“I have worked as a journeyman lumper seventeen years. When I first began that work I was paid 3s. 6d. a-day, being employed two days and a half or three days in a week the year through. The young hands are generally knocked about and sent from one ship to another, humbugged about, and obliged to wait and wait, never getting anything for the time they have to wait. In a timber ship this is the way the work is carried on to lump her (unload her). Well, say a ship is 1,000 tons burthen; suppose her cargo is timber and with a deck load of yellow wood pine, the heaviest cargo that comes to London on deck. I’ll tell you the truth if I lose my work. I don’t care a fig. I can’t be worse. That man you just seen hasn’t told you the whole truth. He’s afeard. He works out of a public-house, and daren’t speak. The ships come up, and eight or nine master lumpers go aboard, and the captain may say, ‘The cheapest man’s to have her.’ One man will say, ‘I’ve done this ship before;’ and he’ll get the ship because he knows how to tip some proper party. and he tips five bob or half a sovereign. Suppose this man gets the ship; he’s a master man, and he goes to a foreman, and he says, ‘Get me a gang together,’ and the foreman gets a gang together, and he must get a good set if the work’s to be done quick. The master lumper has all the pull; the foreman doesn’t get much- only his shilling a day extra. Oft enough he gets the best hands at first, and when a quantity that may be wanted is got off he puts on cheaper hands-new Irish Grecians, some people calls them, or others. Any new hands is the same. I never show those men how to work. They ruin our trade, and are ruining it more and more; they’ll work for nothing.
    “Each man gets 3s., the master paying the waterage. In August, September, and October, work is the best. Then we get 4s. and a pint of beer. They give us 4s. 2d., but we must pay the twopence for a pint of beer-that lies in a man’s option it’s said: but if a man doesn’t do so, he’s thought scaly. If we don’t have our beer, we’re done. The master lumpers who are not publicans pay at public-houses, and have sometimes to borrow the money of the publicans to pay the men, before they get their money from the shipowner. I shall lose my work, maybe, and have to go to the Mount-that is, you see, a place between the Commercial Dock and the Dog and Duck, where we walk looking out for a job-because I speak this way to you. If jobs don’t come, there’s the workhouse. Lots come from Ireland, and go to work, knowing nothing about it. But they’ll work for anything, and so get on. [This he repeated frequently.]
    “I am a married man with a family, but don’t say how many, or I should be more a marked man. I wish I could write as slick as you. I’d do only head work then, and work no more. I have spent 25s. a week in drink. I ought to have as good a suit as you, when I get work as a foreman, which I do sometimes. Last week I got 20s., and took home 3s. I’m afraid to speak. I should lose my work. [This he said over and over again.] I must spend my money in drink some way, or I can’t get on in any work; there’s stoppages and bothers. I was told I couldn’t get paid last Saturday night, for fear I should have anything to do with telling you or anybody the truth. I didn’t get all my money until Sunday, and it was all gone on Sunday night. You understand; if a man gives offence, next morning he’s told ‘You’re not wanted, there’s a hand short of what we expected to want-you understand.’ In less than three years a publican that contracts may make his fortune. Where these men sell a pint to a neighbour they sell three pots to a lumper. It’s compulsion, as you may say-and it’s no compulsion. A contractor, on a tidy job, will get his £4 profit-sometimes £10 or £15 on a good job; and he keeps moving on that way; no matter how our kids starves. Aye, and more than that, I’ve known contractors have £50 for a ship, and has done it for £16. I went on board the for Mr. ~-. He wanted to employ me as foreman, at 4s. a-day, but he wanted me to pay waterage, and I refused. I have had 6s. a-day as foreman. An average lumper will get 4s. a-day when he is at work. I was threatened to be flung out of the windows if I came to any meeting with you. When I’m out of work, the old woman has to keep me. She works at gowns, or anything. How she lives God only knows!”
    The following is the statement of one who appeared to me to be both a truthful and a just man. His wife was a superior woman, and being present at his home- where the information was obtained-she acted as a check upon him, even if he had been disposed to lean either to master or workman. The man’s house was comfortably furnished, evidently owing to the greater prudence of his wife, for I have found it is a rule that when the wife is cleanly and thrifty, the husband is always a higher class man:
    “I have been a lumper nine years. Prices are not so good now as when I first knew the business. We got 4s. 6d. a day then; that is, the old hands did. In a year after it fell to 4s. Work was slack, and so employers could get men to work at their own prices. Three or four years back price fell to 3s. 6d. a day.” My informant then repeated what I had formerly heard, attributing this further decrease to the great influx of Irish labourers, owing to the distress in Ireland, and their willingness to work for any wages whatever, which enables employers to get the old hands on easier terms.
    “The lumpers,” my informant continued, “are employed pnncipally in timber and deal ships, but will undertake any work to which their employer chooses to set them. The corn-ships are all discharged by the fellowship porters; excepting the vessels in the South-west India Dock (formerly the City Canal), where the servants of the company are employed; but they must then have one of the regularly appointed meters. There is far too much drinking among us. One man I know had 14s. to receive for wages the other week, but he went on ‘on tick’ at the public- house, had nothing to take on Saturday night, and was 5s. in debt. It is a great disadvantage in our business that work is so uncertain. Last Christmas twelve-month, all that I earned the week before Christmas was 6d. I have now 15s. in pawn, and as we have no club nor anything of that kind, if I was to be sick there’s only the parish. In a slack time I have sold Christmas carols or anything.”
    I will now give the statement of one of the foremen who was sent to me intoxicated by the publican-contractor, to persuade me that the system under which the working men are employed and paid is a beneficial and a just one to the labourer. The inconsistencies in the statement the reader will easily detect. He said:
    “I am the foreman of a gang of lumpers. The gangs vary in number according to the size of the vessel to be laden. They vary from 8 to 26. When the gang exceeds 10 men, 2 foremen are employed, as the work is carried on on both sides of the ship at the same time. I work under a publican. who contracts with the shipowner to do the work of unlading the vessel by the lump; that is, so much for the entire job, without any reference to weight or measurement. I engage the men employed. anybody I please-and they are paid by the contractor. At this time of the year, when work cannot be carried on longer than from half-past seven in the morning until towards five in the evening, each man is paid 3s. 6d. for his day’s work: he is paid that sum in money. He is not required to spend any of that money; nor would any man have a worse chance of work who didn’t spend anything in drink at the house of the contractor. He hasn’t been a publican long-about a year. We take a pot of beer a man, or twelve pots for every ten men-more usually from the house of the contractor. I consider that we are not obliged to do this.
    “It is very seldom that any gang of men has a full week’s work. I calculate that they are not employed above three days in the week, take the average of the year; that gives an average earning of lOs. 6d. per week. For the next three months there will be hardly anything doing in the timber-ships, on account of the ice in the St. Lawrence and the Baltic. During this slack time the men go off to any job. They may pick up a little tide-work; that is, to assist in taking a ship from a wet dock into a dry one, or any arrangement of that kind. We have no sick fund among us-no benefit club, no society of any kind. When a man’s fairly beat out, his fellow workmen may subscribe a trifle for him. Drunkenness is too common among us, but I don’t know that the system of working under publicans has much to do with it. My employer would as soon see his men take their money home. Many of the men are in great distress; their families are hard put to it; they are the people that have to suffer for it. The foreman, by agreement with his employer, has so much a day over what the men have, but no per centage, and nothing to do with the paying of the lumpers.
    “I dare say from 700 to 1,000 men are employed as lumpers in timber ships. when work is good; lumpers work only in timber ships. There are a far greater number of men in the trade than there used to be, on account of the number of labouring men that have come over from Ireland lately. These Irishmen, when they first go to lumping, are very awkward about it, and don’t soon get handy. Before they came in such lots, wages were better. They have been 4s. 6d. a day to men that knew their work. For the last three years and more wages have been no higher than 3s. 6d. a day. Of course the Irishmen, when first set to work, weren’t worth so much as the old hands, but they were employed, and so wages fell down to their level. There is only one publican among the contractors for lumping. There are four principal contractors, and several small ones. I don’t know the exact number. They all pay the men and the foremen alike. My employer will not allow any lumper to run up drink scores at his house to be worked out afterwards. There are too many men in the lumping business. There is no system of giving a gang of men their turn. We employ those we consider best to do the work.”
    I next saw two lumpers’ wives. The husband of one had been fourteen years, and the other ten years, at the business. They both worked under a master who is a publican. One said, “My husband is such a strange man that he never tells me what he does get.” The husband of the other, who is a foreman, according to the wife’s statement, occasionally gets 5s. and sometimes 4s. 6d. a day. The first woman said, “It is a very bad principle for a man to have work out of a public- house; it makes a man spend a shilling where otherwise he would not.”
    The wife of the one whose husband was a foreman said, “I have had many a bitter bruise for the last fifteen years, and all through the drink. Sometimes he stops till after twelve or one o clock. I have not had anything to eat to-day-not a taste of anything, or even a bit of fire. On draw-nights he usually comes home about ten o’clock, and I call that a very good hour for a lumper, for draw-nights are very bad nights; the men then generally spend at the public-house three parts of what they earn. On pay-night the men generally stop till the public-house is closed, and then some of them doesn’t bring a penny home, but comes home in debt. When the men are in work they may go trust for anything they want. Those that drink the hardest get the most work; they are the most looked upon. If the men was to bring all they earn home-aye, or even one-third of it-it would make the family very comfortable, as there would be a few more blankets and sheets on the bed-yes, and good shoes to their wives’ and children’s feet. Mine are two odd ones,” added the woman, thrusting out her feet; “our dog stole this one, and brought it in his mouth. The men, when they are in full work, earn 24s. per week, and they bring home upon an average 4s. out of that sum. Ah. that’s about it, and there is a fourth part of them don’t do that-the rest goes for what the publicans please to stick up to them.”
    “I know if mine brought home more than he does,” said the other, “I and the children would have some flannel petticoats. I have got one thin one, but a puff of wind would blow that away. They won’t take it in pawn, or it would have gone long ago.” The second woman added, “I have not got anything that would get me a penny, else it would have been in pawn to fetch me over to-day. When my husband beats me it is when I am in bed; but when I am not in bed I can fly from him. I know of one woman who is in the union now. Her husband always made his 24s. a week in the spring, but he brought only a shilling or two home to her at the week’s end. He was almost always drunk, and then he would knock her down and jump upon her, and leave her for dead. When he was sober he was a good quiet sort of a man. He worked out of a public-house, and that is only a part of what the women have to suffer through their husbands being entrapped by the publican into his house. The woman I speak of has gone into the union to get away from the man’s ill-treatment, and to have something nourishing to keep her, for it was very and I laid down the child on that chair, and I shook my husband and said, ‘You villain, I’ll cut your throat, I will,’ and he jumped up and seized hold of me, and then I felt how bad I’d been; but one’s passion must have some vent, so I seized that very kettle you see there by the spout-the gas rather lighted it-and I smashed it on the floor; it was the first thing that came to hand-and broke a hole in it that cost me 2~d. to get mended. After that I felt calmed a bit, and began to see how wicked I’d been, and I fell down on my knees and cried like a child, for I was thankful to God I’d been preserved. Then I went to bed and prayed never to feel the like again.” This statement was made with perfect simplicity; it came out incidentally, and the poor woman had no reason to believe that it would be printed.

Henry Mayhew Morning Chronicle January 8th 1850