From Workhouse to Westminster Part 4

Matthias. He told me it was the oldest church in Poplar, built as a chapel-of-ease to the mother church of East London, St. Dunstan's. Then it was that all the parishes that now go to make up the teeming Tower Hamlets were comprised in Stepney. As the Port of London in those days was confined to the Pool and lower reaches and to the riverside hamlets of the East End, that was why people born at sea were often entered as having been born in the parish of Stepney.

St. Matthias' Church afterwards became the chapel of the old East India Company. Poplar people sometimes call it that to this day. The Company's almshouses were near, and the chapel ministered to the aged almoners alone. According to tradition, the teak pillars in the church served as masts in vessels of the Spanish Armada. Upon the ceiling is the coat-of-arms of the original East India Company. Adjoining the church is the picturesque vicarage, where Crooks pointed out the coat-of-arms adopted by the United Company a hundred years later on the amalgamation with the New East India Company.

This chapel contains a monument to the memory of George Green, who stands out as Poplar's worthiest philanthropist. Schools, churches, and charities in Poplar to-day testify to his generosity. He was one of the owners of the famous Blackwall Shipbuilding Yard, that turned out some of the st.u.r.diest of the wooden walls of England. They were proud in the shipyard of the _Venerable_ and the _Theseus_, the former Lord Duncan's flagship at the battle of Camperdown, the latter at one time Nelson's flagship, in the c.o.c.kpit of which his arm was amputated.

The people of old Poplar had at times unpleasant things to tolerate.

Sometimes the pirates hung at Execution Dock, higher up the river, would be brought down, still on their gibbets, and suspended for a long period at a place near Blackwall Point, as a warning to all seafarers entering the Port of London.

One of the old East India Company pensioners used to tell Crooks's father how one of the bodies hanging on a gibbet was stolen during the night, under romantic circ.u.mstances. An old waterman at the stairs was startled at a late hour by a young and ladylike girl coming ash.o.r.e in a boat and asking him to lend a hand with her father, who, she said, was dead drunk in the bottom of the skiff. A youth was with her, and the waterman a.s.sisted them to carry the supposed drunken man to a carriage which was waiting. Not until the pirate's body was missing in the morning did the old waterman know the truth.

We reached the river ourselves from the Blackwall end of the High Street, while Crooks was giving me these entertaining glimpses into the past of his native Poplar. The sight of Blackwall Causeway and the river crowded with craft instantly reminded him of the last mutiny in the Thames, of which he has gruesome recollections, a.s.sociated with bad dreams as a lad, caused by the knowledge that dead seamen lay in the building adjoining his home. It was here at Blackwall Point that the crew of the Peruvian frigate mutinied in 1861. He relates graphically how the eleven men who were shot dead on the ship were brought ash.o.r.e and laid in the mortuary next his mother's house by the casual ward.

The old watermen at the head of the Causeway, waiting to row people across to the Greenwich side, welcomed Crooks with a cheerful word as we approached. They were soon full of talk. The eldest told how he went to sea as a boy in the famous wooden ships turned out of Blackwall Yard.

His aged companion remembered the stage coaches coming down from London to Blackwall. He was proud also of a memory of Queen Victoria's visit to the neighbourhood to see a Chinese junk.

The two ancient watermen soon overflowed with reminiscences. One remembered his grandfather telling how King George the Fourth would come down to see the ships built at Blackwall, and how on one occasion a sailor who had come ash.o.r.e and got drunk took a pint of ale to his Majesty in a pewter and asked him to drink to the Army and Navy.

"Ah!" exclaimed the other, fetching a sigh; "but don't you remember that old Yarmouth fisherman who used to bring his smack round here from the Roads and sell herrings out of it on this very Causeway?"

"Remember! What do _you_ think? That was the old man who would never keep farthings. In the evening, when he'd got a handful in the course of the day's trade, he would pitch them in the river for the boys to find."

"Likely enough," interposed Crooks. "I mudlarked about here myself as a lad."

The eldest of the ancient watermen would have it that this old boy from Yarmouth was the original of Mr. Peggotty, and that it was at Blackwall d.i.c.kens first made his acquaintance. He said he had often seen d.i.c.kens himself about those parts.

We ventured a doubt.

"Why, bless my life!" he cried; "ain't I talked to him at the Causeway here many a time?"

This, of course, was unanswerable, so we asked what d.i.c.kens did when there.

The ancient waterman thought a moment.

"What did d.i.c.kens do?" he ruminated. "Now, let me see. What _did_ d.i.c.kens do? I know: d.i.c.kens used to go afloat!"

The other declared that d.i.c.kens did more than that: he would often go into the fishing-smack.

We immediately a.s.sumed that it was the fishing-smack of the old Yarmouth salt that was meant. We were wrong. It was another "Fishing Smack," one of the quaint old taverns by the river still standing in Coldharbour.

CHAPTER V

IN TRAINING FOR A CRAFTSMAN

Three years in a Smithy--Provoking a Carman--Apprenticeship--Winning a Nickname--Activity of an Idle Apprentice--"Not Dead, but Drunk"--A Boisterous Celebration--The Workman's Pride in His Work.

The three years in the blacksmith's shop in Limehouse Causeway, that commenced at the age of eleven after the errand-boy period, were years of hard work and long hours. The lad's working day began at six in the morning and often did not close until eight at night. Working overtime meant ten and twelve midnight before the day's work was done. He was paid for the overtime at the rate of a penny an hour.

He was kept hard at it all the time. Once, in the excitement of a General Election, in the days of the old hustings, he stole away from the forge for an hour. The smith had returned in his absence, and inquired angrily where he had been.

"Only to see the state of the poll."

"_You'll_ know the state of the poll on Sat.u.r.day, young fellow."

He did. A shilling was taken from his week's wages.

It was a heavy blow. It delayed a promised pair of new trousers. The need for a new pair was constantly being brought to his notice in a more or less personal way. The biggest affront came from a tall boy at a shop he pa.s.sed on the way home.

"Hi!" this youth would call after him. "Look at the kid wot's put his legs too far frew his trowsis!"

Nevertheless, the little chap in the short trousers was immensely proud to be at work. He would blacken his face before leaving for home so as to look like a working man.

Many a long day's search had he before getting that job. He spent hours one morning in calling at nearly all the shops in the two miles' length of Commercial Road between Poplar and the City. But n.o.body wanted so small a boy. On his way back, not yet wholly disheartened, he turned down Limehouse Causeway and peeped in at the smithy.

"Can you blow the bellows, little 'un?" he was asked.

Couldn't he; you just try him!

They tried him for an hour, then told him he was just the boy they wanted.

They got a lot of smiths' work in connection with the fitting out of small vessels in Limehouse Basin and the West India Docks. The first job at which Will a.s.sisted was on board the barque _Violet_.

The Causeway where the smithy stood was so narrow that carts could not pa.s.s each other. Two carmen driving in opposite directions met just outside the smithy door one afternoon. Neither would give way, and they filled the air with lurid fancies. Young Will came out of the smithy and took the part of the one whom he believed to have the right on his side.

Seizing the bridle of the other driver's horse, he commenced to back the cart down the lane. The man's flow of language increased as he tried to get at the lad with his whip. Will dodged first to one side and then to the other, then under the horse's nose, eluding the lash every time. At last he got the cart backed right out of the lane, allowing the other driver to pa.s.s in triumph.

The enraged carman sprang down and chased the lad back into the smithy.

Will had just time to spring behind the big bellows out of sight before the other appeared foaming at the door. With many oaths the man swore he would have vengeance on the boy some day, come what would.

Some years afterwards Crooks found himself at work in the same yard as his burly enemy, but time, which had made little difference to the man, had transformed the boy out of all recognition. Crooks asked him if he remembered the event.

"Yes; and if I came across that youngster to-day I'd break every bone in his body."

"I don't think you would, Jack," Crooks replied, preparing to take off his coat.

Then the carman understood.

In his third year at the smithy Will was getting six shillings a week, with something more than a penny an hour for overtime. Small though the wages were, they were very welcome at home; and it meant a great deal to his mother when she sacrificed more than half this amount in the lad's best interest.

She was as determined that her boys should learn a trade as that they should learn to read and write. She took Will away from the smithy and his six shillings a week, when she found he was not to be taught the business but to be merely a smiths' labourer, and she apprenticed him to the trade of cooper at a weekly wage of half a crown.

"The sacrifice of a few shillings a week," says Crooks, "which mother made in order that I should learn a trade was only one of the many things she did for me as a boy for which I have blessed her memory in manhood many times. I really don't know now how she managed to feed us all, after losing my three-and-six a week. I know that she always put up a good dinner in a handkerchief for me to take to work. It may have got smaller towards the end of the week, like many of the men's. I remember one Monday dinner-time flopping down on a saw-tub and opening my handkerchief as the foreman pa.s.sed.

"'That looks a good meal to begin the week on,' he said. 'I see how it is;--