Tarquin O’Flaherty continues his series not just on trains, but the men who built the lines on which they ran.
There was an old American work song popular in the 1950’s called “FIFTEEN TONS” (listen here) a few lines of which went as follows;
‘You load fifteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter don’t you call me,’cos I can’t go-
I owe my soul to the company store.
The company store was alive and well on the railways in 19th century Britain. The run-of-the-mill contractor, instead of paying his workers with coin of the realm, paid them with vouchers or slips which allowed them to purchase the basic necessities, but only from ‘the company store’. The contractors set their own prices and the navvies, particularly in remote areas, were left with little choice. The food was of a low quality, the beer heavily watered, and the meat often poor or rancid. It was not uncommon for navvies, having paid their debts, to be left with little or nothing. Thus they began again, already owing money, and with increasingly little prospect of ever clearing their debts.
The contractor Peto detested the ‘company store’ or ‘truck’ system, as it was called in the UK, but he doubted the system could change because ‘… it had been the custom for the last hundred years, ever since they commenced making canals… and I think it requires a very strong hand indeed to bring about a transformation….’
In the 1850’s, Peto, as MP for Norwich, tried ‘…a very strong hand…’ again and again to have the truck system outlawed. Truck Acts were passed which might have achieved a great deal, but they were never enforced, and the truck system continued unabashed for many years.
So, who were ‘the navvies’?
Navvies were the men who did the blasting, tunnelling and bridge building, the dangerous work, and not exclusively on the railways. There were reservoirs to be dug, locks to be constructed, and, as shipping increased in size, quay walls and harbour walls to be built and extended. There was always work for a good team. Essentially navvies were railway labourers who looked down contemptuously on lesser labourers. They were not masons and bricklayers and carpenters but, none of these trades could have operated without navvy help. They were men who, all day, could, at the bottom of a cutting, load up their wheelbarrows with rock, then have the wheelbarrow dragged up the incline by a horse drawn cable whilst the navvy gripped the handles and walked up the slope, to prevent the barrow from tipping over. At the top he would tip the load out and return downhill. The navvy did this back-breaking work, hour after sweating hour. When, to make the job easier, a four wheel truck was used, the navvies took great exception, and would not allow this innovation at any cost. It was doing away with mens’ jobs and they wouldn’t hear of it!
So, how do you become a navvy?
Providing you could maintain this high level of work, and were prepared to live for months on end in remote encampments, it could then be fairly said that your apprenticeship was progressing well.
Then, the greatest test of all:
TO BE CONTINUED . . . .