Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg: Henry Mayhew and Charles Dickens

Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Henry Mayhew and Charles Dickens


The print "The Home of the Rick-Burner" by John Leech, Punch, 1844	Charles Dickens as 'Joe the Ploughboy' In the play "Used Up", by Augustus Egg, 1848

As shown in the above print by John Leech, the rick burners were impoverished, and rebelled by burning ricks of hay. (This is explained in greater detail in the discussion of the Industrial Revolution). The painting of Dickens by Augustus Egg shows an interest Dickens shared with others. Dickens was closely in touch with John Leech, Augustus Egg, Henry Mayhew, etc.

At least four people worked in closely-related areas: the novelist Charles Dickens, the writer Henry Mayhew, the artist John Leech, and the artist Augustus Egg. How did these people influence each other? It is incontestible that these people did influence each other in several ways, including reading each other's writings¹, Dickens and Mayhew acting in the same plays together, and through writing in some of Dickens' periodicals.² In addition, Leech, for years a political cartoonist for "Punch" (which Mayhew founded, and where he remained on staff for many years afterwards), not only provided all the illustrations to Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", but attended dinner parties at the Dickens home, with guests who included Henry Mayhew's brother Horace, "Punch" co-founder Mark Lemon, and artist Augustus Egg.³

As an example of the not-too-well-acknowledged borrowings from each other (although Mayhew thought that his "London Labour and the London Poor" was "the first attempt to publish the history of a people from the lips of the people themselves⁴ ... in their own 'unvarnished' language" ⁵), let us consider the following piece written by Henry Mayhew in 1851-1852. One might find some similarity between what Mayhew has written, and Dickens' "Our Mutual Friend" of 1854-1855.⁶ A discussion of these two pieces will take place in the next section.

The dredgerman⁷ and his boat may be immediately distinguished from all others; there is nothing similar to them on the river. The sharp cutwater fore and aft, and short rounded appearance of the vessel, marks it out at once from the skiff or wherry of the waterman. There is, too, always the appearance of labour about the boat, like a ship returning after a long voyage, daubed and filthy, and looking sadly in need of a thorough cleansing. The grappling irons are over the bow, resting on a coil of rope, mixed with the mud of the river. The ropes of the dredging-net hang over the side. A short stout figure, with a face soiled and blackened with perspiration, and surmounted by a tarred sou'wester, the body habited in a soiled check shirt, with the sleeves turned up above the elbows, and exhibiting a pair of sunburnt brawny arms, is pulling at the sculls, not with the ease and lightness of the waterman, but toiling and tugging away like a galley slave, as he scours the bed of the river with his dredging-net in search of some hoped-for prize.

The dredgers...are the men who find almost all the bodies of the persons drowned. If there be a reward offered for the recovery of a body, numbers of dredgers will at once endeavour to obtain it, while if there is no reward, there is at least the inquest money to be had – besides other chances. What these chances are may be inferred from the well-known fact, that no body recovered by a dredgerman ever happens to have any money about it, when brought to shore. There may, indeed, be a watch in a fob or waistcoat pocket, for that article would likely to be traced. There may, too, be a purse or pocket-book forthcoming, but somehow it is invariably empty. The dredgers cannot by reasoning or argument be made to comprehend that there is anything like dishonesty in emptying the pockets of a dead man. They consider them as their just perquisites. They say that anyone who finds a body does precisely the same, and that if they did not do so the police would. After having had all the trouble and labour, they allege that they have a much better right to whatever is to be got, than the police who have had nothing whatever to do with it. There are also people who shrewdly suspect that some of the coals from the barges lying in the river, very often find their way into the dredgers' boats, especially when the dredgers are engaged in night-work; and there are even some who do not hold them guiltless of, now and then, when opportnity offers, smuggling things ashore from many of the steamers coming from foreign parts. But such things, I repeat, the dredgers consider in the fair way of their business.

One of the most industrious, and I believe one of the most skillful and successful of this particular class, gave the following epitome of his history.⁸

Click here to read the dredgerman's history

It would not be interesting to compare the detailed description of the dredgerman by Henry Mayhew, with Dickens' dredgerman character, Gaffer Hexam (and to a lesser degree, Rogue Riderhood), in "Our Mutual Friend". The opening paragraphs of "Our Mutual Friend" are immediately at variance with Mayhew's description of a dredgerman's boat:

The figures in this boat were those of a strong man with ragged grizzled hair and a sun-browned face, and a dark girl of nineteen or twenty, sufficiently like him to be recognizable as his daughter. The girl rowed, pulling a pair of sculls very easily; the man, with the rudder-lines slack in his hands, and his hands loose in his waistband, kept an eager look out. He had no net, hook, or line, and he could not be a fisherman; his boat had no cushion for a sitter, no paint, no inscription, no appliance beyond a rusty boathook and a coil of rope, and he could not be a waterman; his boat was too crazy and too small to take in cargo for delivery, and he could not be a lighterman or river-carrier; there was no clue to what he looked for, but he looked for something, with a most intent and searching gaze.

Charles Dickens, "Our Mutual Friend", Penguin edition, p. 13

Mayhew points out that "there is a sharp cutwater fore and aft that distinguishes the dredgerman's boat from all others. There is nothing similar to them on the river." Mayhew also points out that there are grappling irons and a dredging-net, while Dickens says there is no net ⁹ (probably referring to a fishing net), and does not refer to grappling irons. Dickens was careful to supervise the illustrations that accompanied his stories, yet the illustration of Hexams' boat by Marcus Stone in "Our Mutual Friend" shows Gaffer and Lizzie Hexam in what does not appear to be a dredgerman's boat.

Click here to see the Hexams' boat

The engraving of the Hexams in their boat, in "Our Mutual Friend" is entitled "The Bird of Prey". However, dredgermen, by removing dead bodies from the Thames, the water supply of London, actually performed an public health function, and may have helped to prevent cholera, typhus, the plague, and other water-borne diseases. (By removing dead bodies, dredgermen also reduced the number of rats.)

Dickens' Portrayal of Dredgermen in "Our Mutual Friend"

It seems clear that Dickens, in "Our Mutual Friend", seeks to portray Gaffer Hexam as a sinister, even gothic, character. There is no dredgerman's net or grappling irons in Gaffer Hexam's boat because a dredgerman's net might be confused with a fisherman's net, and grappling irons would identify this dredgerman as one who was interested in illegal salvage of coal or metal. Dickens wants to make it appear as if this dredgerman is a true "bird of prey", interested only in bodies. However, while this gothic mood is created to subliminally suggest almost supernatural menace, Dickens has made two errors: namely, even if a dredgerman was interested only in bodies, he might still collect bodies using a dredgerman's net or grappling irons. Thus, it is clear that Dickens' interpretation, deliberately leaving out the dredgerman's net, is at variance with Mayhew's observations.¹⁰

Dickens' initial focus is to show his bourgeois readers an act that appears to be theft:

It was not until now that the upper half of the man came back into the boat. His arms were wet and dirty, and he washed them over the side. In his right hand he held something, and he washed that in the river too. It was money. He chinked it once, and he blew upon it once, and he spat upon it once,—"for luck," he hoarsely said—before he put it in his pocket.

Charles Dickens, "Our Mutual Friend", Penguin edition, p. 14

The next contradiction with Mayhew's very careful reporting of a dredgerman's testimony, is Dickens' introduction of Gaffer Hexam's daughter Lizzie, who rows their boat as Gaffer scans the water for likely items to scavenge (bodies). Lizzie expresses a view that is in sharp contrast with the epitome of his life given by the dredgerman in "London Labour and the London Poor". It is highly unlikely that anyone living from hand to mouth on the river would hold such a view, but it is exactly what we would expect Charles Dickens, with his bourgeois attitude, to impute to others:

"Here! and give me hold of the sculls. I'll take the rest of the spell."

"No, no, father! No! I can't indeed. Father!—I cannot sit so near it!"

He was moving towards her to change places, but her terrified expostulation stopped him and he resumed his seat.

"What hurt can it do you?"

"None, none. But I cannot bear it."

"It's my belief you hate the sight of the very river."

"I — do not like it, father."

"As if it wasn't your living! As if it wasn't meat and drink to you!"

At these latter words the girl shivered again, and for a moment paused in her rowing, seeming to turn deadly faint. It escaped his attention, for he was glancing over the sterm at something the boat had in tow.

"How can you be so thankless to your best friend, Lizzie? The very fire that warmed you when you were a babby, was picked out on the river alongside the coal barges. The very basket that you slept in, the tide washed ashore. The very rockers that I put it upon to make a cradle of it, I cut out of a piece of wood that drifted from some ship or another."

Charles Dickens, "Our Mutual Friend", Penguin edition, p. 15

Note that in the passage above, the view presented is that the dredgermen dredged coal from alongside the coal barges (either from coal spilled in the water or through theft of coal directly from the coal barges). Once again, Mayhew's information is far more precise: "I know a furrow off Lime'us Point, no wider nor the dredge, and I can go there, and what others can't git anything but stones and mud, I can git four or five bushels o'coal. You see, they lay there, they get in with the set of the tide, and can't git out so easy like." No mention of theft. It is quite possible that some dredgers did steal coal, but it is also evident that some dredgers did not steal coal.

Mayhew also points out that when a dredger gets too old to dredge he still works for a living, at jobs such as "scrapin'" (scraping off the old tar from ships with a scraper). Even in old age, there is no sign of begging or theft.

Dickens reinforces the idea that Gaffer Hexam "stole" money from the dead man's person in another passage. Rogue Riderhood accuses Gaffer Hexam:

"Since when was you no pardner of mine, Gaffer Hexam Esquire?"

"Since you was accused of robbing a man. Accused of robbing a live man!" said Gaffer, with great indignation.

"And what if I had been accused of robbing a dead man, Gaffer?"

"You COULDN'T do it."

"Couldn't you, Gaffer?"

"No. Has a dead man any use for money? Is it possible for a dead man to have money? What world does a dead man belong to? 'Tother world. What world does money belong to? This world. How can money be a corpse's? Can a corpse own it, want it, spend it, claim it, miss it? Don't try to go confounding the rights and wrongs of things in that way. But it's worthy of the sneaking spirit that robs a live man."

Charles Dickens, "Our Mutual Friend", Penguin edition, p. 16

The passage above is in direct opposition to Mayhew's statement that "the dredgers cannot by reasoning or argument be made to comprehend that there is anything like dishonesty in emptying the pockets of a dead man." In fact, "They say that anyone who finds a body does precisely the same, and that if they did not do so the police would." Thus, not only do dredgers in general not feel that emptying the pockets of corpses is dishonest, but they feel as if they are acting as lawfully as the police. In crafting a conversation where one dredgerman questions another about the morality of removing money from a corpse's pockets, Dickens inserts his own comforting bourgeois view of law and honesty in place of the reality of what law and honesty really mean.

Dickens portrays Gaffer Hexam both as a man who is capable of reading (which seems unlikely), and as a man who is opposed to formal education. This at least is in line with what Mayhew wrote in his interview with a dredgerman, whom he quotes as saying "There's on'y one or two of us dredgers as knows anything of larnin', and they're no better off than the rest. Larnin's no good to a dredger, he hasn't got no time to read".

Taking up the bottle with the lamp in it, he held it near a paper on the wall, with the police heading, BODY FOUND. The two friends read the handbill as it stuck against the wall, and Gaffer read them as he held the light.

"Only papers on the unfortunate man, I see," said Lightwood, glancing from the description of what was found, to the finder.

"Only paper."

Here the girl arose with her work in her hand, and went out the door.

"No money," pursued Mortimer; "but threepence in one of the skirt-pockets."

Charles Dickens, "Our Mutual Friend", Penguin edition, p. 31

"One of the gentlemen, the one who didn't speak while I was there, looked hard at me. And I was afraid he might know what my face meant. But there! Don't mind me, Charley! I was all in a tremble of another sort when you owned to your father you could write a little."

"Ah! But I made believe I wrote so badly, that it was odds if any one could read it. And when I wrote slowest and smeared out with my finger most, father was best pleased, as he stood looking over me."

Charles Dickens, "Our Mutual Friend", Penguin edition, p. 36

Upon what sources did Dickens draw, in the creation of the character of Gaffer Hexam? Although there is no direct evidence that Dickens was familiar with the work of Henry Mayhew, it is difficult to believe that Dickens was unaware of it.

... Mayhew's interviews with London street folk were well enough known for Dickens to have been aware of them whether he knew Mayhew or not. Mayhew first told well-off readers of the shifts by which the poor of London stayed alive from one day to the next in the Morning Chronicle in 1849-1850. The work appeared in a bewildering variety of amended, augmented, edited, and reorganized editions during the next dozen years and more. ... [T]he final version of the work was printed in 1864 and again in 1865. Dickens was writing Our Mutual Friend in 1864 and 1865; it would be strange if he did not know something at least about material so relevant to his interests ...¹¹

Three interests of Dickens are relevant here: his affection for the Thames, his fascination with the work of the police, and a longstanding interest in drowning.¹²

Harlan Nelson has studied the relationship between Henry Mayhew's "London Labour and the London Poor" and Charles Dickens' "Our Mutual Friend", and has noticed other striking coincidences, as follows:

[T]he relationship with London Labour and the London Poor becomes still more plausible on the discovery of two other passages in Mayhew. One contains touches suggesting Gaffer Hexam, the dredgerman (river scavenger) in Our Mutual Friend, touches that include distinct verbal reminisces and parallel details. The other is an extensive section on London dustmen and the garbage they collected, matter that (considering the use made of dust and the dust trade in Our Mutual Friend), certainly would have caught Dickens's eye, if indeed it was not what drew his attention to the book in the first place.¹³ But there is yet another circumstance that argues for the relationship I have suggested between London Labour and the London Poor and Our Mutual Friend. In a work running to nearly six hundred closely printed pages, the passage about the dredgermen occurs only four pages after the one dealing with the old woman¹⁴, and only nine pages before the section on dust begins; so that not only does a methodical reader, but a browser, or a skimmer, or a novelist looking for material, would be likely to run across all of them. It was while browsing, in fact, that I discovered these passages myself.¹⁵

Conclusion

In conclusion: it does appear that Dickens has at least borrowed ideas about dredgermen from the research that Henry Mayhew published several years before Dickens published "Our Mutual Friend", but not quite. Dickens replaced much of the facts found by Mayhew with Dickens' own bourgeois imagination about law, morality, and education: ideas with which Dickens was more comfortable.

¹ "Nineteenth-Century Fiction", Vol. 24, No. 3, Dec. 1969, pp. 345-349, ""Dickens and Mayhew: A Further Note", by H. P. Sucksmith.

² "Dickens certainly knew of Mayhew as a writer as early as 1838 for while editing "Bentley's Miscellany" He had published a piece of comic fiction entitled 'Mr. Peter Punctilio,/ The Gentleman in Black'" by Henry Mayhew. Ibid., p. 346.

³ "Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dickens Entertain at Home", by Helen Cox, Pergamon Press, 1970, pp. 130, 150, 158, 170.

⁴ "The Other Nation: The Poor in English Novels of the 1840s and 1850s", by Sheila M. Smith, Oxford University Press, Oxford, Great Britain, 1980, p. 166.

⁵ "[Mayhew] stops talking and lets the child speak, with the authentic voice ... . Listening to her, we realize what Dickens and Collins meant by their phrase 'strikes to the soul like reality'. From her words we get the same kind of direct impact of her life as we get from [a] remarkable photograph ... and as we do not get from, say, Dickens's Sissy Jupe." Ibid., p. 167.

⁶ "The Victorian Novelist: Social Problems and Social Change", Edited by Kate Flint, Croom Helm, New York, N. Y., 1987, pp. 226-229.

⁷ A "waterman" is licensed to carry passengers. A "lighter" carries goods or baggage, only. A "dredgerman's" boat is equipped with grappling hooks, and ropes and typically carries scavenged coal, bones, rope, metal or any other object with value, including dead bodies.

⁸ "London Labour and the London Poor", by Henry Mathew, London, 1861-1862, II, pp. 149-150.

⁹ Mayhew's dredgers pick up many things besides bodies—finding a body, which means a fixed fee ("inquest money") and perhaps a reward, is occasionally and outside the routine of their regular business. Dickens's Hexam seems to have little interest in anything else. "Dickens's OUR MUTUAL FRIEND and Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor", by Harland S. Nelson, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 20, #3, Dec. 1965, p.221.

¹⁰ Dickens correctly invokes the desired gothic mood, at the cost of inaccuracy. See "BIRDS OF PREY: A STUDY OF OUR MUTUAL FRIEND", by R. D. McMaster, The Dalhousie Review, vol. 40, 1960, p. 373.

¹¹ "Dickens's Our Mutual Friend and Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor", by Harland S. Nelson, Nineteenth Century Fiction Vol. 20 (3), December 1965, p. 213.

¹² "[Dickens] had a preoccupation with the river, and drowning, that came near being an obsession: not to speak of its role in his fiction, it appears in a number of his periodic articles. In one of these, "Down with the Tide" (Household Words, February 5, 1853...), the subject is handled more lightly than usual, even whimsically. But that article interests me just here for another reason, too. It is one of a series Dickens did on the police, whose work fascinated him and whose expertise drew his admiration. In this one Dickens reports on a river patrol he took with the Thames Police. We get an interview with the toll collector at Waterloo Bridge, full of macabre drollness (the man's cheerful precision about the habits of prospective suicides), and an account of the various sorts of scavengers that the police keep an eye on and among these, Dickens gives some space to dredgermen. But there is not a word about their work of recovering bodies, or about their peculiar perquisites—omissions doubly odd if Dickens knew about these matters, considering his persistent interest in drownings, and the prominence of suicide by drowning in this particular piece.

"But having written about dredgermen himself Dickens would probably notice them the more readily later in the writings of others; and their macabre salvage activity, as reported by Mayhew, would certainly recommend them to his attention." [Ibid., p. 219]

¹³ The entire topic of dustmen and the dust industry is a central theme in "Our Mutual Friend"; another apparent resemblance between Mayhew's work and Dickens'.

¹⁴ Mayhew's old woman is a precursor to Dickens' Betty Higden in "Our Mutual Friend". Mayhew's old woman was a purefinder who was younger than Betty Higden, but both despised the workhouse, and prefered death. Dickens modified Mayhew's old woman to make her an even more sympathetic washerwoman.

¹⁵ "Dickens's Our Mutual Friend and Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor", by Harland S. Nelson, Nineteenth Century Fiction Vol. 20 (3), December 1965, pp. 209-210. A more detailed of the Betty Higden-old woman relationship, and of the dustmen and dust business, may be found in Nelson.

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