People had to walk more in those days, as there was no riding to your employment. I know the first employment I obtained was at the London Docks as checker to the landing of goods, and I had to get there by eight and leave at four. No time for meals, which I had to eat behind the desk flap. I had to stand all day on a wheeled platform, with a desk in front, that was moved along the quay wherever it was wanted. It used to take one and a half hours to get there; it was a long drag, but as I got twelve shillings per week I thought it an important post. I could sometimes if the tide served, get a ride home by taking a scull and dropping up with the tide; they were generally glad of a hand. I should think the dock labourer was very much worse off in those days than at present, as there appeared plenty of labourers, and they were only taken on as wanted and discharged as soon as done with, many of the jobs lasting only three hours, and the pay being fourpence per hour. They got their shilling and were done with till they got the next job.

I recollect the way one tail brawny Scotchman, over six feet high, named Macdonald, used to select his gangs; he would go to the dock gates where the crowd was waiting, and not say a word but plunge in and take those he wanted by the collar and swing them round behind him just like you would select from a drove of ponies, and his attendant would give them a ticket with a number on it. From thence the engaged commenced the walk from Chelsea to the docks, through the College Walk, up Ebury Street, and through Elliot’s, the Stag Brewery, always having a look in at the stables at several of the most beautiful black dray horses, splendidly kept and as well cared for as in a nobleman’s stables. Then up Castle Lane to Palmer’s Village, where I would meet a companion who was employed in Thames Street, and then along York Street and Tuttle Street, next out in the open space by Westminster Hospital, close to Palace Yard, up the steps to the high pavement, and through a passage by a public house to Westminster Bridge, through Pedler’s acre, along Stangate and Bankside, through the Brewery, and come over the new Bridge just opened, and out by the water wheel, along Thames Street, over Tower Hill to the docks. I got my appointment through the interest of an old Quaker gentleman who lived at No. 5 Paradise Row, with his two sisters. I had to go of an evening to get instructions in my duties, and he was very particular to impress upon me that neatness was the most important point in bookkeeping, and that the red ink lines in their proper place was the beauty of a ledger, and never to erase a mistake, but draw the red lines across it and enter the correction in red ink on the margin, which I hear is still held good to the present day. I have often walked from Chelsea to the Robin Hood at Kingston Bottom and back after I had done my day’s work, to do my courting and see the young lady, the daughter of the head gardener at Park House, who lived at the lodge by the entrance gates. I was not a recognized suitor, and had to do the courting under difficulties; I would go along the road past the lawn and shrubbery to where the peacock roosted in the big trees, and imitate its screech as a signal that I was there, and then come along the road to where the fence and the hedge met and squeeze through into the kitchen garden, and sit down on the trunk of an old walnut tree and wait. It was here that most of our courting was done.

This went on for some time, till the young lady was sent away as companion to an old lady at Bath, but correspondence was both difficult and expensive. As every letter cost eightpence for postage it was too expensive to last long. I would sometime be able to get them franked, which was a privilege allowed Members of Parliament and certain persons in an official position to send them free of charge. I could generally get a couple sent off in this way by meeting the manservant of an old officer in the hospital, and treating him to a four of hot rum at the Phoenix Tavern, in Smith Street.