The Navvy
A stranger called Thomas Jones supposed from Shropshire, having been unfortunately killed in the works near Gannow by a fall of earth.
Entry in Leeds Committee Minute Book,
Leeds & Liverpool Canal Company, 27 February 1800
Of all the men concerned in canal building, the workmen retain the greatest degree of anonymity: even when they died in the works, the most that could be said of them was that they were strangers of uncertain origin. And yet, in many ways, they are the most interesting of them all. The story of the canal worker is infuriatingly incomplete and discontinuous – we can pick up a few facts from the beginning of the period, a few more from the middle and a fair number from the end. The gaps have to be filled in by speculation.
For well over a century the navvy was an important figure in the social and economic history of Britain. It was tens of thousands of navvies who, with the simplest of tools – spade and barrow – dug their way from one end of the country to the other, and, without their skill and trained muscles to form the basis for the railway workforce, that great system could never have grown as it did. It was the canal ‘navigator’ who became transformed into the railway ‘navvy’.
The first difficulty in trying to determine facts about the canal navvy and his life is that everyone ignored him, except for the occasions when he was off on one of his periodic bursts of rioting. He was very like Chesterton’s ‘invisible’ postman; he was such an accepted part of the scene that the writers and travellers who went to look at the work in progress rarely noticed his presence or felt it worthy of mention. If he was noticed at all, it was not as an individual, nor even as one of a particularly important group; he was far more likely to end up as the subject of a literary image or a classical analogy. A tourist’s comment on the Bridgewater construction is typical:
‘I surveyed the duke’s men for two hours, and think the industry of bees, or labour of ants, is not to be compared with them. Each man’s work seemed to depend, and be connected with his neighbour’s, and the whole posse appeared, as I conceive did that of the Tyrians, when they wanted houses to put their heads in, and were building Carthage.’
Quoted in Anon., A History of Inland Navigations, 1779
Latter-day canal navvies at work on the Manchester Ship Canal. Little has changed, except that the wagons they are filling with spoil are being hauled by a steam locomotive not a horse.
It seems highly unlikely that a gang of Lancashire workmen did, in fact, have very much in common with the builders of Carthage. Even Robert Southey, one of the most observant and accurate recorders of canal construction, could do no better than to spare a few words for the workers at the diggings – ‘emmets to an ant-hill’ was the sum total of his comment. So, we have to look elsewhere to find where the navvies came from and how the navvy working force grew into the mobile, tough and skilled group at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The beginning, again, has to be the Bridgewater Canal. Even in those early days of canal building, there were still as many as 600 men employed in the diggings, split up into gangs of fifty, each with its own foreman. These were locals, many of them recruited from the duke’s own estates and mines. Smiles’ account gives a good idea of the sort of men they were:
‘Brindley did not want for good men to carry out his plans. He found plenty of labourers in the neighbourhood accustomed to hard work, who speedily became expert excavators; and though there was at first a lack of skilled carpenters, blacksmiths, and bricklayers, they soon became trained into such under the vigilant eve of so able a master as Brindley was. We find him in his notebook, often referring to the men by their names, or rather byenames: for in Lancashire proper names seem to have been little used at that time. ‘Black David’ was one of the foremen employed on difficult matters, and ‘Bill o Toms’ and ‘Busick Jack’ seem also to have been confidential workmen in their respective departments. We are informed by a gentleman of the neighbourhood that most of the labourers employed were of a superior class, and some of them were ‘wise’ or ‘cunning men’, blood stoppers, herb-doctors, and planet-rulers, such as are still to be found in the neighbourhood of Manchester. Their very superstitions, says our informant, made them thinkers and calculators. The foreman bricklayer, for instance, as his son used afterwards to relate, always ‘ruled the planets to find out the lucky days on which to commence any important work,’ and he added, ‘none of our work ever gave way’. The skilled men had their trade secrets, in which the unskilled were duly initiated, – simple matters in themselves, but not without their uses.’
Samuel Smiles, op. cit. Vol.1
This is still a long way from the ‘navvy’. But in those early days, canal work was merely a part-time job, a change from harvesting or mining. The men who came to work on the Bridgewater probably had no idea of continuing in canal work once the waterway was finished. They were simply untrained labourers – but then there were no trained canal labourers, nor was there any recognised training. When a new canal concern was started, men learned what they could about the techniques by example. The Coventry Canal was begun in 1768 and the more skilled workers had to be sent off to other works to find out how things were done:
‘Ordered at the recommendation of Mr Brindley that Mr Bull one of our clerks do go for his Improvement to the Staffordshire and other Navigations now forming for a Time not exceeding Three weeks.
Ordered that John Paish now employed by us as a Carpenter be sent for his Improvement to the Birmingham Navigation and there remain during the building of one of the Locks to inform himself fully of the Nature and Construction thereof.’1
Everything had to be learned, even such an apparently simple matter as building a wheelbarrow: ‘Resolved that 100 wheelbarrows be provided and that an advertisement be published for Persons to undertake the making thereof according to the Model lately sent from Staffordshire.’2
Slowly a body of experienced canal workers began to form. It might seem that there was not a great deal of skill needed in shovelling earth out of the ground into a barrow and wheeling it away, but the digger learned technique and, as his muscles were trained to the work, he became stronger. It was estimated that, in good soil, an experienced navvy could shift twelve cubic yards of earth a day.3 Anyone who has ever spent a Sunday afternoon digging the back garden should be able to appreciate the effort involved in digging a trench 3ft wide, 3ft deep and 36ft long. In a period of poverty, the man who had this ability, and was prepared to stand the gruelling life, would find himself one of the few workers whose services were constantly in demand. Workers therefore began to travel to exploit their new-found skills. Groups of men would set off as soon as one set of diggings was closed to look for the next. The days of extensive local labour recruitment were numbered. When the Rev Shaw visited the workings at Greywell tunnel on the Basingstoke Canal in about 1780, the transition was virtually complete:
‘I … saw about 100 men at work, preparing a wide passage for the approach to the mouth, but they had not entered the hill. The morning was remarkably fine, “The pale descending year, yet pleasing still,” and such an assembly of these sons of labour greatly enlivened the scene. The contractor, agreeable to the request of the company of proprietors, gives the preference to all the natives who are desirous of this work, but such is the power of use over nature, that while these industrious poor are by all their efforts incapable of earning a sustenance, those who are brought from similar works, cheerfully obtain a comfortable support.’
Rev S. Shaw, op. cit.
The experience of the regular navvy was beginning to tell. It is impossible to state any particular date when the change-over became complete; it was a gradual process and there were probably many local variations. It seems fairly certain that by the 1790s the system of contractors with their gangs, and individual workmen, touring the country was firmly established. Certainly, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the system was so set that Thomas Telford, who deliberately set out to reverse the trend for the Caledonian Canal workings, had to publish detailed figures to convince people that he was not using English and Irish labourers in any great numbers. But even Telford, who wanted to train the Highlanders to the work, found it necessary to bring in experienced workers: ‘Several people of the Highlands who have been engaged in Canal-work in other parts of Scotland and in England, have begun to work; and they may be expected to prove useful examples to others who have not been accustomed to that sort of employment.’4
The navvy reappeared during later canal improvements, but working methods remained unchanged. (British Waterways)
Telford managed to keep to his policy of training and using local labour and, in any case, the Caledonian offered fewer attractions than other canal works. It was remote, which meant that a man taken on by the Caledonian would not find it easy to move on again if he felt like it, and, more importantly, the pay was comparatively poor, which discouraged those who took the trouble to inquire about work: ‘The Rate of Wages hitherto given to the labourers upon these works, has been about Eighteen-pence a day … and the numbers of Labourers who have from time to time offered themselves for work, and demanded a higher Rate, have been uniformly rejected.’5
By this time the pattern was very clear – the navvy was now a roving, migrant worker, hiring his labour where work was to be found at the highest rate of pay. His wandering habits made life difficult for the engineers: ‘The works on the upper Level go on slowly principally owing to the Men being enticed to leave the works by greater advantage being held out to them by a Contractor at Bristol. But I have some expectation that some of them will return after finding their Disappointment. The Consequence will be that the Contractor must pay higher wages.’6
The navvy had arrived.
The obvious question, and the most difficult to answer, is where the navvies came from. The first recruits came into canal work almost by accident – they were available when the canal came to their neighbourhood. Many of them must have stayed in their own neighbourhood when the work finished, but a few seem to have stayed with the canals. There were men from the north of England and the Midlands, and a few who came from the Fens, the bankers who were already experienced in this sort of work. These formed the nucleus, but the later recruits to the travelling groups came mainly from the most depressed areas of Britain – Scotland and, above all, Ireland.
In the 1790s, the demand for canal labour grew at a rate which meant that it was impossible for the supply of experienced labour to keep pace with the demand. Up to the start of the decade, Parliament had authorised construction of some twenty canals, some of which were still incomplete. In the next five years, from 1790 to 1795, more than twice that number were authorised.7 There are no accurate figures, but, at a conservative estimate, there must have been well over 50,000 labourers employed on canal work by the end of the century. Other users of labour became alarmed by this apparently insatiable demand for workers, and the farmers tried to persuade Parliament to put a stop to it. Sir Charles Morgan moved for leave to bring in a Bill to ‘restrain the employment of labourers in the time of the corn harvest’. The debates on the motion are interesting, partly for the indications they give of the farmers’ attitudes towards their labourers and partly for the evidence they supply about the sources of labour for the canals.
The farmers’ claim was simple: workers were being lured away from the land by the prospect of better pay on the canals. This, they felt, was ruinous to the prospects of getting in the harvest on time. The Bill’s opponents pointed out that, in effect, the farmers were asking Parliament to force workers to do work which they preferred not to do at a rate which was less than they could get elsewhere. Why could the farmers not pay a decent wage instead of asking for compulsory labour? A number of speakers pointed out that many of the labourers had, in any case, never had any connection with farming or harvesting:
‘Mr Dent was against the bill in question; he said there were hundreds of people who came from Scotland and from Ireland, for the purpose only of working on canals, and who knew nothing of corn harvest. If this bill passed, they would be entirely deprived or the only honest means they had of subsistence.’8
Mr Courtenay spoke strongly against the arbitrary principles of this bill … An Hon. Gentleman had stated a difficulty with regard to Scotland, and there was another with regard to Ireland. The people from that country, who worked in bogs, knew nothing about the corn harvest, and to send them to work at the harvest was to make them starve, or to turn into highwaymen and robbers.’9
The Bill never reached the Statute books and Sir Charles Morgan was left complaining that ‘he despaired of getting in the corn.’ The arguments used in the debate reinforce the idea that, at that time, there was a mixture of English workers, possibly recruited from the farms, and a specialised workforce that had come from Scotland and Ireland specifically to work on the canals. Why did workers travel many miles from their homes to take on the rough, hard, nomadic life of the navvy? In the case of the Irish, the answer is plain enough.
The Irish already had a tradition of coming to England to find work, often, in spite of Mr Courtenay’s argument, on the farms.10 When the demand for canal workers began to grow so rapidly, it became common for the contractors to advertise in Ireland. The cost of getting to England was not too high, if you were not fussy about how you travelled. The rates in 1779 were: ‘For cabin passage, with luggage, £1 1s for steerage, 10s 6d; for the hold, in which the poor labourer with his wallet, on which he rests his weary head, 2s 6d.’11 They may have had to suffer an uncomfortable journey, but almost anything they met on arrival was likely to be better than the conditions they left behind. The Parliamentary Committee on Emigration from the United Kingdom heard evidence on the state of the Irish poor in the early part of the nineteenth century. No further comment is necessary:
Are they [the huts they live in] not built upon the bog itself sometimes? – In many instances the very bog.
– Upon the mere bog sod? – Yes.
Is not the roof formed with a few sticks? – Yes, some sticks thrown across.
Without straw? – Yes, but with bog sods.
What is the nature of the furniture inside one of these huts? – They generally have a pot and a little crock, and very few other articles.
What do they sleep upon? – Very often rushes and straw.
Are these habitations divided into apartments of any kind? – Generally in one: there may be one little partition.
What sort of bed clothes have they? – 0, very bad; their clothing is all very bad.
What is the food of this lowest class of labourers? – Potatoes, nothing else.
What do they drink with them? – In summer some of them get a little butter milk, in the winter seldom anything but the salt and the water.12
The Irish were the poorest, but the Highland Scots were very little better off. A great deal of the Committee on Emigration Report is taken up with the conditions prevailing in Scotland. What appears is a depressed population in every sense, who saw their only hope in emigration. In some cases, men would go into England to find work in such projects as canal construction – a great number went much farther to start a new life in the overseas colonies. Telford, like many other Scots, was seriously concerned by this depopulation, and frequently emphasised the usefulness of the Caledonian in helping the local unemployed: ‘there is reasonable expectation that employment may he found for many Hundreds of Persons, who at present have no means of employing themselves in profitable labour, and who may otherwise be more readily induced to emigrate.’13
In England and Wales, conditions varied between different regions and between different times. Many canal labourers were recruited from the farms – the farm labourer and the small tenant farmer. The small farmer had always been in a peculiarly vulnerable position, at the mercy of the weather. In the eighteenth century his position became markedly more difficult, as two factors pressed in on him. First, there was the spread of enclosures, which reduced the amount of common land available; and then there was the growth of industry. The industrial development almost certainly had the most profound effect, for many small farmers and labourers had relied on ‘cottage industries’ – weaving and spinning – to supplement their income and keep them and their families above subsistence level. The factory system changed all that – the demand for hand work fell and many were reduced to appalling poverty. The number of labourers, as opposed to independent farmers, grew. They could seldom get jobs in factories, which preferred to employ women and children, and farm work was scarce, except at harvest time. The canals offered work and the labourers moved in their tens of thousands across the face of the country. Between them they dug almost 3,000 miles of waterways.
There were many commentators to eulogise the engineers who designed the canal system, but there were few who could find a good word for the men who actually dug it. On the other hand, there were quite a few to record their misdeeds. Take thousands of poor, uneducated men, remove them from home and family, send them out into the wilds to sweat away at hard, dirty and dangerous work, and you cannot be too surprised if the end product is a gang of men who frequently find their release in outbursts of drunkenness and fighting.
‘In the making of canals, it is the general custom to employ gangs of hands who travel from one work to another and do nothing else.
These banditti, known in some parts of England by the name of “Navies” or “Navigators”, and in others by that of “Bankers”, are generally the terror of the surrounding country; they are as completely a class by themselves as the Gipsies. Possessed of all the daring recklessness of the Smuggler, without any of his redeeming qualities, their ferocious behaviour can only be equalled by the brutality of their language. It may be truly said, their hand is against every man, and before they have been long located, every man’s hand is against them; and woe befal any woman, with the slightest share of modesty, whose ears they can assail.
From being long known to each other, they in general act in concert, and put at defiance any local constabulary force; consequently crimes of the most atrocious character are common, and robbery, without an attempt at concealment, has been an everyday occurrence, wherever they have been congregated in large numbers.’
Peter Lecount, The History of the Railways Connecting London and Birmingham, 1839.
This account is almost certainly exaggerated. Lecount was engaging in a spot of special pleading, for he was arguing against the adoption of the same system for the railways. But the newspapers of the eighteenth century and the canal company records have enough accounts to show that his view of the navvy was not by any means uncommon or too far from the truth.
The Sampford Peverell riot of 1811 was typical of scores of others, and began with an argument about pay. Many contractors paid their men in tokens, which could then be exchanged for goods or, theoretically, cash. In some cases, however, if there was any doubt about the solvency or reliability of the company issuing the tokens, the navvies had a great deal of difficulty in getting anyone to cash them. Their limited patience soon ran out:
‘On Monday last a disturbance of a serious nature occurred at Sampford Peverell. The annual fair for the sale of cattle, &c was held there on that day. On the Saturday preceding, a number of the workmen, employed in excavating the bed of the Grand Western Canal, assembled at Wellington, for the purpose of obtaining change for the payment of their wages, which there has been lately considerable difficulty in procuring. Many of them indulged in inordinate drinking and committed various excesses at Tiverton, and other places, to which they had gone for the purpose above stated. On Monday the fair at Sampford seemed to afford a welcome opportunity for the gratification of their tumultuary disposition. Much rioting took place in the course of the day, and, towards evening, a body of these men, consisting of not less than 300, had assembled in the village. Mr Chave (whose name we had occasion to mention in unravelling the imposture respecting the Sampford ghost) was met on the road and recognised by some of the party.14 Opprobrious language was applied to him, but whether on that subject, or not, we have not been informed. The rioters followed him to the house, the windows of which they broke; and, apprehensive of further violence, Mr Chave considered it necessary to his defence to discharge a loaded pistol at the assailants. This unfortunately took effect, and one man fell dead on the spot. A pistol was also fired by a person within the house, which so severely wounded another man, that his life is despaired of. A carter, employed by Mr Chave, was most dreadfully beaten by the mob. Additional members were accumulating when our accounts were sent off, and we understand their determination was to pull down the house.’
Annual Register, April 1811
The authorities did not seem overkeen to tangle with the rampaging navvies, as the local paper indignantly noted:
‘It is impossible not to feel the deepest abhorrence for the proceedings of a savage ungovernable banditti, whose ferocious behaviour we hope will be visited by the heaviest punishments of the Law… It is a most extraordinary circumstance that the whole village and neighbourhood should have been kept in a state of the greatest terror and commotion for more than twenty-four hours, and no effects of the Police or Military made to quell the tumult. In the name of Justice, where are the Magistrates!’
Taunton Courier, 25 April 1811
If the navvies sound, from this account, to be a peculiarly riotous and bloodthirsty mob, it is worth looking at their actions in relation to the whole period. It was a time marked by recurrent rioting, mostly over the price and supply of bread. In August 1795, there was a particularly serious riot at Barrow-upon-Soar in Leicestershire, which ended with the military opening fire, killing three of the rioters and seriously wounding eight others. This was only one of a series of bread riots, and pamphlets were distributed in many parts of the country which helped to rouse an already angry people:
‘Treason! Treason! Treason! Against the People!
The Peoples humbugg’d! A plot is discovered. Pitt and the Committee for Bread are combined Together to starve the poor into the army and the navy and to starve your widows and orphans! … Sharpen your weapons and spare not! for all the scrats in the nations are united against your Blood! Your wives and your little ones!’
Quoted in The Oracle, 12 August 1795
In this riotous age, the notoriety of the navvies made them admirable scapegoats. It was far more convenient for the authorities to put the blame on the strangers than to admit that there might be a good reason for the behaviour of the poor:
‘The brown bread was very good, and the unquietude of the populace, from an idea of scarcity, is far less than where riots have been set forth by the news-writers, in some places most erroneously, the disturbance at Barrow-on Soar excepted, which has indeed been productive of the most fatal consequences; but this, it should be recollected, was among that newly-created, and so wantonly multiplied, set of men, the diggers and conductors of navigations.’
Gentleman’s Magazine, August 1795
But even if the last writer’s allegations are untrue, for them to have sounded at all reasonable they must have fitted into an accepted picture of navvy behaviour. It certainly is more than likely that the navvies took part in the Barrow riot, even if they did not actually start it. There was a strong tradition among the navvies of never refusing a fight if one was offered, and never staying out of someone else’s fight if they happened to be around at the time. There are many stories in the localities where the canal builders came of fights between bands of navvies and local workers. There was, for example, almost a full-scale battle between the navvies and the needle-makers of the Midlands, where the two sides took advantage of the enclosure of some nearby land to uproot the fences and use the posts as clubs.
The navvies could be sure, when they came to a new district, that there would be more to curse them than to welcome them. A Lancashire clergyman preached a sermon on the subject, though there is no record that any navvies came to listen. He began with a halfhearted welcome to the newcomers, then got down to the main business of a tirade against the navvies, who ‘cheat, and steal, and drink, and swear, and fight, and do all kinds of mischief to themselves and others’.15 Their reputation, in fact, had grown to such fearsome proportions that the canal navvies do actually appear to have been the first genuine example of ‘Rent-a-Crowd’. Henry Eastburn reported to the Lancaster Canal Committee: ‘We are going on very ill with work in this neighbourhood, not a Man has been at work since the Canvassing began & I doubt it will be the case as long as the Election continues. Lord Stanley’s party having hired them, which can be for no other purpose than to riot & do mischief.’16 A comment which tells us as much about eighteenth-century politics as it does about navvies.
The majority of reports of rioting come from the 1790s and later, which reinforces the suggestion that the gangs of navvies, moving in bands across the country, became the norm among canal workers at about that time. While most people were vociferous in welcoming the idea of a canal being built in their district, only the inn-keepers showed any signs of welcoming the men who came to build it. They were assured of a large and rapid increase in trade, though many of them were not satisfied with that. ‘The Labourers for cutting the canal are much imposed on by extravigant charges of the Inn keepers and the Committee are desired to consider if any scheme can be come into for the convenience of such Labourers by erecting Tents, Booths, &c &c providing them with meat & drink at a more easy expence.’17
Drink was at the heart of many of the problems. In 1820, the navvies working on the Carlisle Canal, who were described as mainly Irish, rampaged through the city. ‘During the whole of Sunday last, the neighbourhood of Caldew bridge was disturbed, and passengers annoyed by a number of these persons, who, not content with excessive drinking and fighting in the streets, proceeded to plunder the tavern-keepers of their property. One party took forcible possession of the Fox and Grapes Public-House and plundered the place of spirits, ale &c.’ Some tried more ingenious ways to get their liquor for free. There appears to have been a good trade in smuggling whiskey across from Ireland for the navvies on this canal. A group of seven or eight at Burgh Marsh set out to buy six quarts of what it transpired was not exactly the best and purist spirits – but then, as they had no money anyway, they were probably not too bothered about quality. ‘They showed the illiterate vendor a tradesman’s bill-head, which they pretended was a £10 note.
The seller not being able to give the required change, it was agreed that on some future day he should bring ten gallons, and the whole should be paid for together. Having now got the whiskey, they retired in glee, and drank to such excess that two of them, named Richard Hall and James Johnston, died through suffocation in consequence, and two or three of the party have not yet recovered.’18
The relationship between the navvies and the communities near which they worked was not as bad at first as it became later, and was partly dependent on where the navvies actually lived. In the early days, when labour was almost all recruited locally, the navvies remained a recognisable section of the local community and there were few problems. Even when the workings progressed and a worker would have a long distance to travel to get to the diggings, he was still able to visit his home regularly. The trouble came with men who had completely cut themselves off from home and family – the migrant navvies. Canal companies tried, wherever possible, to get the men into lodging houses, on the grounds that they provided a link, even if a tenuous one, with a normal life. But as canals became more ambitious, the numbers of men required went up, and accommodation in lodgings was no longer possible. When that stage was reached, the men had to live in special accommodation built at the workings. Hundreds of them would be gathered together in one place – even in the very early days, a project such as the Harecastle was employing as many as 600 men.
A particularly useful source of information about the living conditions of workmen on the line is the set of Reports of the Caledonian Canal Committee. They show how the numbers involved fluctuated with the work and with the fortunes of the surrounding regions. In 1805, when work was begun, there were only 150 men employed. Most of the labourers came from Argyll and Inverness – the exceptions being the experienced workmen specially brought in. Over the next few years, the numbers fluctuated between 150 and 900, as men disappeared to go off to the harvest or to take seasonal work in the herring fisheries. By 1812 the numbers had risen to ‘upwards of 1,400’ and the Report explains the increase as being due to ‘the temporary depression of trade at Glasgow, which has thrown 700 Masons and many other Workmen out of employment’. Such large numbers could not be accommodated in what was an almost unpopulated area, so accommodation had to be provided:
‘The accommodation and markets near the intended Canal, and especially at the South-West End of it, are so little adequate to the wants of a numerous body of Workmen and Labourers, that we have found it necessary to continue our attention to their habitations and subsistence; temporary Sheds and Huts for lodging most of the Labourers have therefore been erected; and we have continued in some degree the supply of Oat meal at prime cost … With a further view to the welfare of the Persons employed, We have encouraged the establishment of a small Brewery at Corpach, that the Workmen may be induced to relinquish the pernicious habit of drinking Whiskey; and cows are kept at the same place to supply them with Milk on reasonable terms.’
Second Report, 17 May 1805
One wonders how successful the Committee were in weaning 1,000 hardworking Scots from their whisky. The accommodation could not by any stretch of the imagination be described as luxurious. The huts and sheds were made out of turf, and for these the workers had to pay rent to the company. Later, when buildings such as lock-cottages and stables were erected along the canal, these were used to provide accommodation for the navvies – though they had to share their living space with ‘the Horses employed on the different Railways’. The food was no more exciting than the accommodation – oatmeal and potatoes.
The living conditions of the workers on the Caledonian were probably very much the same as those found on other construction sites – certainly the workers who came up from England were not in the least deterred by the conditions they found. They might have a poor opinion of the rates of pay, and there were disturbances on this score, but no complaints about the conditions were recorded. If this is a fair picture of the life of the navvy – a turf hovel and dull, plain food is all he had to come back to at the end of work – then there is small wonder that men went wild on the few occasions when they could get away. They worked hard for the little they got, and owed allegiance to no one but the contractor who hired them.