Redburn: Chapter 38

Chapter 38

THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS

I might relate other things which befell me during the six weeks and
more that I remained in Liverpool, often visiting the cellars, sinks,
and hovels of the wretched lanes and courts near the river. But to tell
of them, would only be to tell over again the story just told; so I
return to the docks.

The old women described as picking dirty fragments of cotton in tie
empty lot, belong to the same class of beings who at all hours of the
day are to be seen within the dock walls, raking over and over the heaps
of rubbish carried ashore from the holds of the shipping.

As it is against the law to throw the least thing overboard, even a rope
yarn; and as this law is very different from similar laws in New York,
inasmuch as it is rigidly enforced by the dock-masters; and, moreover,
as after discharging a ship's cargo, a great deal of dirt and worthless
dunnage remains in the hold, the amount of rubbish accumulated in the
appointed receptacles for depositing it within the walls is extremely
large, and is constantly receiving new accessions from every vessel that
unlades at the quays.

Standing over these noisome heaps, you will see scores of tattered
wretches, armed with old rakes and picking-irons, turning over the dirt,
and making as much of a rope-yarn as if it were a skein of silk. Their
findings, nevertheless, are but small; for as it is one of the
immemorial perquisites of the second mate of a merchant ship to collect,
and sell on his own account, all the condemned "old junk" of the vessel
to which he belongs, he generally takes good heed that in the buckets of
rubbish carried ashore, there shall be as few rope-yarns as possible.

In the same way, the cook preserves all the odds and ends of pork-rinds
and beef-fat, which he sells at considerable profit; upon a six months'
voyage frequently realizing thirty or forty dollars from the sale, and
in large ships, even more than that. It may easily be imagined, then,
how desperately driven to it must these rubbish-pickers be, to ransack
heaps of refuse which have been previously gleaned.

Nor must I omit to make mention of the singular beggary practiced in the
streets frequented by sailors; and particularly to record the remarkable
army of paupers that beset the docks at particular hours of the day.

At twelve o'clock the crews of hundreds and hundreds of ships issue in
crowds from the dock gates to go to their dinner in the town. This hour
is seized upon by multitudes of beggars to plant themselves against the
outside of the walls, while others stand upon the curbstone to excite
the charity of the seamen. The first time that I passed through this
long lane of pauperism, it seemed hard to believe that such an array of
misery could be furnished by any town in the world.

Every variety of want and suffering here met the eye, and every vice
showed here its victims. Nor were the marvelous and almost incredible
shifts and stratagems of the professional beggars, wanting to finish
this picture of all that is dishonorable to civilization and humanity.

Old women, rather mummies, drying up with slow starving and age; young
girls, incurably sick, who ought to have been in the hospital; sturdy
men, with the gallows in their eyes, and a whining lie in their mouths;
young boys, hollow-eyed and decrepit; and puny mothers, holding up puny
babes in the glare of the sun, formed the main features of the scene.

But these were diversified by instances of peculiar suffering, vice, or
art in attracting charity, which, to me at least, who had never seen
such things before, seemed to the last degree uncommon and monstrous.

I remember one cripple, a young man rather decently clad, who sat
huddled up against the wall, holding a painted board on his knees. It
was a picture intending to represent the man himself caught in the
machinery of some factory, and whirled about among spindles and cogs,
with his limbs mangled and bloody. This person said nothing, but sat
silently exhibiting his board. Next him, leaning upright against the
wall, was a tall, pallid man, with a white bandage round his brow, and
his face cadaverous as a corpse. He, too, said nothing; but with one
finger silently pointed down to the square of flagging at his feet,
which was nicely swept, and stained blue, and bore this inscription in
chalk:--

   "I have had no food for three days;
    My wife and children are dying."

Further on lay a man with one sleeve of his ragged coat removed, showing
an unsightly sore; and above it a label with some writing.

In some places, for the distance of many rods, the whole line of
flagging immediately at the base of the wall, would be completely
covered with inscriptions, the beggars standing over them in silence.

But as you passed along these horrible records, in an hour's time
destined to be obliterated by the feet of thousands and thousands of
wayfarers, you were not left unassailed by the clamorous petitions of
the more urgent applicants for charity. They beset you on every hand;
catching you by the coat; hanging on, and following you along; and, for
Heaven's sake, and for God's sake, and for Christ's sake, beseeching of
you but one ha'penny. If you so much as glanced your eye on one of them,
even for an instant, it was perceived like lightning, and the person
never left your side until you turned into another street, or satisfied
his demands. Thus, at least, it was with the sailors; though I observed
that the beggars treated the town's people differently.

I can not say that the seamen did much to relieve the destitution which
three times every day was presented to their view. Perhaps habit had
made them callous; but the truth might have been that very few of them
had much money to give. Yet the beggars must have had some inducement to
infest the dock walls as they did.

As an example of the caprice of sailors, and their sympathy with
suffering among members of their own calling, I must mention the case of
an old man, who every day, and all day long, through sunshine and rain,
occupied a particular corner, where crowds of tars were always passing.
He was an uncommonly large, plethoric man, with a wooden leg, and
dressed in the nautical garb; his face was red and round; he was
continually merry; and with his wooden stump thrust forth, so as almost
to trip up the careless wayfarer, he sat upon a great pile of monkey
jackets, with a little depression in them between his knees, to receive
the coppers thrown him. And plenty of pennies were tost into his
poor-box by the sailors, who always exchanged a pleasant word with the
old man, and passed on, generally regardless of the neighboring beggars.

The first morning I went ashore with my shipmates, some of them greeted
him as an old acquaintance; for that corner he had occupied for many
long years. He was an old man-of-war's man, who had lost his leg at the
battle of Trafalgar; and singular to tell, he now exhibited his wooden
one as a genuine specimen of the oak timbers of Nelson's ship, the
Victory.

Among the paupers were several who wore old sailor hats and jackets, and
claimed to be destitute tars; and on the strength of these pretensions
demanded help from their brethren; but Jack would see through their
disguise in a moment, and turn away, with no benediction.

As I daily passed through this lane of beggars, who thronged the docks
as the Hebrew cripples did the Pool of Bethesda, and as I thought of my
utter inability in any way to help them, I could not but offer up a
prayer, that some angel might descend, and turn the waters of the docks
into an elixir, that would heal all their woes, and make them, man and
woman, healthy and whole as their ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the
garden.

Adam and Eve! If indeed ye are yet alive and in heaven, may it be no
part of your immortality to look down upon the world ye have left. For
as all these sufferers and cripples are as much your family as young
Abel, so, to you, the sight of the world's woes would be a parental
torment indeed.

Back to chapter list of: Redburn