The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London by Judith Flanders Page B
Authors: Judith Flanders
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services above-bridge, to the west of London Bridge, and two below-bridge, to the east, with the change made at the Old Swan Stairs. In Our Mutual Friend , set in the 1850s, the waterman Rogue Riderhood’s boat is run down by a ‘B’low-Bridge steamer’. Long after the new bridge removed the danger, ‘steamers...dance up and down on the waves...[and] hundreds of men, women, and children, [still] run...from one boat to another’.
Hungerford Stairs was typical. Passengers walked down a narrow passage lined with advertisements ‘celebrat[ing] the merits of “ DOWN ’ S HATS ” and “ COOPER ’ S MAGIC PORTRAITS ”...We hurry along the bridge, with its pagoda-like piers...and turn down a flight of winding steps.’ On the floating pier, ‘The words “ PAY HERE ” [are]...inscribed over little wooden houses, that remind one of the retreats generally found at the end of suburban gardens’, and tickets were purchased ‘amid cries of “Now then, mum,this way for Cree morne!” “Oo’s for Ungerford?” “Any one for Lambeth or Chelsea?” and [you] have just time to set foot on the boat before it shoots through the bridge.’ In David Copperfield , Murdstone and Grinby’s wine warehouse stood in for Warren’s blacking factory, which, until it was razed for the building of Hungerford market, had been ‘the last house at the bottom of a narrow street [at Hungerford Stairs], curving down hill to the river, with some stairs at the end, where people took boat’.
The Old Swan Stairs at London Bridge, the embarkation point for steamers to Europe, was for decades nothing more than a rickety wooden flight of stairs leading to an equally rickety under-dock.
By 1837, small steamers owned by the London and Westminster Steam Boat Company shuttled between London and Westminster Bridges every day between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., with sometimes an extension loop out to Putney in the western suburbs. Their boats, the Azalea , the Bluebell , the Rose , Camellia , Lotus and other floral tributes, departed every fifteen minutes, for journeys that lasted up to thirty minutes, depending on the number of intermediary stops. All but the smallest boats had hinged funnels, which folded back as they passed under the bridges. The boats were only about ten feet wide, with 18-horsepower engines and crews of five, and the boilers and the engines occupied most of the space. The skipper, wearing a top hat, stood on the bridge if there was one, or on the paddlebox itself. A call boy, ‘Quick of eye, sharp in mind, and distressingly loud in voice’, stood at the engine-room hatch and transmitted the skipper’s hand signals to the engineer below ‘with a shrillness which is a trifle less piercing than that of a steam-whistle’: ‘Sto-paw!’ (‘Stop her’), ‘E-saw!’ (‘Ease her’), ‘Half-a-turn astern!’ Because of this method of communication, signs everywhere on board warned, ‘Do not speak to the man at the wheel.’
At first it looked as though the arrival of the railways from the late 1830s would destroy this new transportation system almost before it had begun, but for the next decade the competition instead drove frequency up and fares down. By the 1840s, at least one steamer ran from London and Westminster Bridges every four minutes. The river had become ‘the leading highway of personal communication between the City and the West-end’, with thirty-two trips an hour, 320 a day, carrying more than 13,000 passengers daily: this ‘ silent highway is now as busy as the Strand itself ’. The London and Westminster Steam Boat Company reduced its 4d price to 2d for a return ticket between London Bridge and St Paul’s, and soonpenny steamers were the norm. Competition was guided solely by price, for the boats were neither luxurious nor even pleasant. There was barely any seating and no shelter on board; in the rain passengers huddled in the lee of the wheelhouse, holding up ‘mats, boards, great coats, and umbrellas’
Hungerford Stairs was typical. Passengers walked down a narrow passage lined with advertisements ‘celebrat[ing] the merits of “ DOWN ’ S HATS ” and “ COOPER ’ S MAGIC PORTRAITS ”...We hurry along the bridge, with its pagoda-like piers...and turn down a flight of winding steps.’ On the floating pier, ‘The words “ PAY HERE ” [are]...inscribed over little wooden houses, that remind one of the retreats generally found at the end of suburban gardens’, and tickets were purchased ‘amid cries of “Now then, mum,this way for Cree morne!” “Oo’s for Ungerford?” “Any one for Lambeth or Chelsea?” and [you] have just time to set foot on the boat before it shoots through the bridge.’ In David Copperfield , Murdstone and Grinby’s wine warehouse stood in for Warren’s blacking factory, which, until it was razed for the building of Hungerford market, had been ‘the last house at the bottom of a narrow street [at Hungerford Stairs], curving down hill to the river, with some stairs at the end, where people took boat’.
The Old Swan Stairs at London Bridge, the embarkation point for steamers to Europe, was for decades nothing more than a rickety wooden flight of stairs leading to an equally rickety under-dock.
By 1837, small steamers owned by the London and Westminster Steam Boat Company shuttled between London and Westminster Bridges every day between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., with sometimes an extension loop out to Putney in the western suburbs. Their boats, the Azalea , the Bluebell , the Rose , Camellia , Lotus and other floral tributes, departed every fifteen minutes, for journeys that lasted up to thirty minutes, depending on the number of intermediary stops. All but the smallest boats had hinged funnels, which folded back as they passed under the bridges. The boats were only about ten feet wide, with 18-horsepower engines and crews of five, and the boilers and the engines occupied most of the space. The skipper, wearing a top hat, stood on the bridge if there was one, or on the paddlebox itself. A call boy, ‘Quick of eye, sharp in mind, and distressingly loud in voice’, stood at the engine-room hatch and transmitted the skipper’s hand signals to the engineer below ‘with a shrillness which is a trifle less piercing than that of a steam-whistle’: ‘Sto-paw!’ (‘Stop her’), ‘E-saw!’ (‘Ease her’), ‘Half-a-turn astern!’ Because of this method of communication, signs everywhere on board warned, ‘Do not speak to the man at the wheel.’
At first it looked as though the arrival of the railways from the late 1830s would destroy this new transportation system almost before it had begun, but for the next decade the competition instead drove frequency up and fares down. By the 1840s, at least one steamer ran from London and Westminster Bridges every four minutes. The river had become ‘the leading highway of personal communication between the City and the West-end’, with thirty-two trips an hour, 320 a day, carrying more than 13,000 passengers daily: this ‘ silent highway is now as busy as the Strand itself ’. The London and Westminster Steam Boat Company reduced its 4d price to 2d for a return ticket between London Bridge and St Paul’s, and soonpenny steamers were the norm. Competition was guided solely by price, for the boats were neither luxurious nor even pleasant. There was barely any seating and no shelter on board; in the rain passengers huddled in the lee of the wheelhouse, holding up ‘mats, boards, great coats, and umbrellas’
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