"'I work from six every morning to nine at night; some work
till ten. My breakfast at eight stops me for ten minutes. I can
breakfast in less time, but it's a rest. My dinner takes me say
twenty minutes at the outside; and my tea eight minutes. All
the rest of the time I'm slaving at my bench. How many minutes'
rest is that, sir? Thirty-eight; well, say three-quarters of an
hour, and that allows a few sucks at a pipe when I rest; but I
can smoke and work too. I have only one room to work and eat in,
or I should lose more time. Altogether, I labour fourteen and a
quarter hours every day, and I must work on Sundays—at least
forty Sundays in the year. One may as well work as sit fretting.
But on Sundays I only work till it's dusk, or till five or six in
summer. When it's dusk I take a walk. I'm not well dressed enough
for a Sunday walk when it's light, and I can't wear my apron on
that day very well to hide patches. But there's eight hours that
I reckon I take up every week, one with another, in dancing about
to the slaughterers. I'm satisfied that I work very nearly 100
hours a week the year through; deducting the time taken up by the
slaughterers, and buying stuff—say eight hours a week—it gives
more than ninety hours a week for my work, and there's hundreds
labour as hard as I do, just for a crust.'
"The East-end turners generally, I was informed, when inquiring
into the state of that trade, labour at the lathe from six
o'clock in the morning till eleven and twelve at night, being
eighteen hours' work per day, or one hundred and eight hours
per week. They allow themselves two hours for their meals. It
takes them, upon an average, two hours more every day fetching
and carrying their work home. Some of the East-end men work on
Sundays, and not a few either,' said my informant. 'Sometimes
I have worked hard,' said one man, 'from six one morning till
four the next, and scarcely had any time to take my meals in the
bargain. I have been almost suffocated with the dust flying down
my throat after working so many hours upon such heavy work too,
and sweating so much. It makes a man drink where he would not.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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