me, that in busy times they often earned 25s. a week.
Then, again, dustwork, as with the weaving of silk, is a kind of family work. The husband, wife, and children (unfortunately) all work at it. The consequence is, that the earnings of the whole have to be added together in order to arrive at a notion of the aggregate gains.
The following may therefore be taken as a fair average of the earnings of a dustman and his family when in full employment. The elder boys when able to earn 1s. a day set up for themselves, and do
not allow their wages to go into the common purse.
£
s
d
£
s
d
Man, 5 loads per day, or 30 loads
per week, at 4d. per load
0
10
0
Perquisites, or beer money
0
2
9½
Night-work for 2 nights a week
0
5
0
________
0
17
9½
Woman, or sifter, per week, at
1s. per day
0
6
0
Perquisites, say 3d. a day
0
1
6
_________
Child, 3d. per day, carrying rags,
0
7
6
bones, &c.
0