The construction of the great docks has completely changed this quarter. The Precinct of St. Katherine's by the Tower has almost entirely disappeared, being covered by St. Katherine's Dock; the London Dock has reduced Wapping to a strip covered with warehouses. But the church remains, so frankly proclaiming itself of the eighteenth century, with its great churchyard. The new Dock Basin, Limehouse Basin, and the West India Docks, have sliced huge cantles out of Shadwell, Limehouse, and Poplar; the little private docks and boat-building yards have disappeared; here and there the dock remains, with its river gates gone, an ancient barge reposing in its black mud; here and there may be found a great building which was formerly a warehouse when ship-building was still carried on. That branch of industry was abandoned after 1868, when the shipwrights struck. Their action transferred the ship-building of the country to the Clyde, and threw out of work thousands of men who had been earning large wages in the yards. Before this unlucky event Riverside London had been rough and squalid, but there were in it plenty of people earning good wages--skilled artisans, good craftsmen. Since then it has been next door to starving. The effect of the shipwrights' strike may be illustrated in the history of one couple.
The man, of Irish parentage, though born in Stepney, was a painter or decorator of the saloons and cabins of the ships. He was a highly-skilled workman of taste and dexterity; he could not only paint but he could carve; he made about three pounds a week and lived in comfort. The wife, a decent Yorkshire woman whose manners were very much above those of the riverside folk, was a few years older than her husband. They had no children. During the years of fatness they saved nothing; the husband was not a drunkard, but, like most workmen, he liked to cut a figure and to make a show. So he saved little or nothing. When the yard was finally closed he had to cadge about for work. Fifteen years later he was found in a single room of the meanest tenement-house; his furniture was reduced to a bed, a table, and a chair; all that they had was a little tea and no money--no money at all. He was weak and ill, with trudging about in search of work; he was lying exhausted on the bed while his wife sat crouched over the little bit of fire. This was how they had lived for fifteen years--the whole time on the verge of starvation. Well, they were taken away; they were persuaded to leave their quarters and to try anther place, where odd jobs were found for the man, and where the woman made friends in private families, for whom she did a little sewing. But it was too late for the man; his privations had destroyed his sleight of hand, though he knew it not; the fine workman was gone. He took painters' paralysis, and very often when work was offered his hand would drop before he could begin it; then the long years of tramping about had made him restless; from time to time he was fain to borrow a few shillings and to go on the tramp again, pretending that he was in search of work; he would stay away for a fortnight, marching about from place to place, heartily enjoying the change and the social evening at the public-houses where he put up. For, though no drunkard, he loved to sit in a warm bar and to talk over the splendours of the past. Then he died. No one, now looking at the neat old lady in the clean white cap and apron who sits all day in the nursery crooning over her work, would believe that she has gone through this ordeal by famine, and served her fifteen years' term of starvation for the sins of others.