"I A PLEA FOR THE NAVVY. BY MRS. CHARLES GARNETT, AUTHOR OF "LITTLE RAINBOW." met two of your friends, the navvies, | welcome he expected from "mates." Navvies yesterday-begging, of course." have many faults and sins, but our hearts "Forgive my contradicting you, but you warm to the soiled canvas when we meet did not. You met two sturdy rogues and them, for we well know that noble hearts masterless men,' but they were not navvies. often beat beneath it. Round every class a scum clings, and there are men who, claiming the name of navvy,' pass from one large work to another, levying a species of black-mail from the men whose appellation they disgrace. No, they were not navvies. See, there stands one by the roadside as the gipsies would say, he has the tacho jib.' He is on the tramp. It is evening, and he is evidently worn out. No 'kit' on his back, everything is gone, and most likely he has not a penny in his pocket. Let us speak to him." The object of this paper is to introduce the navvy in his true colours, and in his own peculiar circumstances, to the reader. To begin at the beginning. Here is a navvy boy. He is about twelve years of age, and already "earning his living." Many boys are required on all public works, by which collective name navvies understand the formation of railway lines, docks, harbours, reservoirs, &c. Let us suppose this boy was born in a hut; if so, he has in his few years probably lived at several different places. He may have been to school a little, orand this is much more probable-he may not have seen the inside of one; for on very few works does one exist. So if he reads at all it will be but badly. He is a brave little chap; like other boys full of fun, ready for Station, and you will any "lark." If he were a gentleman's son, in half an hour by rail." "How far to walk?" "Seventeen miles." "On the tramp, I see?" "Aye," slowly and sadly, he replies, after one glance at the questioner, gazing back into vacancy. "The nearest works to here are get to "Too far to go to-night," in the same even, sad tone. "You seem badly off. Is it the beer?" "It was, but my eyes have been very bad, and I have been in M-- Hospital." "They look red still." "Aye, but they are better." "When did you come out?" "This morning." his relatives would be proud of the manly boy, and would tell one with a smile how well he could ride and row. But he was born a navvy. So, in "pitch and toss," cards, fox and geese, as well as quoits and cricket, and stealing apples, he is an adept, and his young lips are soiled by horrid oaths, which he picked up with his first words. Our boy is very independent. Let his ganger or his father ill-treat him, and he will go off without permission to some other work. Or if employment is scarce, he will, "And you have tramped here. Why it is with his parents' consent do the same, and nearly twenty miles!" "About it." "I wish I had more with me, it is not even a shilling, but it will get you something to eat and a bed-will you take it?" "GOD BLESS YOU!" perhaps return in a few months, or, may be, not for years. One day, the mother (growing grey) will hear a knock at the door of the hut which she is keeping, perhaps hundreds of miles away from the place where her boy left her. She will shut the oven with a "You're welcome. Many a navvy has bang, and pile the fragrant loaves on the long been kind to me. Good night." "Good night." No word of begging, you see. Oh, my friend! don't judge navvies any more than gentlemen by outward seeming. We have known one on the tramp walk for two days without food, and disdain to beg it, though he passed through villages and towns. We could tell you of one whose feet bled through his cut boots as he limped along, but he persevered till he saw the huts, and received the brothers' "None table, and step to the door. On the threshold of a girl, with her hair screwed up in curl fellow-countrymen, and unknown to them. papers, and wearing a harding apron, rushes Navvies are seldom to be met with in towns; away down the line to tell "father." Neigh- sometimes the lodging-house visitor may find bours come in, and that evening there is a a few of them sitting together in the public carnival-the fatted calf is killed, for their room, but they will not mix with the other lost is found. Or, never again in this world "travellers," and the next evening they will do the parents see their child, or even hear be gone. More frequently are they to be of him. This is frequently owing to the met with in third-class railway carriages; for navvy custom of adopting an "alias." They navvies love "to see the course of the do not change their names because they have country," and when they leave a place where committed any crime, but generally from they have remained some time, will frequently mere carelessness or in a joke. Thus, two spend pounds in fares before settling down brothers went to a timekeeper's office and again. But generally they do not then talk asked to be "put on." "What are your much, and their fellow-passenger will know names?" "Tom and Harry Smith." "Oh, | little more of them when he gets out than he bother Smith! I've more Smiths on my did when he got in. They form a great books than enough. Listen! you are Lock nomadic tribe, numbering tens of thousands, and you are Key." And sure enough Tom yet so isolated are they in our midst that we Lock and Harry Key are their names to this see and know but little of them. very day. is a new Again. A handsome young man, an only son, was killed, thirty years ago, upon a public work, to which immediately afterwards came a young engineman and his wife. The new comer was remarkably like the dead young man. The navvies said, "Why, here come to take his place." Ever since, not only the engineman, but his wife and children, have been called by that young man's name. Two men on the tramp arrive at a new lodging place. The hut-keeper asks their names, only one speaks and gives his; in the future the one surname is given to both. The greater number of navvies are not navvies born, but join the ranks. Many are from the southern counties; others are discharged soldiers; others "have seen better days," they say, and these could easily, as a rule, have seen much better than the drunken ones they now lead. Amongst all "aliases are common, and not unfrequently they lose money by this foolish habit, and sometimes it leads to very sad results. The only son of a widow left home, took another name, and obtained employment upon a line only twelve miles from his home. He was unknown; and when stricken down by fever strangers nursed him, and strangers laid him in his grave. The widow applied to her clergyman to find her boy. This gentleman with infinite pains traced him, but too late. The only consolation he could offer the mother was to show her the grave to which six weeks previously her son had been carried. Whether a navvy is born one, or whether he becomes one, the life is a strange one, isolated, and free, differing from that of his Three causes combine to render navvies an unknown class-prejudice, habit, and circumstance. Navvies have a bad name; they are considered less men than brutes. The word navvy raises in many minds the idea of a creature possessing powerful limbs, and with a mighty capacity for work and beer, whose mildest pleasure is a dog-fight, and whose highest is a prize-fight, the more bloody and savage the better. In a village where many navvies lodged, because a "line" was being made past it, some really Christian people declared "the navvies were too bad to be gone amongst―no good could be done." A clergyman meeting a friend with some tracts in his hand, and hearing that they were to be distributed among the navvies, exclaimed, "Oh! won't they rend them ?" and a lady" dare not go down a lane because she saw three navvies coming up it!" Unconsciously these worthy persons compared navvies to lions and wolves. Navvies, knowing they are so regarded, return prejudice by prejudice. They say, "Happen we're as good as a lot o' them folk, wi' their noses in the air, and the hearts of chickens in their bussums; anyhow we'll do as we like, and they may keep out of the way." They know they are misjudged, and so they say, "Stand off!" They are suspected, and this hardens them till they are almost ready to confirm the erroneous belief. They laugh at what they hear is said of them, but while they laugh they feel the sting. Every man's hand is against them. Do you wonder they raise theirs to return the blow? So much for prejudice. Now for the second point-"habits." We have already mentioned some, but must refer to a few others. Their habits differ entirely from those of the agricultural labourer, who contentedly remains in the same village, perhaps the same cottage, where his grandfather lived before him. Still more do they offer a contrast to those of the mechanics, mill-hands, and colliers of the manufacturing districts. Though constantly changing from place to place, their work is always in the open air, and demands great muscular power, and necessitates the consumption in large quantities of the most supporting food-good beef, fine wheaten bread, eggs, tea, parsnips, &c., and many of them, alas! believe, strong beer also. They often earn high wages, but a large proportion is spent in food, so that, any navvy will tell you, a "piece man "is not much the gainer by his higher wages, being obliged to buy so much more beef. The butchers and provision dealers in any town near a settlement find this out, and quickly raise their pricesthough why navvies are to be preyed upon because they earn good wages by excessive toil does not appear. Like sailors, navvies are confiding. Having no means of safely investing their spare cash, they will trust it to almost any one's care. A man will work for, say, six months in one spot. He knew nothing of his hut-keepers before he came there, yet he will from week to week hand over his surplus wages to the woman, keeping (being unable to write) no account against her. When he "jacks up," and is about to leave, he asks her for his money. He knows she has £10 or 12 of his, but if she is a dishonest person, and many such are to be found, she will declare she has only £2 or £3, and perforce he must take that and go. Or, more frequently still, he will lend his all-give it rather to some shiftless relations, who are content to live feebly in a country village, and are not ashamed constantly to beg from their navvy relative, forgetting, or not caring, that every I they receive has cost him exhausting labour, which is shortening his life-for seldom is an old navvy to be met with. Again, at all times, even with care, their clothes are expensive, their boots are very heavy, and cost about 18s. per pair; their coats are of the strongest cloth, and lined throughout; their shirts and stockings are also very thick; some of the dandy navvies will give 10s. for a walking-stick, and 15s. for a real seal-skin cap. But if they sometimes spend their money lavishly, oftener still they give it with an ungrudging generosity which is to be matched in no other class. Not only are many of them constantly sending money home, but their shilling, even to the last one, is at the service of a mate on the tramp. This the men know who live by imposing on others. They contrive to reach a "dock" on pay-day, and will often come away with 30s. in their pockets. They will remain there and work for a week or two, and then be off to play the same trick at another place. In such numbers do they sometimes arrive, that we have heard of one piece-man giving away 19s. before he had left the neighbourhood of the pay-office. Navvies consider it a point of honour never to refuse the Is. or tommy" (i.e. food); they say, "I may want it some day, and then he would give it to me." If a man is killed or injured, or sickness or misfortune comes to a family, or indeed on any special occasion, a gathering is made on the works, resulting generally in a collection of several pounds. If a man be ill, his mates will call on him on a Saturday, and, although he may already be on the sick club, he will receive money from each, and bottles of wine or brandy, tobacco, fowls, flannel, &c., will find their way to him. And, more than this, they will, though exhausted by work, with him night after night. One man, not a saint in other respects, met a mate ill in consumption, took him home, worked over-hours for three months that he might want for no comfort, slept in the same room, and waited upon him in the nights until the long night came"-a night, thank God, illuminated by the rising beams of the Sun of Righteousness. 66 sit up Yet if some of their habits are noble, others are the reverse; oaths and drinking are prevalent; out of every three couples keeping the huts probably two only are married. Among the females living in navvy villages are women as true and good and pure as any in the world, but, alas! there are many others outwardly respectable too-of whom it is a shame to think. Is this wonderful, when we consider the circumstances of their lives? At the lowest calculation there cannot be fewer than 40,000 navvies working in the United Kingdom, not to speak of all those abroad. Add to these 20,000 women and children. Where are all these people? we see few of them. Ah! that is just it. More than two-thirds of them live in out-of-theway spots in their temporary villages at considerable distances from towns. If you went for several miles down a line which is marked out, or to a natural basin where a reservoir is being made, or to a sea-side bay where a dock is being formed, you would come upon a navvy settlement. You would see rows of huts and two larger buildings, one a "store," where everything can be bought which the settlement requires—at a rather high price-and a shant," where strong and frequently "doctored" beer is sold. All the rents, of course, go to the contractors or corporation to whom the village belongs, so the wages they pay they partly regain. The best huts are built of brick and roofed with tiles, the second best of rough stone, the next of tarred boards and rooted with felt, and the poorest of wattles plastered with mud or of sods of turf thatched with straw. In all there are three rooms-a general living room and two sleeping places, one for the use of the housekeeper's family the other for the lodgers. This last is always crowded, being supposed to accommodate ten or more men; it is furnished with some rough beds and perhaps a box or two, nothing more; the men all wash out of doors. The family sleeping room in the best huts is often most comfortably furnished, in all more so than the other sleeping room. The navvy room has a long table, a couple of forms, and some chairs, &c. In superior huts you will see clocks, pictures, pretty crockery, &c., and clever little fans and fly-catchers carved in wood are hanging above the fire-place with the bright brass horse ornaments. The second class huts are rougher, both in building and furnishing; and so on. The worst of the huts are not fit to kennel dogs in. Rain and damp penetrate the sides and drip through the rotten felt, or the mud plastering crumbles off in handfuls with every change of weather Icicles a foot long hung down into a room the owner of which was laid ill, and mushrooms and fungi have been gathered in the sleeping room growing on the only flooring-the earth. In such hovels the navvies lie in wet beds, and contract not unfrequently rheumatic and lung complaints, which bring on early death. Fever, o course, frequently rages. |