NAVVIES
by
Richardson L. Spofford
Delivered to The Chicago Literary Club
May 9, 1994
Insofar as the Industrial Revolution, an overwhelmingly broad-based
socio-economic process, may be said to have a single beginning, we may look
to the year 1709 in Coalbrookdale, England. In that year Abraham Darby, an
iron smelter, first developed a commercially successful process for
smelting iron ore using coal. There is evidence of previous experiments in
England and Germany, but nothing came of them.
Coal in its natural state gave off gases during combustion which affected
the quality of the metal. Consequently wood had to be used until Darby
developed an effective coking process. Not only was this cheaper than wood,
but wood was becoming scarcer and more costly.
We are not concerned with specific inventions or their inventors except to
note that James Watt's stationary steam engine was by 1776 a definite
success. The First Industrial Revolution, as we may call it, was enabled by
cheap iron, steam and water power, and the increasing availability of
enough capital to launch enterprises of significant size. Also, commencing
about mid-century, great advances were being made in agricultural
management and production. Labor was generally readily available. Towns
always had people in need of employment, child labor was normal and
enormous numbers of poor people were forced off the land an a result of the
enclosures forming part of the agricultural revolution. From mid-18th
century to mid-19th century, 4,000,000 acres of hitherto common lands were
turned over to private use. Since efficient agriculture and stock raising
require large tracts of land and relatively fewer people to work them, an
enormous surplus population was available to work for meager wages. Wages
generally remained low past the middle of the 19th century.
The Industrial Revolution is not only to be explained by great inventions,
but the inventions themselves were stimulated by economic factors. From
about 1760 to 1830 national income doubled, canals were dug, navigable
rivers extended, mines opened, factories built, roads constructed,
population increased and foreign trade expanded.
The first Industrial Revolution was primarily one of production, with
transportation having a much smaller part. Improvements in transportation
came slowly. With the revolt of Prince Charles of Scotland in 1745, the
government realized the military value of turnpikes, which by the end of
the century covered England and much of Scotland, demonstrating great
commercial value. For transport of persons they worked well, but transport
of goods was cumbersome. The extensive system of canals functioned well but
speed and capacity were limited.
The most rudimentary beginnings of railroads may have been the crude
colliery tramways existing as far back as the 16th century around
Newcastle. By the end of the 18th century they were commonly used to carry
ore and coal from minehead to a nearby transport location. Earlier, rails
were mere wooden planks laid on log sleepers or perhaps stone blocks, if
available. When iron became more readily available, wooden rails were
covered with metal strips, but this was not successful.
Until the second decade of the 19th century, horsepower was used almost
exclusively, with only a few experimental trials of steam power. On canals
and coastal waterways, steam had little acceptance. All this was soon to
change in a second Industrial Revolution.,
The application of steam power to land transport, long delayed, came with
unprecedented speed and thoroughness. Trevethick did construct a workable
road engine in 1803 and a tramway locomotive in 1804 but nothing came of
this primitive effort. After 1810 there were a few instances of steam power
used for coal transport at collieries, but it remained for George
Stephenson, the self-taught son of a Northumberland colliery fireman, to
become the first and premier railway engineer of the age.
He had constructed an engine as early as 1814 and in 1823 he was appointed
engineer to the Stockton and Darlington railway. It was in 1822, when a
gang of 300 navvies pulled into Stockton the carriage of a local dignitary
who was to lay the first rail, that the railway age began. True, it was a
relatively short line - some 30 miles in all and originally intended for
freight only. By popular demand, passenger transport was added. At first
only horsepower was used, but Stephenson successfully employed steam as
well. It was the first public railway of any note and the first where large
earthworks were created by a large force of navvies assembled for the
purpose.
In a sense, this was only a glorified colliery tramway, but the example had
been noticed. A bill to authorize the Liverpool to Manchester line was in
Parliament by 1825. The first railway line intended to carry both freight
and passengers. it was ready for use in 1830. The second major
long-distance line, London to Birmingham, opened in 1838.
From 97 miles of track in 1830, track-miles grew to 1500 by 1840 and 5000
by 1848. By 1852 all main lines were substantially completed, in process or
authorized. By 1860 most major lines were complete and by 1880 railways
carried about 500 million passengers per year. Actually, the greatest
building period was over by 1850, though consolidation of shorter lines
into longer systems, extension into less-populated areas and upgrading
continued through the rest of the century.
Railway construction was a unique profit-making opportunity for many :
investment for shareholders, greatly enlarged markets for factories, mines
and large farmers, more foreign trade for shippers and lower prices to
urban consumers for many products. None of these, though, actually worked
to build the railways.
Laborers and other construction workers on the canals were originally
called "navigators" and were popularly called navvies. As the canal system
was so extensive that by the mid-1840s no point in England south of Durham
was more than 15 miles from a canal, and most were closer, the term was
universally known. Railway navvies came first from the canal workers and
the Lincolnshire seawall-builders. Others, farm laborers and unemployed
town and village men, would be recruited locally by contractors or foremen
as work progressed..One writer describes them as "the men who built the
railways...the unknown labourers of the nineteenth century who blasted,
tunneled, drank and randied their way across Christian England. Preached
at and plundered, sworn at and swindled, this anarchic elite endured perils
and disasters, and carved out of the English countryside a new iron-age
architecture unparalleled since the building of the cathedrals."
They were predominantly English, also Scottish and Irish, and in Wales,
many Welsh. Large numbers of English came from Yorkshire and Lancashire.
They were laborers with pick and shovel, they were masons, bricklayers,
tunnelers, layers of rail. Town and agricultural workers definitely were
not navvies, though they might gain acceptance after a year of work and
experience if they could last that long. More menial jobs were done by
locally recruited men and boys.
True navvies, in general, had several defining characteristics. Primarily
they had physical strength or particular skill in the required construction
trades. For men who shoveled earth and rocks above head-level into waiting
carts, nearly 20 tons per man per day was not unusual in favorable weather.
Those of us who shovel a small quantity of snow next winter, or who
contrive to avoid such tasks, may remember this statistic.
In good working conditions or bad, they worked together, lived together
along the line, usually in bad accommodations, and tended to move in
groups to new works. Distinctive clothing included "...moleskin trousers,
double-canvas shirts, velveteen square-tailed coats, hobnail boots, gaudy
handkerchiefs, and white felt hats with the brims turned up. They would pay
fifteen shillings, a great price, for a sealskin cap, and their distinct
badge was the rainbow waistcoat."
Living and working together means eating together. Two pounds of beef a day,
a like quantity of bread and a gallon of beer or ale separated the men from
the boys. Some of the latter would be consumed on the job.
Paid two to three times the wage of a common laborer, they justifiably
considered themselves above ordinary men. In general, they worked harder,
often under difficult or dangerous conditions. They had a strong sense of
camaraderie in the small work group as well as fraternity in a larger
sense with others similarly employed on other parts of the line or on other
works. If reasonably well-treated they showed strong loyalty to the
contractor or sub-contractor who actually employed them and would move in a
body with him from job to job.
One interesting aspect of their self-awareness of being free agents set
apart from regular society was their use of colorful nicknames, both on and
off the job. Often known by their place of origin, there was Bristol Jack,
Brummagem Joe, and any number of Lanks and Yorks, for Lancashire and
Yorkshire, respectively. Gypsy Joe and Happy Peter may have related to
personality traits. Contrairy York was called so because he did all sorts
of routine acts in unorthodox ways. Physical appearance counted. There were
Ginger Bill and Redhead. A short man almost surely became Punch. Wellington
and Mary Ann were widely known, the former for his patrician visage and the
latter for his high-pitched voice. Two thin brothers became Bones and
Shadow. Bible John was gored to death by a cow and Coffee Joe was fired for
excessive drunkenness. Evidently he had been misnamed. Johnny-come-lately
must have been the most recent John hired. Typically known to their mates
and contractors only by nicknames, difficulties sometimes arose. One man
lost his share of a large inheritance when a relative died and he could not
be located until years later, after the estate had been distributed. Once a
visitor came to the works asking for Richard Millwood.. No one knew him and
when about to leave, a woman spoke up, saying "You must mean my father,
Old Blackbird. Why didn't you say so?"
Navvies were not limited to railways. They also worked on many other
heavy-duty public and private enterprises. Bridges, docks, tunnels, roads
and buildings provided employment to many, especially when railway work
was slack. One well-known gang built the Crystal Palace in London. The
earliest known photographs of navvies are of some of these men on a job
break.
Living conditions for the most part could charitably be described as bad.
Even when works were in or close to towns, there were few accommodations for
the thousands of men suddenly brought to the job, and in the villages and
countryside there were little or none. At one typical location, 3000 were
engaged on 5 miles of line. Job sites were often miles from any real
inhabited places. Some men with families might build small huts of mud or
stone with thatch roofs for themselves, but the typical dwelling was a hut,
perhaps twenty to thirty feet by twelve, built of any material available.
When possible, they were wedged into an embankment so the sides and rear
would have a solid backing. In one large room were bunks for up to thirty
men, two often sharing one bed. A fireplace was in the middle and a crude
kitchen at one end. If any men had wives, other women or children, all had
to make their place. Typically, a communal shanty was presided over by an
older woman who saw to the rudimentary cooking and cleaning and no doubt
often served as a kind of house mother. Each man paid her a small sum and
provided his own food.
In better situations there were larger three room shanties put up by
entrepreneurs. The owner and family occupied one, the lodgers another and
the middle would be a common living room. The better ones would be as good
as a respectable town workingman's dwelling, complete with wallpaper,
whitewash, furnishings and a name such as Rose Cottage. It must be
understood that the railway management did not provide housing, or for that
matter, much of anything else except a right of way for the works,
engineering supervision and money when they had it. Usually, housing
arrangements were left to contractors for large sections of the line, their
smaller subcontractors or the men themselves. Terms of the contracts,
resistance of contractors to spending money, availability of materials and
job site location were all factors.
Food and drink were, on a day to day basis probably the navvies' major
concern. In populated areas provisions were more readily available than in
the countryside and remote areas of the north, but prices tended to rise
with an influx of hungry men. Boarding in town was not always an option
even if distance to the job was short. Navvies were feared as unruly
intruders in the more orderly lives of outsiders and as unreliable in
paying rent. In turn many were uncomfortable with town living or
distrusted landladies who might steal their food.
The most usual arrangement for feeding men was the truck shop, or tommy
shop as it was commonly known. Makeshift stores, perhaps only tents
appeared, convenient to the works Meat, bread, potatoes, beer, tobacco and
other basics could be had in often poor quality at usually inflated prices,
and most important of all, on credit. Shops were owned either by local
merchants or by contractors themselves, and if contractors did not own
them, they could extract a percentage for allowing them to do business
there.
This arrangement was easily controlled by the system of paying the men.
Payday typically would be once a month, though this varied. Men could draw
an advance of pay in the form of tickets redeemable at the tommy shop, with
these amounts being deducted on payday. Navvies were generally an
improvident lot who tended to drink their excess money or otherwise avoid
saving a few shillings for future need. It was commonly reckoned that
inferior meat and drink cost about three-quarters of its real value;
consequently there was little if any money left after a four-day drunken
payday randy, when work largely ceased, and a man had to live on credit
until the next payday. If the works were convenient to a town, payday might
be in a public house. For the trade that would bring, the proprietor was
glad to provide a room for the paymaster to conduct his business. Some less
reputable contractors gave part of the pay in beer. At a few jobs, drinking
was prohibited by local authorities; at one such, beer was brought up
in kegs marked "paraffin". Bringing food to the work location was necessary
when it was miles from any village or town, but profiteering was another
matter. It should be noted, however, that adulteration and low-quality
food were common in poor and working-class parts of towns. There were no
laws on these matters, many persons knew no better, and in any case they
could not afford better products.
Having little opportunity or energy for diversion most of the time, except
for some poaching and other lesser depredations, they were ready for action
when payday came. Drunken frolics or randies, as they were called, could
last several days until money ran out and men returned to work. Not all
engaged in this, of course, but enough to give all a bad reputation.
Respectable citizens avoided them at such times and kept their wives and
daughters out of sight. More than one unattached female had been known to
run off with a navvy. One observer said that a navvy come to town was like
a dog that had been tied up for a week - he would run around and not know
what to do with himself.
For all of this, there were fewer large-scale riots than there might have
been. One was at Penrith in Cumberland in 1846.. Apparently an Irish
laborer refused to take orders from an English foreman, one thing led to
another and a large group of English drove off the Irish and tore down
their huts. The next day 500 Irish returned and drove off the English
workers but forbore to destroy their huts. By the next day an army of 2000
English workers from a ten-mile radius appeared, ready for a good fight.
Most Irish had fled, but a few were caught and beat up. One died.
At Gorebridge, near Edinburgh, also in 1846, discontent had been long
growing. Irish, English and Scots were employed in large numbers but kept
apart from each other on different parts of the line. One gang of Irish had
been paid at a pub and began celebrating the occasion. They thought
themselves shortchanged, not having kept track of tickets at the tommy
shops or pub, but had enough money with which to get drunk. At this point a
traveling packman came by and passed around two watches for their approval.
Somehow, the watches disappeared and no one seemed to have them.
Seeing the
futility of arguing with a gang of drunken Irishmen, the packman appealed
to the authorities. Local people came to the aid of one of their own. The
Irish rioted, and in the ensuing skirmishes, a local constable was killed.
Before the military could arrive, a force of nearly 1500 English and Scots
navvies and nearby miners assembled, chased all the Irish away and tore
down their huts, leaving their families out in the February cold. The
sheriff of Edinburgh intervened and restored order while a show of force by
the militia dissuaded the Irish from marching on Edinburgh itself. The
contractor fired some of the Irish, rebuilt huts of the others and railway
building went on. The constable's attackers were identified and a reward
posted, but they were never found. The fate of the packman's watches has
been lost to history.
While the Irish are at the forefront of these incidents, they actually seem
not to have been nearly as wild at their reputation suggests. They
preferred to live by themselves when possible and were more peaceably
inclined, left to themselves, than the Scots and English. It was said
further that the Scots would fight the Irish and the English would fight
anybody.
A third noteworthy incident was the Norwich election riot in 1847. For the
two parliamentary seats there were three candidates; the future Duke of
Wellington, Morton Peto, the great railway contractor and one Parry. At
that time, election results were announced from time
to time as balloting went on, greatly increasing public interest in the
results. Peto had a liberal reputation and was comfortably ahead, while
Parry was well behind. About the time the election was over, a large group
of navvies arrived to cheer for Peto. They could not vote, but that did
not dampen enthusiasm for a popular master. Parry supporters booed the
navvies, some of the town rabble joined in and a good fight was had by all.
The navvies retreated to a hotel where Peto's victory was to be celebrated
and the ensuing brawl trashed the hotel's lower floors. The future Duke of
Wellington won the second seat.
One other thing about the Irish was noted by Carlyle. They, he noted,
would often intercept the postman on his rounds to send a small money order
home. The English, he said, never troubled the postman.
Belligerent, anti-social and intemperate they were in large numbers, but
in the first generation of railway-building, navvies had a tradition of
taking care of their own. If a man on the tramp came by looking for work
and there was no job for him, they would share their dinner, listen to his
story and take up a small collection to help him on his way. Or, if
working navvies met a needy compatriot on the road, they were expected to
give him the " tramping bob". On payday a collection might be taken for the
sick or the widow of a navvy who died on the works. For such purposes
little could be had from the contractors except in unusual cases.
Working conditions were another matter. Inclement weather is a given for
outdoor work, but there were worse aspects. There were no laws governing
safety, training, reporting of accidents or workmen's compensation. The
navvies' own culture was one of bravado, while contractors may have had
little experience in such matters. In any case they had a finite amount of
money at their disposal and a lot of unknowns which could decrease their
profits or even bankrupt them.
Here we must mention a few construction problems. Unexpected deposits of
hard rock or slippery clay were common. Soft or swampy ground posed great
difficulty. Since steam engines of the day had low pulling power and little
traction, it was essential to have as nearly level a roadbed as possible.
Consequently, many more cuttings and embankments and much more labor were
required than would be the case today. Soil mechanics had not become a
science, and no one knew for sure what lay inside a tunnel - soft crumbly
earth, solid clay, slate or granite-hard millstone.
To these natural conditions was added the need to deal with landowners.
When Parliament authorized construction of a railway, it gave the right of
eminent domain to the company. Surveyors and engineers, however, had to
avoid landowners' homes and orchards as much as possible, to say nothing of
spoiling their view and scaring off game.. All this caused far more
engineering and construction problems than building a railroad across the
plains of Canada or the United States.
One of the engineers on the London to Birmingham line calculated that as a
public work it exceeded either the pyramids or the Great Wall of China.
Impressive bridges, viaducts, tunnels and embankments exist to this day in
many places and are largely taken for granted. At the time much was new
and had to be learned by doing. There were no established productivity
standards for labor and little personal experience to draw upon.
Inexperienced and poorly-informed small contractors abounded. There is the
story of one who bid 18,000 pounds on a job, but his wife persuaded him to
raise that to 20,000. After further consideration, they increased the bid
to 40,000 pounds. They slept on it another night, after which he submitted his
bid for 80,000 pounds. As the low bid, it was accepted. It is no wonder that
foremen and contractors often cut corners and safety measures were not
used. One might say that the real wonder is that more accidents did not
occur, considering the large numbers of men who were often hastily
organized, poorly trained, inadequately supervised and worked in some haste.
The first recorded death seems to have been that of a man in 1827 who
undercut a face too high and deeply, causing it to collapse on him. The
procedure was to undercut, creating an overhang which would be blasted
down. The bigger the undercut, the more would come down and, on piecework,
the more the man could earn. Any narrow cutting could be risky, especially
in wet weather.
Blasting presented another danger. The usual method was to bore a hole,
pack in gunpowder and clay and light the fuse. Usually all went well,
but injuries were known when a charge did not go off at first and a man
went back to investigate. Iron rams were used to tamp down the powder and
clay and the were instances of sparks from rods striking rock igniting the
charge. One engineer, responding to an official inquiry about injuries
from this cause, agreed that using a softer metal such as copper would
avoid sparks, but said the rods would wear out and be more costly. Another
inquiry concerned blasting injuries when men had not had time to clear out
safely. It was acknowledged that slower-burning safety fuse was available,
but this was more expensive and since it acted more slowly, valuable time
was lost. It was only common sense that time was money. Then there was the
case of the navvy who, when a charge did not go off, blew on the fuse. It
went off in his face, causing him to lose both arms and the sight in both
eyes. This case resulted in a judicial inquiry. The company justifiably
claimed this was clear-cut stupidity and it should not be held liable.
Their lawyer said, in effect, keep quiet and do what the court says. The
victim was awarded the extraordinary sum of 200 pounds.
The horse-drawn tip wagons were another source of injuries. When filled
with earth and rock by shoveling navvies, boys or other menial workers led
them away for dumping, either over the side of a bank or at a forward
tip-head to create a new raised embankment. In wet weather they could slip
under horses' hooves or the wagon wheels. In 1845 the Manchester Infirmary
reported that one Edward Higham, aged 5, was cured of a fractured skull
caused by such an accident.
Collapse of the almost-completed nine-arch viaduct at Ashton-under-Lyne in
1845 was more spectacular. Fifteen men died and many more were injured. In
the official inquiry, it appeared the cause was shoddy construction: piers
consisted of rubble filling with a finished stone facing, but the interiors
were not solidly mortared or bonded to the exteriors. The company said it
was all up to the engineers, as they were the experts. The engineers blamed
the contractors who did the work and the contractors said yes, but the
engineers approved the work. The coroner's verdict was accidental death.
Injuries were really just part of the job. Britain's leading civil engineer
of the time, Brunel, saw a list of 151 men from the Great Western line who
were taken to Bath hospital between September, 1839 and June, 1841. He
thought it not excessive, considering the number of men on the line and
difficulty of the work. He also thought there were more casualties that
were not on the list.
This also caused a burden for hospitals, which is to say, local taxpayers.
During 11 months in 1846, 52 navvies were in-patients at Salisbury
hospital. at a total cost of 177 pounds. The South Western Railway contributed
5 pounds, the contractor 6 pounds, and the hospital absorbed the remainder.
Then there was the case of the Woodhead tunnel, which has been described as
"the most degraded adventure of the navvy age". Woodhead is a hamlet on
the border of Cheshire and Yorkshire and the site of a three-mile tunnel
under the moors, constructed from 1839 to 1845. On one side it was six
miles from any real settlement and eight or nine on the other. Nothing more
than a cart track to the site existed.
In the beginning the men were totally dependent on themselves to forage for
the most rudimentary dwelling materials, sleeping in the open for some
time. Eventually the company was persuaded to give funds for the purpose.
Engineers disagreed among themselves and with the company and funds were
sometimes lacking. When there was money, navvies worked day and night in
mud and water, seven days a week while living in conditions described by
local observers as "near-savagery".
In 1845 a Dr. Roberton of Manchester visited the site and met Dr. Pomfret
of a nearby town who, being retained by the navvies themselves from a
sick-fund, came three days a week to do what he could. Impressed by what he
saw, Roberton asked Pomfret for a detailed list of casualties, and returned
to Manchester where he spoke with the director of the local mission. This
man confirmed what Dr Roberton had said. Their findings created much
attention in Manchester. Dr. Pomfret's list showed 32 killed, several men
maimed, 23 cases of compound fracture, 74 simple fractures and 140 more or
less serious other cases, such as burns, contusions, dislocations and
lacerations. All this was only at one end of the tunnel, for Dr. Pomfret
had nothing to do with the other end which was under a different contractor.
Dr. Roberton brought all this to the attention of his friend Edwin
Chadwick. Chadwick was a lawyer and civil servant who had served on
government commissions to investigate child labor in factories and to
establish a workable police force. He was then engaged in promoting public
health reform which, after ten years, would in 1848 result in the first
Public Health Act. He knew that employment conditions were regulated by no
laws, not even the early Factory Act which pertained primarily to textile
mills. He also calculated that the casualty rate at the tunnel was greater
than that of private soldiers in the Peninsular War.
Eventually the scandal was great enough that a Scottish member of
parliament moved for a select committee to investigate. The Home Secretary
making no objection, it was passed with the stated objective of inquiring
in to working conditions on railways and public works generally. More than
3000 questions were asked of 32 witnesses: railway officials, navvies,
police officials, clergymen, contractors, engineers and even a tommy shop
proprietor.
Evidence given by public officials and clergymen generally confirmed the
reputation of navvies as intemperate, irreligious and debased. Thomas Eaton
had navvied on railways for twenty-seven years, including the Woodhead
tunnel, and gave graphic descriptions of how men could be injured or
killed when being hauled hundreds of feet up an air shaft. Brunel, the
great civil engineer, spoke against employer liability as restricting the
rights and freedom of action of Englishmen, but he also denounced the truck
system and said men should be paid in money.
The committee concluded that widespread abuses existed. Housing and
health care should be arranged before work started, wages should be paid
in money, constables should be appointed to maintain public order and
companies should be responsible for all deaths and injuries on the line.
Actually, the idea of workmen's compensation was not new, but the existing
Factory Act only related to employers' responsibility as to unguarded
machinery and basically antedated the age of railway building.
The House of Commons formally received the report, had it printed and that
was the end of the matter. The public took no notice, the government did
not act and it was as the Home Secretary had expected - nothing important
would come of it. Coleman commented "... what was to be expected of a
House of Commons where one railway company alone was said to have eighty
Members in its pocket?"
We must also mention the work of navvies in foreign lands. The larger
English contractors obtained contracts in most western European countries,
Canada, Australia, South Africa, the Sudan and India. British navvies were
experienced, took pride in their work and worked harder than their local
counterparts. Their first jobs were in France in the 1840s, where capital
and engineering skill then were lacking. In his chapter "King of
Labourers", Coleman says: "The English contractors boasted about their
English, Irish and Scots navvies, who were themselves quite conscious of
their self-evident superiority. Supervising what he derisively called
'native labour', the British navvy would point to the earth to be moved and
the wagon to be filled, say 'damn' with some emphasis, and stamp his foot.
The foreigners generally understood." When this approach no longer worked,
a sort of lingua franca evolved - part English, part French and part a
mixture of the many languages spoken by other nationalities then at work,
and this spread to other lines around Europe.
Particularly worth noting is the railway built in the Crimea to rescue the
British and French forces besieging Sevastopol. Due to incompetent
leadership they did not take Sevastopol when they could have and now, in
November, with winter approaching, the British troops were dug in but
without food, clothes, medical or other supplies and with little or no land
transport capacity from the harbor of Balaclava seven miles away. Peto,
then a member of parliament, approached the government offering to build a
supply railway in short order at cost if the government paid all expenses.
Brassey joined him, the government accepted and the contractors went to
work. In two days they hired all the men needed, including some veterans of
Canadian construction who understood winter work.
By the end of December, they were shipping men and supplies and by February
they were arriving at Balaclava. Within ten days the navvies had built
their camp of huts and five miles of line. One English army officer wrote
that while they looked disreputable, they did more work in a day than an
English regiment in a week. One evening they unloaded a piledriver and
carried the pieces to the site of a bridge. Next day they erected the
piledriver, drove the piles, removed the driver, built the bridge and laid
rails 100 yards beyond. By early April of 1855, all 29 miles of light rail,
including branches, had been finished and the army was saved. The army
engineer commander and the "Illustrated London News" praised the navvies
highly. "Punch" magazine ran a cartoon showing navvies trouncing Russian
soldiers with pick and shovel for weapons.
The British army had not fought a war for forty years, since Waterloo, and
the government could not maintain 30,000 men in the Crimea or fight well
there. Brassey and Peto, who customarily employed far more men, went to the
Crimea with a few hundred navvies, properly led and supplied, built a few
miles of railway and saved the day. Coleman quotes the "Illustrated London
News" saying "... the men who 'made England great by their skill,
enterprise, and powers of organization, were of far different calibre
from the officials the Government employs.' And the navvies, who returned
to a great welcome. .. confirmed in the minds of all Englishmen the
judgement...that the English navvy was the king of labourers".
EPILOGUE
Much else of importance happened in the railway building age, some directly
related, some not. When passengers rode from Liverpool to Manchester in
1830 they passed through Newton, a wide place in the road which had two
representatives in Parliament, to Manchester which had none. The Reform Act
of 1832 began to enlarge the franchise in favor of the middle class. The
Chartist movement, which so worried the government, aimed to enfranchise
workingmen but came to an unsuccessful end about 1848.
The Poor laws were radically revised, the Corn Law repealed, child labor
laws extended, universal penny postage introduced and the electric
telegraph invented. Public health was greatly improved. Architecturally
quaint railway stations appeared everywhere. The country went on to world
leadership in commerce, industry and prosperity. Some navvies continued to
work on branch lines, consolidation of smaller ones and ongoing
improvements. A few old-timers who had not died in their forties and
fifties were still around.
Daddy Hayes died on the works in 1882 at age 86. This was probably a unique
case of longevity, and his mates, who we may be sure gave him a proper
burial, claimed he was one of the first in England. If so, he went back to
canal-building days. William Falgate died in 1898 at age 80, having navvied
for 62 years. He reached back to the very beginning of railways and could
have well worked for the Stephensons. The tradition of self-reliance and
assistance to hard-up mates had been declining, but the legend of the navvy
as a rugged anti-hero survived until the World War.
Abraham Darby's kiln; the first iron bridge to span a river, erected in
1776 by a younger Darby; a Watt stationary engine of the same period, in
working order, are all there to be seen to this day. For more than a
hundred years the engine was used in pumping service on the canals around
Birmingham. Canals themselves have been extensively restored. To see all
these is to gain a most valuable appreciation of how far we have come.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Best, Geoffrey Mid-Victorian Britain 1851-75 London, 1990
Cole, G. D. H. A Short History of the British Working Class Movement.
London, 1966.
Coleman, Terry The Railway Navvies London, 1981
Harrison, J. F. C. The Early Victorians 1832-1851. London, 1971.
Hibbert, Christopher The English - A Social History 1066-1945 London, 1988.
Meredith, H. O. Outlines of the Economic History of England. London, 1908
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