Chapter 38

THE DOCK-WALL BEGGARS

I might relate other things which befell me during the six weeks and
more that I remained in Liverpool, often visiting the cellars, sinks,
and hovels of the wretched lanes and courts near the river. But to tell
of them, would only be to tell over again the story just told; so I
return to the docks.

The old women described as picking dirty fragments of cotton in tie
empty lot, belong to the same class of beings who at all hours of the
day are to be seen within the dock walls, raking over and over the heaps
of rubbish carried ashore from the holds of the shipping.

As it is against the law to throw the least thing overboard, even a rope
yarn; and as this law is very different from similar laws in New York,
inasmuch as it is rigidly enforced by the dock-masters; and, moreover,
as after discharging a ship's cargo, a great deal of dirt and worthless
dunnage remains in the hold, the amount of rubbish accumulated in the
appointed receptacles for depositing it within the walls is extremely
large, and is constantly receiving new accessions from every vessel that
unlades at the quays.

Standing over these noisome heaps, you will see scores of tattered
wretches, armed with old rakes and picking-irons, turning over the dirt,
and making as much of a rope-yarn as if it were a skein of silk. Their
findings, nevertheless, are but small; for as it is one of the
immemorial perquisites of the second mate of a merchant ship to collect,
and sell on his own account, all the condemned "old junk" of the vessel
to which he belongs, he generally takes good heed that in the buckets of
rubbish carried ashore, there shall be as few rope-yarns as possible.

In the same way, the cook preserves all the odds and ends of pork-rinds
and beef-fat, which he sells at considerable profit; upon a six months'
voyage frequently realizing thirty or forty dollars from the sale, and
in large ships, even more than that. It may easily be imagined, then,
how desperately driven to it must these rubbish-pickers be, to ransack
heaps of refuse which have been previously gleaned.

Nor must I omit to make mention of the singular beggary practiced in the
streets frequented by sailors; and particularly to record the remarkable
army of paupers that beset the docks at particular hours of the day.

At twelve o'clock the crews of hundreds and hundreds of ships issue in
crowds from the dock gates to go to their dinner in the town. This hour
is seized upon by multitudes of beggars to plant themselves against the
outside of the walls, while others stand upon the curbstone to excite
the charity of the seamen. The first time that I passed through this
long lane of pauperism, it seemed hard to believe that such an