Reprinted Pieces

by Dickens, Charles

  found. Likewise did Waterloo inform us, in reply to my inquiries,

  admiringly and deferentially preferred through my friend Pea, that

  the takings at the Bridge had more than doubled in amount, since

  the reduction of the toll one half. And being asked if the

  aforesaid takings included much bad money, Waterloo responded, with

  a look far deeper than the deepest part of the river, HE should

  think not! - and so retired into his shawl for the rest of the

  night.

  Then did Pea and I once more embark in our four-oared galley, and

  glide swiftly down the river with the tide. And while the shrewd

  East rasped and notched us, as with jagged razors, did my friend

  Pea impart to me confidences of interest relating to the Thames

  Police; we, between whiles, finding 'duty boats' hanging in dark

  corners under banks, like weeds - our own was a 'supervision boat'

  - and they, as they reported 'all right!' flashing their hidden

  light on us, and we flashing ours on them. These duty boats had

  one sitter in each: an Inspector: and were rowed 'Ran-dan,' which -

  for the information of those who never graduated, as I was once

  proud to do, under a fireman-waterman and winner of Kean's Prize

  Wherry: who, in the course of his tuition, took hundreds of gallons

  of rum and egg (at my expense) at the various houses of note above

  and below bridge; not by any means because he liked it, but to cure

  a weakness in his liver, for which the faculty had particularly

  recommended it - may be explained as rowed by three men, two

  pulling an oar each, and one a pair of sculls.

  Thus, floating down our black highway, sullenly frowned upon by the

  knitted brows of Blackfriars, Southwark, and London, each in his

  lowering turn, I was shown by my friend Pea that there are, in the

  Thames Police Force, whose district extends from Battersea to

  Barking Creek, ninety-eight men, eight duty boats, and two

  supervision boats; and that these go about so silently, and lie in

  wait in such dark places, and so seem to be nowhere, and so may be

  anywhere, that they have gradually become a police of prevention,

  keeping the river almost clear of any great crimes, even while the

  increased vigilance on shore has made it much harder than of yore

  to live by 'thieving' in the streets. And as to the various kinds

  of water-thieves, said my friend Pea, there were the Tier-rangers,

  Page 104

  Dickens, Charles - Reprinted Pieces

  who silently dropped alongside the tiers of shipping in the Pool,

  by night, and who, going to the companion-head, listened for two

  snores - snore number one, the skipper's; snore number two, the

  mate's - mates and skippers always snoring great guns, and being

  dead sure to be hard at it if they had turned in and were asleep.

  Hearing the double fire, down went the Rangers into the skippers'

  cabins; groped for the skippers' inexpressibles, which it was the

  custom of those gentlemen to shake off, watch, money, braces,

  boots, and all together, on the floor; and therewith made off as

  silently as might be. Then there were the Lumpers, or labourers

  employed to unload vessels. They wore loose canvas jackets with a

  broad hem in the bottom, turned inside, so as to form a large

  circular pocket in which they could conceal, like clowns in

  pantomimes, packages of surprising sizes. A great deal of property

  was stolen in this manner (Pea confided to me) from steamers;

  first, because steamers carry a larger number of small packages

  than other ships; next, because of the extreme rapidity with which

  they are obliged to be unladen for their return voyages. The

  Lumpers dispose of their booty easily to marine store dealers, and

  the only remedy to be suggested is that marine store shops should

  be licensed, and thus brought under the eye of the police as

  rigidly as public-houses. Lumpers also smuggle goods ashore for

  the crews of vessels. The smuggling of tobacco is so considerable,

  that it is well worth the while of the sellers of smuggled tobacco

  to use hydraulic presses, to squeeze a single pound into a package

  small enough to be contained in an ordinary pocket. Next, said my

  friend Pea, there were the Truckers - less thieves than smugglers,

  whose business it was to land more considerable parcels of goods

  than the Lumpers could manage. They sometimes sold articles of

  grocery and so forth, to the crews, in order to cloak their real

  calling, and get aboard without suspicion. Many of them had boats

  of their own, and made money. Besides these, there were the

  Dredgermen, who, under pretence of dredging up coals and such like

  from the bottom of the river, hung about barges and other undecked

  craft, and when they saw an opportunity, threw any property they

  could lay their hands on overboard: in order slyly to dredge it up

  when the vessel was gone. Sometimes, they dexterously used their

  dredges to whip away anything that might lie within reach. Some of

  them were mighty neat at this, and the accomplishment was called

  dry dredging. Then, there was a vast deal of property, such as

  copper nails, sheathing, hardwood, &c., habitually brought away by

  shipwrights and other workmen from their employers' yards, and

  disposed of to marine store dealers, many of whom escaped detection

  through hard swearing, and their extraordinary artful ways of

  accounting for the possession of stolen property. Likewise, there

  were special-pleading practitioners, for whom barges 'drifted away

  of their own selves' - they having no hand in it, except first

  cutting them loose, and afterwards plundering them - innocents,

  meaning no harm, who had the misfortune to observe those foundlings

  wandering about the Thames.

  We were now going in and out, with little noise and great nicety,

  among the tiers of shipping, whose many hulls, lying close

  together, rose out of the water like black streets. Here and

  there, a Scotch, an Irish, or a foreign steamer, getting up her

  steam as the tide made, looked, with her great chimney and high

  sides, like a quiet factory among the common buildings. Now, the

  streets opened into clearer spaces, now contracted into alleys; but

  the tiers were so like houses, in the dark, that I could almost

  have believed myself in the narrower bye-ways of Venice.

  Everything was wonderfully still; for, it wanted full three hours

  of flood, and nothing seemed awake but a dog here and there.

  So we took no Tier-rangers captive, nor any Lumpers, nor Truckers,

  Page 105

  Dickens, Charles - Reprinted Pieces

  nor Dredgermen, nor other evil-disposed person or persons; but went

  ashore at Wapping, where the old Thames Police office is now a

  station-house, and where the old Court, with its cabin windows

  looking on the river, is a quaint charge room: with nothing worse

  in it usually than a stuffed cat in a glass case, and a portrait,

  pleasant to behold, of a rare old Thames Police officer, Mr.

  Superintendent Evans, now succeeded by his son. We looked over the

  charge books, admirably kept, and f
ound the prevention so good that

  there were not five hundred entries (including drunken and

  disorderly) in a whole year. Then, we looked into the store-room;

  where there was an oakum smell, and a nautical seasoning of

  dreadnought clothing, rope yarn, boat-hooks, sculls and oars, spare

  stretchers, rudders, pistols, cutlasses, and the like. Then, into

  the cell, aired high up in the wooden wall through an opening like

  a kitchen plate-rack: wherein there was a drunken man, not at all

  warm, and very wishful to know if it were morning yet. Then, into

  a better sort of watch and ward room, where there was a squadron of

  stone bottles drawn up, ready to be filled with hot water and

  applied to any unfortunate creature who might be brought in

  apparently drowned. Finally, we shook hands with our worthy friend

  Pea, and ran all the way to Tower Hill, under strong Police

  suspicion occasionally, before we got warm.

  A WALK IN A WORKHOUSE

  ON a certain Sunday, I formed one of the congregation assembled in

  the chapel of a large metropolitan Workhouse. With the exception

  of the clergyman and clerk, and a very few officials, there were

  none but paupers present. The children sat in the galleries; the

  women in the body of the chapel, and in one of the side aisles; the

  men in the remaining aisle. The service was decorously performed,

  though the sermon might have been much better adapted to the

  comprehension and to the circumstances of the hearers. The usual

  supplications were offered, with more than the usual significancy

  in such a place, for the fatherless children and widows, for all

  sick persons and young children, for all that were desolate and

  oppressed, for the comforting and helping of the weak-hearted, for

  the raising-up of them that had fallen; for all that were in

  danger, necessity, and tribulation. The prayers of the

  congregation were desired 'for several persons in the various wards

  dangerously ill;' and others who were recovering returned their

  thanks to Heaven.

  Among this congregation, were some evil-looking young women, and

  beetle-browed young men; but not many - perhaps that kind of

  characters kept away. Generally, the faces (those of the children

  excepted) were depressed and subdued, and wanted colour. Aged

  people were there, in every variety. Mumbling, blear-eyed,

  spectacled, stupid, deaf, lame; vacantly winking in the gleams of

  sun that now and then crept in through the open doors, from the

  paved yard; shading their listening ears, or blinking eyes, with

  their withered hands; poring over their books, leering at nothing,

  going to sleep, crouching and drooping in corners. There were

  weird old women, all skeleton within, all bonnet and cloak without,

  continually wiping their eyes with dirty dusters of pockethandkerchiefs;

  and there were ugly old crones, both male and

  female, with a ghastly kind of contentment upon them which was not

  at all comforting to see. Upon the whole, it was the dragon,

  Pauperism, in a very weak and impotent condition; toothless,

  fangless, drawing his breath heavily enough, and hardly worth

  Page 106

  Dickens, Charles - Reprinted Pieces

  chaining up.

  When the service was over, I walked with the humane and

  conscientious gentleman whose duty it was to take that walk, that

  Sunday morning, through the little world of poverty enclosed within

  the workhouse walls. It was inhabited by a population of some

  fifteen hundred or two thousand paupers, ranging from the infant

  newly born or not yet come into the pauper world, to the old man

  dying on his bed.

  In a room opening from a squalid yard, where a number of listless

  women were lounging to and fro, trying to get warm in the

  ineffectual sunshine of the tardy May morning - in the 'Itch Ward,'

  not to compromise the truth - a woman such as HOGARTH has often

  drawn, was hurriedly getting on her gown before a dusty fire. She

  was the nurse, or wardswoman, of that insalubrious department -

  herself a pauper - flabby, raw-boned, untidy - unpromising and

  coarse of aspect as need be. But, on being spoken to about the

  patients whom she had in charge, she turned round, with her shabby

  gown half on, half off, and fell a crying with all her might. Not

  for show, not querulously, not in any mawkish sentiment, but in the

  deep grief and affliction of her heart; turning away her

  dishevelled head: sobbing most bitterly, wringing her hands, and

  letting fall abundance of great tears, that choked her utterance.

  What was the matter with the nurse of the itch-ward? Oh, 'the

  dropped child' was dead! Oh, the child that was found in the

  street, and she had brought up ever since, had died an hour ago,

  and see where the little creature lay, beneath this cloth! The

  dear, the pretty dear!

  The dropped child seemed too small and poor a thing for Death to be

  in earnest with, but Death had taken it; and already its diminutive

  form was neatly washed, composed, and stretched as if in sleep upon

  a box. I thought I heard a voice from Heaven saying, It shall be

  well for thee, O nurse of the itch-ward, when some less gentle

  pauper does those offices to thy cold form, that such as the

  dropped child are the angels who behold my Father's face!

  In another room, were several ugly old women crouching, witch-like,

  round a hearth, and chattering and nodding, after the manner of the

  monkeys. 'All well here? And enough to eat?' A general

  chattering and chuckling; at last an answer from a volunteer. 'Oh

  yes, gentleman! Bless you, gentleman! Lord bless the Parish of

  St. So-and-So! It feed the hungry, sir, and give drink to the

  thusty, and it warm them which is cold, so it do, and good luck to

  the parish of St. So-and-So, and thankee, gentleman!' Elsewhere, a

  party of pauper nurses were at dinner. 'How do YOU get on?' 'Oh

  pretty well, sir! We works hard, and we lives hard - like the

  sodgers!'

  In another room, a kind of purgatory or place of transition, six or

  eight noisy madwomen were gathered together, under the

  superintendence of one sane attendant. Among them was a girl of

  two or three and twenty, very prettily dressed, of most respectable

  appearance and good manners, who had been brought in from the house

  where she had lived as domestic servant (having, I suppose, no

  friends), on account of being subject to epileptic fits, and

  requiring to be removed under the influence of a very bad one. She

  was by no means of the same stuff, or the same breeding, or the

  same experience, or in the same state of mind, as those by whom she

  was surrounded; and she pathetically complained that the daily

  association and the nightly noise made her worse, and was driving

  her mad - which was perfectly evident. The case was noted for

  inquiry and redress, but she said she had already been there for

  Page 107

  Dickens, Charles - Reprinted Pieces

  some weeks.

  If this girl had stolen her mistress's watch, I do not hesitate to

&
nbsp; say she would have been infinitely better off. We have come to

  this absurd, this dangerous, this monstrous pass, that the

  dishonest felon is, in respect of cleanliness, order, diet, and

  accommodation, better provided for, and taken care of, than the

  honest pauper.

  And this conveys no special imputation on the workhouse of the

  parish of St. So-and-So, where, on the contrary, I saw many things

  to commend. It was very agreeable, recollecting that most infamous

  and atrocious enormity committed at Tooting - an enormity which, a

  hundred years hence, will still be vividly remembered in the byeways

  of English life, and which has done more to engender a gloomy

  discontent and suspicion among many thousands of the people than

  all the Chartist leaders could have done in all their lives - to

  find the pauper children in this workhouse looking robust and well,

  and apparently the objects of very great care. In the Infant

  School - a large, light, airy room at the top of the building - the

  little creatures, being at dinner, and eating their potatoes

  heartily, were not cowed by the presence of strange visitors, but

  stretched out their small hands to be shaken, with a very pleasant

  confidence. And it was comfortable to see two mangy pauper

  rocking-horses rampant in a corner. In the girls' school, where

  the dinner was also in progress, everything bore a cheerful and

  healthy aspect. The meal was over, in the boys' school, by the

  time of our arrival there, and the room was not yet quite

  rearranged; but the boys were roaming unrestrained about a large

  and airy yard, as any other schoolboys might have done. Some of

  them had been drawing large ships upon the schoolroom wall; and if

  they had a mast with shrouds and stays set up for practice (as they

  have in the Middlesex House of Correction), it would be so much the

  better. At present, if a boy should feel a strong impulse upon him

  to learn the art of going aloft, he could only gratify it, I

  presume, as the men and women paupers gratify their aspirations

  after better board and lodging, by smashing as many workhouse

  windows as possible, and being promoted to prison.

  In one place, the Newgate of the Workhouse, a company of boys and

  youths were locked up in a yard alone; their day-room being a kind

  of kennel where the casual poor used formerly to be littered down