Tag: Merchant Navy

The old sea dog and the dancing girl

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In the 1860s The Era was a newspaper that served the entertainment industry. It carried stories about the theatre but also covered the rest of the news, including the ‘doings’ of the Police Courts. The principal popular entertainment of the day was the music hall which offered a variety of comics, singers, dancers, jugglers and novelty acts to a mixed audience who could eat and drink while they enjoyed the show. Some music halls had reputations as being more ‘respectable’ than others, and a handful of the roughers ones were little more than fronts for prostitution.

In January 1866 The Era reported that a sea captain in the merchant navy had appeared at Marylebone Police court to ask the magistrate’s advice. The unnamed captain explained that he had a season ticket for ‘one of the principal’ West End music halls and had been sitting in the stalls when he was very taken by one of the dancing girls.

According to him she caught his eye and the attraction was ‘mutual’. After the show the couple left together and now he would not allow her to return to work. When he next turned up at the theatre the manager asked him to allow his employer to come back to dance but the captain refused.

The manager then approached the band leader and threatened to discharge him unless he took out legal action to get the girl back. This presumably means that the dancers were employed by the band and not directly by the theatre. The captain said they could do what they liked but the ‘danseuse’ would not be returning.

At this the manager lost his temper and ordered the seaman to leave his premises. He summoned his son and together they roughly and forcibly removed the captain from the theatre and turfed him out on the street. Unhappy about this, the naval man had presented himself before the magistrate the next morning.

Complaining that he spent £150 ‘in the place, and ought not to be subjected to such treatment’, he wondered what his legal position was. The magistrate was curt; he was surprised that such a man would air his business in public and more especially that he would admit to having taken a dancing girl home with him. In the popular opinion many of these women were hardly different to street prostitutes and indeed, in some of the rougher establishments, they performed a dual role.

The magistrate wasn’t going to help this old sea dog, if he wanted legal redress he told him to apply to a solicitor. No one seems to have asked the dancer what she wanted to do, not least whether she was happy to give up the boards. After all it is worth noting that the sailor said the attraction was mutual; he took ‘a fancy’ to her, and ‘she to him’. It speaks volumes about the agency of young working class women in the Victorian entertainment industry that nobody thought to ask her opinion.

[from The Era , Sunday, January 7, 1866]

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The pitfalls of being a newly arrived sailor in Victorian London

Sailors' Home, Well Street, London Docks

The Sailors’ Home, Penny Illustrated Paper, (29 August 1868).

London was the world’s largest and busiest port in the Victorian period, and ships and sailors from all over the globe traveled to and from it. Merchant seamen were generally paid off when they arrived in port, getting their money from the Mercantile Marine Office that was situated in the Minories, close to the borders of East London and the City.

After weeks or months at sea many sailors simply blew their hard earned cash in a  matter of days or even hours on drink or women or both. Others fell victim to thieves. These were often the prostitutes that picked them up in the many pubs and lodging houses along the Ratcliffe Highway.

As a result (either of criminality or their own carelessness and profligacy) many sailors found themselves destitute and in danger of falling into crime themselves, especially if they couldn’t quickly find another ship to take service on. In 1827 the Destitute Sailor’s Asylum was founded in Dock Street but welcome as it was it soon became inadequate to the needs of the hundreds of seaman that required its help. In 1835 a second institution opened its doors: the Sailors’ Home in Well Street.

The Home also helped sailors avoid some of the dangers associated with being a fresh face (and a potential meal ticket) for unscrupulous locals in the dock area. They did this by sending agents or arranging for others to meet sailors at the Marine Office and escort them to safety at the Home. We can see this in operation in a case that reached the Mansion House Police Court in 1868.

On the 19 August a  sailor presented himself at the Marine Office to collect his wages of £6. He wanted to get home to Liverpool as soon as possible and was worried about getting distracted or robbed  and so he asked if an agent could escort him to the Sailors’ Home.

John Williams, who was employed by the Marine Office as a messenger, was directed to accompany the seams through the throng of ‘loose characters waiting outside’. However, ‘the moment they got into the streets they were mobbed by a number of crimps, touters, and lodging-house keepers’. The sailor was bundled into a waiting cab and driven away.

One of the crowd of vultures was identified as William Lee and he was later arrested and brought before Alderman Causton at Mansion House on a summons.  The justice fully convicted him of using ‘threatening and abusive language’ towards the Marine Office messenger and condemned the fleecing of newly arrived sailors. He told Lee that these ‘poor fellows who received their money after long and severe labour should be protected’ and he fined the lodging-house keeper 40s and made him enter into a recognisance of £10 to keep the peace for six months.

It is unlikely that it would have done much good however, the sailor was probably already parted from his £6 and if he made it to Liverpool there were just as many ‘crimps and touters’ there to exploit him. Lee would have chalked it off to bad luck at getting caught, I doubt it would have altered his behaviour much. The Ratcliffe Highway was a notorious area for crime and prostitution and a magnet for discharged seamen throughout the 1800s and beyond. The Sailors’ Home itself only closed its doors in 1974, more than 100 years later.

[from The Morning Post, Thursday, August 27, 1868]