Beers, Spades, and Sumphole Nobby: Navvies, the Men Who Built the Railway by Steve Dowen

‘It may be doubted whether there is in England any class of men which, as a class, has produced greater results and attracted less attention than the navvies.’ Above, is a quote from the British magazine Quiver. Written in 1877, the author would have been surrounded by the explosion of new technologies, fashions, and social change of the mid-nineteenth century. These changes were perhaps as jarring - if not more so - than the changes we experience today in our ever-evolving world. No more so was this apparent in Britain than with the construction of the Railways. The story of the railway is one filled with drama; antagonism; financial triumph, catastrophe, with a plethora of stories of love, destruction, and adventure. The railway not only allowed for people and goods to travel over large distances in comfort and at speed, but it shaped the very way in which we perceive the world. The world of the Victorians shrank with the introduction of the railway. The countryside was now on the city-goers front door, and distance was no longer an obstacle. Time itself bowed before this new invention with contemporaries such as Charles Dickens marvelling at their ability to travel from London to Paris in a few hours, many of whom suffered something akin to jetlag. However, while the story of the railway has been recorded and recounted many times, the story of those who built them have not. The original navvies were men hired to construct the canals of the eighteenth century. The first professional navvy that we know about was a man called John Walker who, when interviewed in 1801, claimed to have been a navvy for over 40 years. Typically men from the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire fens were hired to be navvies, thanks to their familiarity with construction, digging, and drainage following the works conducted in these areas from 1631 onwards. While the first commercial railway, the Liverpool to Manchester line, would not be built until 1830, thousands of navvies would have been working on canals and other construction projects before this. It is in fact the boom in railway construction from the 1840s onwards that makes it impossible to specify how many navvies were around. From the 10,000s in the 1810’s to the 200,000 railway workers recorded around the 1840’s. The navvies , or navigators, were the men who built the railways, canals, tunnels, and viaducts from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. Theres is a story of a group with a fierce individualistic spirit who built the modern world. As with many things in History, a precise definition can be a hard thing to achieve. Predominantly, the navvies were those who built the infrastructure listed above. However, from examining the company records and local surveys we know that the majority of railway workers were actually from the local area. Most were local agricultural workers who came to the railways in order to earn (substantially in some cases) higher wages before returning to the land come harvest season. However, a navvy was not just an occupation, but rather a culture and a way of life. To be a navvy meant to work hard and for yourself. It meant going on the tramp (walking around the country in search of work) and to speak the navvy tongue. It also meant the requirement to give your coins to another in need when tramping and to pay your respects to the dead. To be a ‘true’ navvy meant to be a part of the sub-culture of the working class and to simultaneously accept and reject your identity through fierce individualism. While this might seem pedantic to discuss for a short article, it is worth informing the reader that not all those who worked on the construction of the railway were navvies, and that to be a navvy was to occupy an identity more than a simple trade. It was an identity forged through the geographical isolation of the works and hostility that came alongside the work.

Despite what scholars might now argue as to who was or wasn’t a navvy, for contemporaries, the navvy was akin to a bogeyman. Lieutenant Peter Lecount was one of Robert Stephenson’s twenty-five assistant engineers on the London & Birmingham Line and he recorded his observations of the workers: “These banditti, known in some parts of England by the name of ‘Navies’ or ‘Navigators’, and in others by that of ‘Bankers’, are generally the terror of the surrounding country; they are as completely a class by themelves as the Gipsies. Possessed of all the daring recklessness of the smuggler, without any of his redeeming qualities, their ferocious behaviour can only be equalled in the brutaility of their language. It may be truly said, their hand is against every man, and before they have been located, every man’s hand is against them: and woe befall any woman, with the slightest share of modesty, whose ears they can assail. From being long known to each other, they in general act in concert, and put at defiance any local constabulary force; consequently crimes of the most atrocious character are common, and robbery, without an attempt at concealment, has been an everyday occurrence, wherever they have been congregated in large numbers.” The words of Lecount reflect the common perception of the navvy throughout the country. Reverend D. W. Barrett reflected on these opinions in 1883 when writing about his experience as a railway missionary. He notes that to the common-man a navvy was “the blackest of the black”, “the roughest of the rough”, and “the most uncouth of the human species”. We also have first hand experiences of the ostracisation that navvies experienced when wondering the land. The Irish poet Patrick Macgill records his experiences as a navvy in his semi-autobiographical novel Children of the Dead End. In it, the character is continually ignored, chased, and rejected by the common man. Dick Sullivan also records an instance told to him by his father - a former navvy: “‘Well, I was on tramp in Gloucestershire when this farmyard savage stops me. He says, ‘Are you a navvy?’ Only speaking countrified. He says, ‘I’ll give you sixpence if you show me your tail.’ They thought navvies had tails, you see, like monkeys.” The common opinion of navvies is perhaps best shown in the supposedly real conversation between a magazine editor and a navvy on a train in the Quiver magazine. Despite his original reluctance to engage with his fellow passenger, the author began to talk to the navvy and discuss his position, and the perception of navvies. The navvy responds: “Decent people, them as lives in towns and villages and has homes of their own and no occasion to tramp, they gets a notion into their heads as we belongs to a different breed from what they do. They reckon us a sort of big strong beasts, very useful in our way, but terribly dangerous and not of much account except for strength. Why, it was only t’other day as I heard a woman telling about a railway accident, and she said as there was three men killed and a navvy. That’s the way sir. We aint men at all, we aint got no feelings nor no souls, nor nothing but just strong backs and arms and a big swallow for beer.” There were three main characteristics that the navvies would be known by, this being; their work ethic, their propensity for fighting and mischief, and their excessive consumption of alcohol and food. The navvies garnered a reputation for excessive drinking which was supported by the wages they would earn by working on the line. Due to the demand for railway workers, experienced navvies could earn between 2 and 8 shillings a day depending on their experience and whether they were part of a “butty gang”. In comparison, agricultural labourers around the time could expect to earn a little over 1 shilling a day, though this could vary greatly depending on location and time of year. These vast wages allowed some to live stringently and save in order to open a shop or establish their own butty gang. For the majority however, the money was quickly spent on the common vices of the period of drinking and gambling. The amount of beer, gin, and other alcoholic drinks were in such large numbers that in 1852 a writer claimed that a sum equal to £1,000 a mile on all the railways had been spent on drink. On the Kettering and Manton line it was estimated that 312,000 gallons of beer was drunk as well as 5,200 gallons of spirit. The total spent by navvies on drink on this single line was £36,000 (£6.3 million in today’s currency) by the time of its completion. One man confessed to a missionary in the early 1880s that he had saved £212 (around £32,000 today), only to have then spent all but a shilling of it on beer in a single month at Barnsley. While these are staggering amounts drunk, it is worth remembering that beer was a substitute for water in the majority of locations at the time. Additionally, most of the accounts of the navvies prodigious drinking were recorded by missionaries who worked in the railway camps and gave spiritual support. These men and women had their own reasons for exaggerating the sins committed by the navvies. Such missionaries would receive funding through charities or from the board of the railway line to provide spiritual succour to the workers. Interestingly, while many of these missionaries were extremely critical of their spiritual charges, many were also ardent defenders and supporters of navvies. Reverend D.W Barrett is one such missionary as mentioned earlier but the most significant supporter was Elizabeth Garnett who was a founder and driving force behind the Navvy Mission Society which published the Quarterly Letter to Navvies from 1878 onwards. Writers such as these two give us crucial accounts to help balance the traditional demonised opinion of the navvies.

The construction of the railway necessitated working in isolated locations. All along the line, shanty towns sprang up to house the labourers. These towns presented a variety of housing opportunities with varying qualities of life. It was common for some, particularly those who had married, to construct a house or cabin. Once done, they would offer lodgings to other navvies and workers. Many of these lodgings would have a woman of the house who acted within the traditional social structure. They would clean the house and cook the men's food for them with the service often being included in the rent. Some cabins were true homes to the workers for their time on the works and had everything that a respectable home would need. Many others however would lodge in a room with a member of the residential population or in a lodging house. Agricultural workers, general labourers, widows, paupers, and washerwomen are amongst the sort of people who frequently took in a navvy. These workers would stimulate growth in the area by paying for rent, food, and of course beer. It would also be where many people would first come face to face with a navvy. During the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal, the Eccles and Patricroft Journal wrote in 1888: We hear good accounts of the navvies’ conduct. The old prejudice has not quite worn out against them but respectable people who have had navvies as lodgers are, we hear, astonished to find them so tractable, so intelligent, and so well-behaved. Of course, all are not alike but it is clear that it is time to judge them as men… David Brooke, the eminent historian on the navvies has argued that the navvies and the rural populations were much more intertwined that previously thought. While their reputation would precede them, the navvies were not completely ostracised by the local population. It is only in the cities - where the navvies would rarely go in search of work, which would hold a pervasive demoinsed view of the navvies . Navvies would often embrace their mortality in a way only those who were oft in danger would. After all, Mrs Garnett stated that there was a death for every mile of completed track. In fact, more men as a percentage were killed in the construction of the Summit tunnel than were at the battle of Waterloo. Due to this, the men often spent eagerly on earthly vices, especially when accompanied by the terrible conditions they worked in. Contemporaries were horrified to hear stories of workers at the construction of Woodhead tunnel auctioning the property of one man who had died earlier that day. The same site also had a story of a man who sold his wife for a keg of beer. Unsurprisingly the excessive consumption of alcohol led to instances of conflict with the local law. One such instance was when rioting broke out in February 1846, between English and Irish navvies on the northern lines. After the yeomanry were called out. The newspapers united to condemn these 'savage' and 'lawless' men. Navvy violence and riots became a favourite of newspapers and the arrival of the navvy often became something to be dreaded by local populations. The world of the navvy was one of what could be considered excessive masculinity where individuals established their identity through danger and physical feats. Speaking in the House of Commons in 1846, Superintendent Dowling described “the principal technical and managerial skills possessed by a Ganger [as] two in number: his left fist and his right.’ If there is one truism of any contemporary source of the navvy it is that they were men of violence and lawlessness. However, when examining crime statistics of Southern Counties only 244 of 8329 prisoners (2.9%) had committed an offence which was in some way related to the business of railway building. The overwhelming majority of these offenders (202 persons or 83 per cent) had been charged with larceny and, of them, 108 prisoners were employees of contractors or railway companies; the rest came from the general population. Despite this, the idea of navvy lawlessness was so prevalent that local troublemakers would pretend to be them in order to deflect blame. In June 1847 the directors of the South Devon Railway received a bill for £46 to cover the cost of enrolling over 300 special constables during tow days of disturbance in Torquay during the previous month But further enquiries revealed that the trouble had begun as a bread riot in which labourers of the south Devon were a very small group in a crowd of at least 500 people. In order to confuse the police and implicate railway workers, some in the mob were imitating navvies language and pretending to be navvies.