The recruiting sergeant in Chelsea on Whitsun and Easter Mondays and during the regatta was very active. There would be two or three smart fellows from the cavalry with one or two young fellows, posing as recruits, for decoys. The artillery sergeant would be in smart blue uniform, and then came the regiments of the line. The decoys for the latter were two or three smartly dressed girls of doubtful character. Then came the East India Company sergeant, and last but not least came the recruiting for the Spanish legion. They all had their gangs of harpies and hangers on, as the sergeant spent money freely, every recruit being worth five to six pounds to him. It was a common practice to get a lad half drunk over night, and in the morning to bounce him that he had enlisted, and there were always plenty to swear that he had done so. The recruits for the Spanish legion were a rare motley crew, and would go singing through the streets, half drunk, in gangs, that they were going fighting for the Queen of Spain, and collect drink and money. A good part of the crowd would be loafers and not recruits at all. The great recruiting ground was along the riverside, and at the public houses along the roads leading to the fair at Wandsworth, which was held on a piece of land in the York Road, just beyond where Wandsworth Station now stands. The recruits for the Spanish legion were a poor miserable lot, as they were the refuse from the others. They would take them at any age, from sixteen to fifty, and were not at all particular about size or health; in fact, there is little doubt that lads of fourteen were sent out. They used to assemble by Northumberland Passage, Charing Cross, and march in gangs to Tower Hill to pass the Board of Commissioners that sat in a room over a sailmaker’s, and having passed, would go by steamboat to Gravesend ready to embark; and it was generally asserted that they never shipped above two-thirds of the recruits they enlisted. The balance would desert and enlist again, and were assisted in so doing by the recruiting sergeant. CHAPTER 8.—The London Docks.