Abstract
The Port as it stood in 1850 had not changed in essentials since the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Trade, it is true, had greatly increased in this period, and the tonnage entered in the foreign trade had in fact more than doubled.1 There had, however, been no major changes in the facilities provided for the reception of this trade since 1828, and thus congestion in the river remained a feature of the port.2 Sail continued to predominate as the motive power for shipping, while mechanical handling of cargoes was virtually unknown. Although railways had reached the riverside at Blackwall, Greenwich and North Woolwich, they had not yet affected the working of the port.3 In short, the port of London in 1850 had not entered upon the modern age.
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Notes
E. Course, London Railways (1962) chs 6 and 7.
For a full account of the early history of the London docks see Sir Joseph Broodbank, History of the Port of London (1921) 1, chs viii-xv.
Rodwell Jones, The Geography of the London River (1931) p. 30.
P. Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis, 6th ed. (1800) pp. 218–39.
For account of origins of London and West India docks see W. M. Stern, ‘The First London Dock Boom’, in Economica, February 1952.
Sir David Owen, The Origin and Development of the Ports of the United Kingdom (1939) pp. 67 and 70.
Henry Mayhew, London Labour and London Poor (1861–2) III 303, 310 and 312.
Stern, in Economica, February 1952, pp. 72–3 and 77.
See evidence of Mr Scott, Royal Commission on the Port of London (1902), Cd 1152, Evidence Qs 5581–4.
Second Report from the Select Committee on the Sweating System (1888) xxi, Evidence Q 14429. See also Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London (1902 ed.) iv, 1st ser., p. 33.
For a study of the lighterage trade in London see C. L. Wheble, ‘The London Lighterage Trade’ (M.Sc. thesis, London, 1939).
Jones, Geography of London River, pp. 163–7, contains a description of the various categories, but I have relied mainly upon the mass of information contained in the Booth Collection (British Library of Political Science, London School of Economics). In particular Group B, cxli 97–106 and cxlii 49–59. See also Millicent Rose, The East End of London (1951) p. 143.
C. Capper, The Port and Trade of London (1862) p. 161.
G. Graham, ‘The Ascendancy of the Sailing Ship’, in Economic History Review, August 1956. See also F. Hyde, Blue Funnel (Liverpool, 1956) pp. 15–23
For dock construction in Liverpool see H. Rees, British Ports and Shipping (1958) p. 36.
For timber trade see J. Potter, ‘The British Timber Duties 1815–1860’, in Economica, May 1955.
C.O.S., Report on Unskilled Labour (1908) p. 27.
E. G. Howarth and M. Wilson, West Ham (1907) p. 186.
W. M. Langdon ‘Casual Labour at the Docks’, in Toynbee Record, February 1912, p. 63.
S. Pollard, ‘The Decline of Shipbuilding on the Thames’, in Economic History Review, iii, 2nd ser. (1950) no. 1.
R.C. on Port of London (1902), Cd 1152, Evidence Q 5596. See also Brysson Cunningham, Cargo Handling at Ports (1926) p. 1.
Smith, Sea Coal for London (1961) pp. 285–90.
Charles Barnes, The Longshoremen (New York, 1915) ch. iv, especially pp. 34–40.
E. F. Rathbone, Labour at the Liverpool Docks (Liverpool, 1904) p. 16.
Richard Williams, The Liverpool Docks Problem (Liverpool, 1912) p. 22.
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© 1969 J. C. Lovell
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Lovell, J. (1969). The Port. In: Stevedores and Dockers. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00096-8_1
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