David Liss - A Spectacle Of Corruption

This incident was met with the greatest public outcry, but without consequence for Littleton’s attackers- no consequence, that is, but that it brought to a period the rebellion against the Naval Yard, and it brought to a period Littleton’s efforts as a labor agitator.

Littleton called the girl to refill his tankard and then drained it in an instant. “Now that he’s gone, I’ll tell you what you need to know, and the sooner you get the fellow and your five pounds, the more kindly you’ll think on your friend John Littleton. With a bit of luck, you might have the matter in hand by the morrow, and you may then rest as comfortably as a housewife whose husband has been cured of the pox.”

“Tell me what you know, then.”

“First off, you have to understand that this here ain’t Ufford’s parish. He’s at John the Baptist’s Church in Wapping. He don’t live there because it don’t suit his style to live in such a shitten place that smells twice as beautiful as a Tom-turd man. He has a curate what he pays a few shillings a week to do most of the parish work, and this fellow is but a drudge, a mere slave to Ufford’s whims. Until of late, he had the curate do the Sunday preaching too, but then Ufford took an interest in the plight of the poor, as he calls us, and so more of the tasks went to him.”

“And how does this help me find the man who wrote the letter?” I asked.

“Well, you have to understand that there’s a lot of grumbling going on with the dockworkers.” He proudly tapped his porter’s shield. “Old privileges are being taken away, and they ain’t being replaced by anything. Men who sock a little tobacco in their trousers or stuff a few leaves of tea in their pockets- they’re getting seven years’ transportation and told they’re lucky not to get the gallows. And now that they ain’t allowed to take from the hogsheads, they ain’t being given any wages in exchange. So they’re angry, all of them, angry as a dog with a lighted taper up its arse.”

“A lighted taper, you say?”

He grinned. “And dripping wax.”

I could understand that Littleton did not much care for this situation, for it was remarkably like his troubles at the dockyards. Such was the nature of labor all over the island. Traditional compensations such as goods and materials were being wrested from workers, but no new wages were offered in place. What surprised me was that, in light of all he had suffered in his efforts to fight for the rights of workers, Littleton would allow himself to be drawn into Ufford’s circle. But I knew that a man who is hungry will often forget his fears.

Nevertheless, the story Littleton told me made little sense. “If Mr. Ufford wants to help the laborers, why would they be angry with him?”

“That’s the puzzle, ain’t it? It used to be that all us porters caught what work we could, but then this big tobacco man- Dennis Dogmill by name- he put a stop to it. Said we should get together and come to him all at once so he could hire a crew instead of wasting his time hiring this man and that. So crews got formed, but somehow they turned from crews to gangs, and they hate one another more than they hate Dogmill, which I guess was the plan all along. You know him- Dogmill?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Ain’t nothing to be afraid of in not knowing him. It’s knowing him that’s the trouble. He’s the son of the biggest tobacco man this island’s ever seen, but he ain’t his father. No matter what he does, he can’t sell as much as the family used to, and it makes him right furious. I saw him beat a porter near to death once for not working as hard as Dogmill reckoned he ought to. We stood there, Weaver, watching it, none of us willing to walk over and stop it, though we outnumbered him something severe, but that don’t signify. You take a step toward him, and you lose your badge. You have a family, it will be without bread. And there was something more, too. I got the feeling- it’s hard to say it, but it’s so- that twenty of us would not quite have been a match for him. He’s a big man and a strong man, but that ain’t it. He’s angry, if you know what I mean. And that anger is something vicious.”

“And he is behind these gangs?” I asked.

“Not direct, but he knew what he was doing when he arranged that we should separate out as we done. There’s a whole lot of gangs now, and we don’t ever come together. Now, the biggest gangs are Walter Yate’s and Billy Greenbill’s, who they call Greenbill Billy on account of his funny lips.”

“And not because of his name?”

Littleton removed his hat and scratched his nearly hairless head. “There is that, too. Howsomever, Greenbill Billy is a nasty fellow, and it’s said he’d see the other men what want to lead the workers dead, and the workers dead too, rather than yield to another man- any man but Dogmill, that is. I suspect he don’t want Ufford sticking his own bill into the mess, since it ain’t none of his business, as he reckons it, and has no cause to jab his shitten stick in the porters’ arse pot. The priest wants the gangs to form one big labor combination to fight Dogmill, and if that happens, Greenbill Billy goes from being the most powerful porter on the quays to no more than just another turd in the pile.”

“Are the other gangs willing to set aside differences and become a combination?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Just the opposite. They compete with one another, for Dogmill’s nearly got control of the whole dock now, and he don’t let any one gang work unless it’s outbid another. So our wages keep getting lower and lower, and we’re fighting all the fiercer over these little scraps.”

“And you suspect that Greenbill Billy is behind the notes?”

“Could as likely be as not. I’m in Yate’s gang, and I know he don’t go for that sort of thing. He’s a good man, that Yate. Young he is, but smart as a pig running from Bartholomew Fair, and he seems to want to do right. And he’s got the prettiest wife I ever saw. I wouldn’t mind a wife like that, let me tell you. I’ve seen her look at me once or twice, too. I know I’m a bit older than Yate, but I still have some charms that the ladies glance to. Stripped to the waist, I look like a young man, and it wouldn’t surprise me if so pretty a girl didn’t sample the wares away from her husband, if you take my meaning.”

Feeling we had somehow lost our way, I attempted to bring him back on course. “Perhaps I should have a word with Greenbill, then.”

Littleton snapped his fingers. “That’s the thing I propose. He likes to spend his time at a tavern called the Goose and Wheel, off Old Gravel Lane, near the timber yard. I ain’t saying he’s the one who sent the note, mind you, but there’s a good chance that, if he didn’t, he knows who did.”

“Have you told all of this to Mr. Ufford?”

He winked at me. “Not so much of it.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said in a whisper, “Ufford is a horse’s arse, that’s why. And the less he knows and the scareder he is and the more he goes bum-firking from this place to that, the more he gives me ale and bread and a coin here and there. I’ll be honest with you, since I don’t want you hearing this elsewhere and thinking ill of me. I told him not to bring you in. I said it was because the Church don’t need no Jews to do its business, but the real reason is that I don’t want him to get his mind put at ease too quick. It’s bad for my belly. This here is winter, and there ain’t no work for the quays porters. I keep food and drink in me- and only just enough to keep off death- by catching rats off the docked ships. It’s a disgrace that a porter with a badge like me is so reduced. Now, Ufford came to me and asked could I help him, and he offered me money and food, and these clothes he gave to me too. Milking his udders is a might better than catching rats, and I don’t want to see that well dry up too fast, you understand, though he seems now to feel like he done for me all he need to and I should dance for him like a Mayfair puppet.”