As much interest has latterly been roused concerning the population habitually living in the English canal traffic boats, we offer the following particulars on the subject from the personal observation of a correspondent. His narrative is as follows:

After allowing one or two barges to pass, the occupants of which seemed to be surly ill-favoured folks, one at length came in sight which answered our purpose, and we shall begin with it.

A cleanly dressed woman looked up at us with a pleasant smile upon her face as we bade her ‘good-day,’ her husband at the same time answering our salutation heartily. Whilst waiting for the lock to fill he came to our side and volunteered some sensible remarks on the great saving of water effected by the use of the side-pound system, which led to a conversation between us, and eventually to an invitation to step on board and go with them as far as Brentford. Accordingly we stepped on board; but at first had some little difficulty in bestowing our person out of the way of the long tiller, which swept completely over the available standing-room in rear of the cabin door, and momentarily threatened to force us overboard.

When at length we were well under way, and the man had relieved his wife at the helm, she invited us to inspect the interior of their cabin, apologising for its unfurnished state as compared with other cabins, on the ground that she did not habitually accompany her husband on his voyages, preferring to stay at home, when possible, to keep the house in order. With no little pride, however, she pointed out the usual arrangement of cupboards, lockers, shelves, hooks, &c., by which the limited space of nine feet by six was made to contain the utensils and necessaries for the use of a whole family. As was natural to a good housewife, she dilated mostly upon the cooking capabilities of a wonderfully small fire-place, erected close by the doorway, at which, she averred, she could cook as readily as at home. We looked sharply round for the sleeping accommodation, but failing to discover anything resembling a bedstead—other than the tops of the lockers placed round two sides of the cabin, and which we calculated could not possibly accommodate more than three persons—were considerably puzzled to understand how such families as we had seen on the other boats were disposed of at night. The roof was not high enough to admit of hammocks being slung; nor was the space between the lockers sufficient to allow of a bed being made up on the floor. Unable to solve the puzzle ourselves, we suggested that surely, where there was a family of five or six children, they did not all sleep in the cabin.

‘Indeed, but they do,’ replied our hostess. ‘And this is how they manage. The father and mother with the youngest baby sleep at the end there, with maybe the next youngest at their feet; then a couple of the children at this side; and another, or two, under here.’

‘Under here’ being the space beneath the father’s bed, a very kennel, closed on all sides except a portion of the front corresponding to the width of the floor—about three feet. That children even could sleep in so confined a space without suffering permanently in health seems contrary to all natural laws; but as a matter of fact, bargemen and their families appear to be remarkably healthy. Expressing our surprise that any person could possibly sleep in so cramped a space, our informant continued: ‘Bless you! that’s nothing. When there’s a butty, he sleeps as best he can on the floor.’

‘And pray, what is a butty?’ we inquire.

‘Well, you see, by rights there must be two able-bodied people on board every boat, besides a lad or a lass to take turn about at driving. Generally it’s the man’s wife. But sometimes it happens as she’s sick or what not; and then they have to get a growing lad of sixteen or seventeen to butty with them for a voyage or two; and then of course he lives and sleeps on the boat along with the family. Not as you must run away with the idea that we all of us live entirely in the boats, as a good many of us have as good homes on shore as you’d wish to put foot in. But on the other hand, there’s as many more who don’t sleep out of the boat once a year, and hardly know what the inside of a house is like.

‘Do I mean to say that children are born in these cabins? Indeed I do, sir. What is more, many’s the child that is not only born on board but dies on board too; for as I told you, there’s many that have no other home than the boat, and no friends but what are boatmen too. So what are they to do? with their husbands a-travelling all over the country; Birmingham one week, and Brentford here maybe, the next. Plenty of ’em indeed have got so used to the boats it would be downright cruel if they were to be compelled to live in a house ashore like decent people; because, you see, everything’s so different, and they’ve become so used to making shift in little room, that they’d be regularly lost in a house.

‘How do they get on when they’re sick? Well, you see, it’s mostly a town that we tie up at, at night, and there’s generally a doctor to be found, however late it may be; and they get medicine that way. I once lost a little girl on board. She was taken a little queer on the Sunday night before we were to start on this very same voyage on the Monday morning. It so happened that the master couldn’t get a butty, and so we’d arranged as I should come down with him; though of course we never dreamt as there was anything serious the matter with little Polly, or I wouldn’t have stirred with her. All day Monday and Tuesday the child got so much worse, that when we tied up at night I made the master take her to a doctor and get some medicine for her. Of course we were obliged to go on the next day, with little Polly getting worse and worse every hour, so that at night we were afraid to take her on shore, and had to pay a doctor to come on board and see her. I hardly liked the thought of going on the next day; but we were on a time voyage, by which the master was bound to be in Brentford on a certain day, and so we had to go on. But before night little Polly died. All that evening my master tried to get somebody to take his boat on; but it was a busy time just then, and there wasn’t a boatman to be got for love or money. We had some thoughts of going on ourselves; but almost as soon as it was daylight the next morning a policeman came on board and stopped us, saying, as no doctor had attended the child, there’d have to be an inquest. It was no use me a-shewing him the medicine bottles, and saying as two doctors had seen her; he wouldn’t believe us. Nor it wasn’t till two days afterwards, after my master had been to the last doctor and got him to give him a letter to the coroner, that we could get leave to bury the child; which we did, with not a soul belonging to her following her except my husband in his working clothes, I myself being too poorly to keep the poor man company in seeing the last of her.

‘As for children being born in the cabins, sir, I know several women who have had large families all born on board the boat while it was making its voyage, with perhaps nobody at all to attend on them except their husband, or some woman from another boat which chanced to be working mates with them.

‘Both my lads can read and write; but there’s nine out of ten as you see on the boats can’t tell “A” from a bull’s foot, and on that account the new Act is sure to do good. But my husband can tell you more about that than I can, and he’ll have done for a mile or two when we get through this next lock.’

‘None such easy work after all—is it, sir?’ inquired the husband, as after passing through several locks all within a few score paces of each other, at every one of which he had been very hard at work opening and closing sluices, he stepped on board the barge and took the helm from his wife. ‘There is them as thinks we bargees have nought to do all day except lean our arms on the tiller, smoke our pipes, and chaff anybody we come across. But you can see for yourself, sir, as we have all our work at times.’

Having expressed our conviction that on that point he was right, we requested him to enlighten us on several matters connected with his particular class, which he willingly did somewhat as follows.

‘About our earnings? Well, I suppose we can’t grumble as times go. Take it all the year round, one week with another, I and the lads earn perhaps a couple of pounds. We get paid mostly by the voyage—so much a ton from one place to another; and if we could only get loaded up as soon as we emptied, we shouldn’t make a bad thing of it; but the worst of it is the waiting about for a load when one voyage is finished before we can start on another. The boats the master finds; but the horse is my own; and out of what I make I have to feed him, which must be on the best of corn and hay that can be got for money; otherwise, he’d never be able to get through the tramp, tramp, for five-and-twenty or thirty miles—sometimes more—which he has to do day after day, wet and fine. Look at that corn, sir! Better you won’t find in any gentleman’s stable, I’ll warrant. And I find that in the long-run it comes the cheapest, for where those as feeds their horses on anything, wear out two or three, I don’t use up one. Of course we don’t walk the whole day through, alongside the horse; but we take it turn about, five or six miles at a spell; though sometimes when we are working quick voyages, night and day that is—owners finding relays of horses—we have regular hours to drive, like watches on board ship; but there ain’t much of that kind of work now. Our day’s work is mostly over by dark, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, all depending on the place we choose to tie up at, or the time we have to wait to pass the locks.

‘Do I think that railways will do away with canals in time? No, sir; I don’t. Because, you see, there’s lots of goods as don’t well bear the packing and unpacking as is necessary for railway travelling, as can be put straight on board a barge and never be shaken even, till they are unloaded just at the very place where they are wanted. And lots of other goods there are that we can carry cheaper than the railway, where a day or two more on the road don’t matter. Besides which, there’s plenty of brickfields, collieries, ironworks, and such like just on the canal banks and some distance from railroads, that will always use barges to save the expense of carting; so that I don’t think canals will go out of fashion yet awhile. And that’s why I’m glad to hear as they’re passing an Act to do something for the poor children. You see it’s just this way, sir: our people as a rule don’t know how to read and write themselves, most of ’em having been on the boats since they could remember, and therefore they don’t see why they shouldn’t have the advantage of their children’s assistance in working the barge, the same as their fathers had.

‘There’s another way in which I think the Act will do good, and that is this. It will teach our women perhaps to have a little more decency about them than some of the worst of them have. If you’ll believe me, sir, I see scenes on the canal sometimes, when some of the worst of them have been paid, as I can’t bear to look at, though not nearly so commonly now as I used to. And then again, it doesn’t always follow as because a man and woman work the same boat that they are married. In fact, in my opinion it would be a good thing if the lasses were not allowed on board after they had grown up to be twelve or thirteen, as it stands to reason that they’re nearly sure to grow up bargewomen. And after all’s said and done, it’s no fitting life for a woman to lead. As you’ve seen for yourself, there’s a good deal of hard work attached to it, even on a fine day like this; but in winter-time it’s simply cruel to a woman who has a young baby. However, I suppose when our children are compelled to go to school, as they say this new Act compels them, there’ll be a stop put to a good deal of what’s wrong about us, and perhaps folks may not have so good a reason for looking upon us as something worse than themselves. People seem to think that generally we are a regular bad lot; but I fancy if they knew a little more about us, they’d see that, though there are some bad ones amongst us, take us all in all we are no worse than most of our neighbours. We seem somehow to have got a name for interfering with people as we chance to come across; but you may see for yourself, sir, that we have quite as much as we can do to mind our own business, and a bargeman can no more afford to neglect his business than anybody else, if he means to do any good in the world.

‘What becomes of us when we get old? Well, most of us stick to the barges as long as we can; and when we are obliged to give up, if we haven’t put by enough to keep us comfortable, which I’m sorry to say as there ain’t many of us do, there’s generally a lock to be got or a job of some sort at the docks; all depending on the sort of character we’ve kept.

‘Here we are, sir, at our journey’s end for this time,’ he added, as the boat slowly floated into a small open basin, there to remain for the night. The boatman’s wife, being already shawled and armed with a capacious basket, stepped on shore as soon as the boat came near enough; and with a cheerful ‘good-night’ to us, went away to do her marketing before the shops should close.

Tying up the boat, my bargee friend sent off the boys with the horse to its stable, and proceeded to gather together and stow away in their respective lockers the odds and ends which had been in use during the day; remarking as he did so, that though there were watchmen kept in every dock, it often happened that the barges were robbed of any loose things which might be left about, and therefore it was that most of the boats had a dog on board, who made a better policeman than all the watchmen. With a last glance round he took from one of the cupboards a dirty paper, and unfolding it for our inspection, said: ‘There, you see, reading and writing would be of some use to us after all; for according to what tonnage is put down there, we get paid. And as you see, wherever we pay tolls they put down the time we pass, so that if we get drinking or loitering about for a day the owners know it, and make up our character according.

‘Yes; I’m going to sleep on board; but I must go and report our arrival at the office, and see as the horse is all right first. And as for what I’ve told you, I’m sure you’re very welcome to know it, especially if it will only make you believe as if something was done to give our children a little reading and writing, and to stop so many lads and lasses being crammed together in the boats, there might be less respectable people than bargees.’

An unclouded moon was shining upon the calm water of the canal and upon the gaudily painted cabins of some twelve or thirteen barges, which lay motionless in the basin, displaying no other sign of human habitation than the thin columns of smoke which issued from their stove-pipes, as we bade our friend ‘good-night,’ and started on our homeward walk, well satisfied with the experience we had gained while spending an hour or two with some of ‘our canal population.’