‘Indeed, but they do,’ replied our hostess. ‘And this is how they manage. The father and mother with the youngest baby sleep at the end there, with maybe the next youngest at their feet; then a couple of the children at this side; and another, or two, under here.’ ‘Under here’ being the space beneath the father’s bed, a very kennel, closed on all sides except a portion of the front corresponding to the width of the floor—about three feet. That children even could sleep in so confined a space without suffering permanently in health seems contrary to all natural laws; but as a matter of fact, bargemen and their families appear to be remarkably healthy. Expressing our surprise that any person could possibly sleep in so cramped a space, our informant continued: ‘Bless you! that’s nothing. When there’s a butty, he sleeps as best he can on the floor.’ ‘And pray, what is a butty?’ we inquire. ‘Well, you see, by rights there must be two able-bodied people on board every boat, besides a lad or a lass to take turn about at driving. Generally it’s the man’s wife. But sometimes it happens as she’s sick or what not; and then they have to get a growing lad of sixteen or seventeen to butty with them for a voyage or two; and then of course he lives and sleeps on the boat along with the family. Not as you must run away with the idea that we all of us live entirely in the boats, as a good many of us have as good homes on shore as you’d wish to put foot in. But on the other hand, there’s as many more who don’t sleep out of the boat once a year, and hardly know what the inside of a house is like. ‘Do I mean to say that children are born in these cabins? Indeed I do, sir. What is more, many’s the child that is not only born on board but _dies_ on board too; for as I told you, there’s many that have no other home than the boat, and no friends but what are boatmen too. So what _are_ they to do? with their husbands a-travelling all over the country; Birmingham one week, and Brentford here maybe, the next. Plenty of ’em indeed have got so used to the boats it would be downright cruel if they were to be compelled to live in a house ashore like decent people; because, you see, everything’s so different, and they’ve become so used to making shift in little room, that they’d be regularly lost in a house.