Portcities London

The courts and alleys round about the London Docks swarm with low lodging-houses, and are inhabited either by the dock labourers, sack-makers, watermen, or that peculiar class of London poor who pick up a precarious living by the water side.

The open streets themselves have all, more or less, a maritime character. Every other shop is either stocked with gear for the ship or for the sailor. The windows of one house are filled with quadrants and bright brass sextants, chronometers and compasses….

Every public-house is a ‘Jolly Tar’, or something equally taking. Then come sail makers, their windows stowed with ropes and lines smelling of tar.

All the grocers are provision agents, and exhibit in their windows tin cases of meat and biscuits, and every article is warranted to keep in any climate.

The corners of the streets, too, are mostly monopolised by slopsellers, their windows party-coloured with bright red and blue flannel shirts, the doors nearly blocked up with hammocks and well-oiled ‘nor’ westers’, and the front of the house itself nearly covered with canvas trousers, rough pilot coats, and shiney black dreadnoughts.

The passengers alone would tell you that you were in the maritime districts of London. Now you meet a satin-waistcoated mate, or a black sailor with his large fur cap, or else a Custom-house officer in his brass-buttoned jacket.