38. CHAPTER XXXVIII.
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 the 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 pciture 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.
