docks, for example, are appropriated to the Baltic trade, and their store-houses and vaults are filled with timber, grain and tar; the West India to rum, and logs of mahogany, ebony and rosewood; the East India to indigo and dye-stuffs; St. Katherine's to landing and embarking passengers and their luggage; and the London to pipes of wines and spirits, tea, spices and ivory, tobacco, sugars and drugs. These last, the London docks, comprise an area of ninety acres, thirty-five being of water, and 12,980 feet of quay and jetty frontage. In the depth they give of twenty-seven feet of water, 302 sail of shipping can ride, while 220,000 tons of merchandise can be warehoused in their rooms, and 80,000 pipes of wine stored in their vaults. It is to these docks, because of the kind of goods they contain, that the interest of the curious is directed, and in examining them, accompanied by several foreign gentlemen, I spent a day in 1861. A friend had procured for us a general order from the secretary, and a "tasting order" from a leading wine merchant, and we had agreed to meet at the door of the entrance leading to the wine vaults at ten the next morning.
For myself there was another object in view. Henry Mayhew had just issued the first part of "The Great World of London," and I wanted to see, not only what the London docks contained, but that congregated swarm of men, who, "of all grades, looks and natures," wait from early light till eight o'clock for the only day's job they can get in the metropolis, without character or recommendation. I, therefore, rose at five, and, taking a cab, found myself at half-past six at the gates of the London docks, through which, by an introduction to one of the foremen, the previous day, I was at once admitted, and given a window on the second floor of the outer warehouse, overlooking the principal entrance. It was a drizzly May morning, and chilly. Not more than twenty-five or thirty men were standing about near the gates, and they looked more like well-to-do travellers than starved-out workmen. As the hour of eight approached streams of men from the different streets kept pouring into the gates, until from 1,500 to 1,800 must have been assembled within the area. They were of all ages, from sixteen years to sixty; of all former employments—mechanics, laborers, porters, gardeners, bakers, green-grocers, butchers, clerks and shopkeepers—as could be seen from their dress; in all stages of poverty, from some remaining appearance of thrift to that of absolute destitution; and of all characters, not a small proportion of the crowd being made up of Irishmen, costermongers, Jews and thieves.
When the foremen of the docks, ten in number, each of whom was to employ that day sixty additional laborers, came out, and the crowd, dividing itself into ten groups, pressed around each foreman standing in his elevated box with memorandum book and pencil, I never witnessed a scene of greater confusion. It was not so much the struggle of every man to be foremost, though this was great—or to stand more in sight than the others—as to catch the foreman's attention. Every one shouted his own name and continued shouting it. It was a Babel of sounds. There was not a moment's cessation. All sorts of artifice were used to catch the foreman's ear. "It is Barney, my lad, who has worked for you these twenty months, Barney Mahoney, you know!" "Don't forget James Smith, Mr. Jones, James Smith, the carpenter!" "For God's sake, give Tom Williams a job to-day!" While a little fellow, in a fustian jacket, with a big Jewish nose, who could hardly be seen for the crowd, kept crying out in a soprano voice, which no hubbub of voices could drown, "Ikey Jacops, Ikey Jacops, Mishter Jones, pe sure and put down Ikey Jacops!" It was a sight to sadden the most callous, to see hundreds of men praying for a single day's hire,
