The Boat People Canals: The Making of a Nation

This is the story of how canals changed and shaped our modern world.

Carrying huge volumes of goods and fuel around the country,

they were a stimulus of our great Industrial Revolution.

But they also gave us much, much more and their legacy

lives on today in surprising ways.

My name's Liz McIvor.

I've spent my life studying and talking about history

and I believe it's time to take a different look

at our inland waterways.

Strangely, the story of the people who actually

worked on the canals is often overlooked.

Once the waterways were built, men, women and children toiled

for long hours, often in dangerous conditions and at huge personal cost.

So, who were these boat people?

How did they live and how did a cast of campaigners work

tirelessly to improve life on the canals?

This is Foxton Locks in Leicestershire,

part of the Grand Union Canal route,

which takes you all the way to London.

Looks great today.

It's a popular spot for tourists and day-trippers.

But in the 19th century, the picture wasn't so pretty

and work on the canal was anything but leisurely.

It was a hive of activity during the 19th century.

18,000 families were recorded living on canal boats,

including 3,000 women on board.

So, Wendy, can you paint a picture of how busy it was on this

-stretch of canal?

-It would have been very busy in its heyday.

From about...

1800-ish up to 1840,

this was the main route

between the industrial Midlands and London,

so you'd have coal coming down from the Midlands to London,

goods from the London docks going the other way,

there'd be flyboats - flyboats were the express boats of the canal,

they went day and night nonstop -

and then the slow boats carrying coal and stone and timber,

and all drawn by horses, of course,

no engines in any part of the 19th century.

The transportation of goods was typically a family affair,

with children growing up on the boats and learning to help.

Boat families often came from farming,

when family work was common.

They diversified into working the water to make more money.

So, obviously, families were working these boats

and presumably the children, no matter what age they were,

had some sort of role, some sort of job.

As soon as they were old enough, obviously not very tiny children,

but as soon as they were old enough to do something useful,

then they would be expected to pull their weight.

No passengers, basically, on a narrow boat.

This was hard and heavy work.

Boatmen were paid by the weight of cargo they carried,

so it was often cheaper for them to employ members of their own family.

Children were expected to lead horses and operate locks like this one.

It was tough going and a long day,

the boat sometimes on the move for 17 hours or more.

And, of course, the place of work for many boat people was also

a place to live,

a home - sometimes the only home.

Space was limited.

A husband and wife and perhaps six children

would live on a boat like this.

It was customary to decorate them with lace and rag rugs

and paint roses and castles on the outside of the boat.

These people had their own culture and their own way of life.

But you can easily see how overcrowding was a problem.

They were often choky little boxes with poor ventilation.

People were working, eating and sleeping in small spaces.

Hygiene was poor and back cabins could be boiling

hot in the summer, freezing in the winter.

But if life was tough indoors, it wasn't much fun outside either.

It was here in Braunston, Northamptonshire, the boatmen's

spiritual home and the village of choice for many baptisms and burials,

a deadly disease struck in 1834, carried along the canal from London.

This canal water looks pretty clean, but 150 years ago,

filthy water was a real hazard.

Factories, mills and houses all discharged dirty water

and sewage into the canal, and canal boat people

emptied their chamber pots into it.

Diseases like typhoid were rife,

but when cholera arrived in the 1830s, the results were catastrophic.

The disease was widespread in Calcutta and Bombay,

spreading along trade routes and brought back to England by boat.

It had a devastating impact on boat families.

The church known as the Cathedral of the Canals, in Braunston,

holds some of the secrets about what happened here.

Some of the victims of that cholera outbreak were buried

-here in the churchyard, weren't they?

-They were.

How was it thought that cholera arrived in Braunston

-in the first place?

-It arrived in Braunston on a narrow boat.

The skipper of the narrow boat came up,

dropped his laundry in to Mrs Luck, the washerwoman in Cross Lane,

and she laundered it for him and she died of cholera,

though I don't think anybody realised it at the time.

Yards, lanes and boats were all cleansed

and five houses were used to isolate the sick.

In all, there were 70 cases and 19 deaths.

So, do you think that the outbreak of cholera here brought

canal families and the settled people together?

Yes, it did to a great degree.

Obviously, there's always a little bit of tension between one

and the other, depending on what's going on at the time,

but they all worked together to get cholera under control.

It was a case of, "What do we do about it?

"We've got a problem, let's fix it."

Working the waterways meant many boat people rarely left the towpath.

Victorian society grew suspicious of these outsiders.

Bargees, as they might be known,

began to gain reputations for criminality,

violence and drinking.

So, in terms of society, people often viewed canal families

as, perhaps, suspicious or as heavy drinkers,

people who had bad behaviour.

-Is that strictly true or is it a form of moral panic?

-It's partly true.

I think it's true that a lot of them were heavy drinkers,

got into fights.

Fights were caused by things like somebody jumping

the queue at the locks.

Swearing a lot, they had a reputation for that as well,

and I think that was pretty much justified.

But they looked scruffy because of the living conditions that

they had to put up with, and the fact that they moved around a lot

caused suspicion and this business of not going to church, I mean,

that was very much frowned upon.

There were indeed some quite high-profile canal crimes that rocked

Victorian society and attracted the attention of the newspapers,

such as the murder of Christina Collins in June 1839 at Rugeley.

Christina was a paying passenger on the Staffordshire Knot,

a working boat bound for London.

It was reported at the time its crew blazed a trail of bad behaviour

wherever they went

and during the night, they broke open a cask of rum being

carried on board and attacked, raped and murdered Christina.

The men went on the run and it was over a month before they were caught.

When they were eventually hanged, 10,000 people turned out to watch.

"These wretched men have this day expiated their dreadful crime,

"by the forfeiture of their lives on the gallows."

Victorian Britain could be a hard and violent place.

Life on the canals was little different to that of other

working-class communities.

But one man was shocked at what he observed,

a social reformer named George Smith.

Smith, a man motivated by religion,

described the scene in his 1875 book Our Canal Population.

"It has often and truly been said one half the world

"doesn't know how the other half lives.

"This has been my experience over and over again

"in visiting the boat cabins on our canals.

"Families are made miserable, health ruined, lives shortened

"and souls lost.

"There are in this country over 100,000 men, women and children

"living and floating on our rivers and canals

"in a state of wretchedness."

The 1833 Factory Act banned children younger than nine

working in textile mills and reduced working hours for those under 13.

But canal boat children had no such safeguards.

George was determined things had to change,

but it was a mission which would become a lifelong struggle.

Victorians were not convinced yet

that childhood was a time period that should be protected

and that children should go to school or play.

Historically, children had helped with family enterprises,

they'd been involved in work and that tradition continued on and

it wasn't clear that going to school and learning from books was going

to give them the same advantages in the labour market when they grew up,

so for all these reasons, there was a supply of working children.

Smith grew up here

on the banks of the Trent and Mersey Canal, near to Stoke.

He was set to work at seven in a brickyard and his early years were

full of toil and drudgery, carrying clay for up to 13 hours a day.

He soon realised his only escape was education.

George was a strict Methodist and single-minded.

By his 20s, he had come a long way

and was managing his own brickyard in Leicestershire

and he began to improve the lives of the children working for him,

as well as lobby for new laws to protect

the brutalised brickyard children.

His speeches about the conditions in other brickyards caused

public outrage and after years of protest, George won the fight.

Brickyard children were finally covered by the factories act,

offering them some protection.

Spurred on, he turned his attention to the canal children,

but from the start, this new campaign caused controversy.

Well, the canal showed that child labour could take very

different forms,

not just the children minding the machines in textile factories, but

these children working on the boats of those many navigable waterways.

And George Smith, his own personal experience

helped shine light into these nooks and crannies of the Victorian economy

where children were still working in hazardous conditions

for long hours and for very low rates of pay.

George Smith was now in full flow, fighting for the rights

of canal children and it was while speaking

here at Moira, on the Ashby Canal, he was threatened with being thrown

in the cut for causing boatmen to become dissatisfied with their lot.

Undeterred, he replied, "200 boats moored on this canal

"and no provision for a Sunday school."

National newspapers began to take up his cause

and chastise Parliament for its inaction.

Remarkably, Denis Baker's great-grandfather was a friend

to George and he still lives here in Leicestershire.

So, Denis, you've got family connections to George Smith, haven't you?

Yes, I have, through my great-grandfather.

He was associated with the Baptist church,

whereas George was associated with the Methodist church.

And he supported him, I suppose,

in every way that he could.

So that if George was going down to London, for instance,

he would actually give him, I don't know, the odd shilling,

or maybe a pound, I don't know how much it was,

but a lot of people would do the same. If he said he was going to

London, then God would provide and surely enough he did.

George was spurred on by his own unpleasant childhood,

but also some of the horrific accidents involving boat children.

One of them happened here, just outside Wolverhampton.

"A child drowned in a canal boat.

"On Thursday, at the Boat Inn, the borough coroner held

"an inquest upon the body of Jane Ball, aged eight months.

"The deceased was the infant daughter of Jacob Ball,

"in charge of the Venus canal boat.

"He had got his boat into number seven lock by the Cannock Road

"and was assisted by his wife when his boat came into contact with

"a piece of iron, which prevented one end of the boat

"rising with the water. In a moment, the vessel sank.

"Two children on the deck narrowly escaped,

"but deceased, who was asleep in the cabin, was drowned.

"The jury returned a verdict of accidental death."

A sad story but one of many George would have read about.

George proposed a remedy, a wish list of changes and improvements.

No boys on boats under 13 to work or sleep.

No girls under 18. A minimum space for sleeping in the cabin.

Cabin inspections to improve conditions.

And all canal children to pass a basic standard of education.

Smith continued to press on with more speeches and lobbying,

and after seven long years he won his fight.

In 1877 the new Canal Boat Act was passed.

It was watered down from his list of remedies,

but there were minimum standards inside the boater's cabin.

It controlled the number and age of children who slept there.

Smith wasn't giving up. Incensed, he took to the towpath once more.

He set off during winter when the boats were iced in.

What he found were vessels that were dirty and overcrowded.

He urged the local authorities to step in and enforce the Act.

George got his Act amended six years later,

and inspectors began checks for overcrowding.

Canal children were also required to attend school

and given passbooks recording their attendance.

So, Denis, what do you think George achieved in his lifetime?

I think he achieved great things, because he managed to get

two Acts of Parliament passed as a private individual rather

than an MP, which takes some doing even today, I think.

And, of course, what he did was to improve the lot of people

enormously, particularly in the working classes.

He would never give up. Just so dedicated to it, I think.

George's successful campaigns had come at a heavy personal cost.

Much had been funded from his own pocket.

He had lost everything, even his family home.

There is little doubt that George Smith helped to implement new

laws that would improve the lives of thousands of children

before his death aged 64 in 1895.

Almost a century and a half since his achievements,

George has been fondly remembered in his home town

of Coalville, Leicestershire, where this new road now bears his name.

The 19th century was drawing to a close.

This was a time in which society had become uneasy with the hardships

and what they saw as immoral behaviour of the boat people.

Mission halls, floating chapels and boat schools had all appeared

along the canals in an effort to spread the word of God

and educate boat families.

This is Walsall Top Lock on the Birmingham Canal Navigations,

where a boatman's mission still stands.

So, how did canal children take to the classroom environment?

Well, at places like this they were made welcome

and they only had to mix with their own kind, which they liked.

Unlike ordinary children who get fed up with going to school

every day, for a boat child it was a novelty.

They were supposed to go to a mainstream school whenever the boat tied up.

But, of course, then they would be bullied by regular children,

the local children would pick on them.

I do think they probably gave as good as they got,

but it wasn't a pleasant experience.

As the 20th century got into gear,

education became compulsory for all up to 14.

But canal boat children often got around this by clocking into

the classroom to record attendance then moving on with the family boat.

But places like this also served the canal in other ways.

It wasn't just education.

They offered other facilities to boat people - coffee rooms,

recreation rooms, and some of them

even offered washing facilities, perhaps even a bakehouse.

So they were offering real, practical help to boat people.

Technology was advancing.

Horsepower was sometimes being replaced by steam and then diesel,

but living conditions on board boats at the start of the 1900s remained harsh.

Canal inspectors were now checking for overcrowding,

and many families were sleeping in two cabins,

with the girls at the front and the boys at the rear.

Both had their hazards.

The fore cabin could get wet from splashing water at the locks,

and the rear cabin was by the stove and sometimes the engine,

which meant fumes.

Just as George Smith led his moral crusade in the 1800s,

another reformer, Harry Gosling, picked up the baton.

This time the motivation was socialist ideals rather than religion.

Harry was a Labour politician, a union leader,

and came from a family of watermen who worked the Thames.

So in 1929, Harry demanded new laws which would ban children under 14

from living or travelling on canal boats.

Outraged by the proposed changes, which could split up families,

boat people wanted their voices heard, so they went to the House of Commons.

But, frustrated by the questioning, they answered the MPs with scorn.

When a group of women were asked

whether life on the barge was really healthy, one of them replied,

"Well, I have ten children on the barge,

"and they're all alive, so I ought to know."

A thousand people signed a petition against Harry's Private Member's Bill,

and it began to lose momentum.

Now in ill health, he was too weak to put up much of a fight.

Parliament refused to pass the bill, and soon after, Harry died.

With this letdown, as some people saw it,

the canals started to enter an era of social stagnation.

This was an industry in gradual decline,

the beginning of the end for cargo carrying on our canals,

with faster forms of transport available.

Although some official assistance was given to families left working the waterways,

help also came from volunteers like this lady.

-NEWSREEL:

-'Nothing is allowed to delay the cargoes,

'but old and young know there's always care, a pill,

'or a word of advice to be had from Sister Mary.

'They call her the angel of the waterways,

'and if a waterman ever swears, he swears by Sister Mary.'

At the time Harry Gosling was fighting for new laws,

Sister Mary was fighting to provide basic medical care on the canal.

From the 1930s right up to the 1960s, she nursed canal boat families

here at the locks at Stoke Bruerne on the Grand Union.

For canal children who fell ill many miles from a hospital,

Sister Mary was salvation.

Dr Della Sadler-Moore has just written a book about her.

So, Della, we're here outside what was Sister Mary's surgery,

which is now an Indian restaurant.

Yes, that was Sister Mary's home, it was the family home.

So, what kind of problems would she have been dealing with on a day-to-day basis?

Well, in the 1930s she'd get two types of cases, really.

She started to pick up people that

really hadn't looked after themselves.

They hadn't had any health care, so they got quite long-standing

problems - leg ulcers, respiratory problems.

But her second type of cases would be emergencies.

-Would these be from injuries received on the boats?

-They would, absolutely.

With some help from the canal owners,

but financing much of the work herself, Sister Mary was

recognised when she received the British Empire Medal in 1951.

Was there anybody else on the canal network like Sister Mary?

No, she was very, very unique.

The Grand Union Canal Carrying Company were

concerned about the welfare of their boaters,

and they actually appointed her as a consultant sister, and the

boaters travelled many, many miles to be able to come and see her.

You can see it written in stories by them,

and they have published them, about how iconic she was.

By the time of her death in 1972,

long-distance canal carrying had ended, superseded by road and rail.

Canals were now used for leisure, or simply neglected.

Barry Argent's parents spent their lives working the water,

and were among the last to leave.

My mam were born on a boat, at Ellesmere Port, in the bottom basin.

My dad actually came from a fairground family.

From when he first went on the boats, eight, nine years old,

he was doing the job of, you know, a full-grown man.

Barry's father's films show a time of decline on the canals.

The films that my dad took, it was from when the working boats packed up.

It was, like, heartbreaking for him because, like I say,

he'd worked on the Erewash Canal,

and he had seen it right from the beginning.

In his day, it was in very good condition, and, like I say,

he had just seen it go downhill and downhill and downhill.

Out of all of his films, one of my favourites is, like,

when we went down to London in 1967.

It was one of the first really big trips I did with my mam and dad.

I can remember it just like it was yesterday.

I can watch the films and I can tell you exactly where it is,

and I haven't been to London since 1967.

Barry's dad refused to leave the cut.

He lived out his retirement years on a house on the banks of the Erewash Canal.

But this wasn't the case for all boat families.

Many moved away.

Some canal boat children were even told to keep quiet by families

embarrassed about their past.

Some historians are rewriting,

and perhaps reclaiming the history of boat families.

Lorna York once kept quiet about her father's past.

So, Lorna, you're proud of your canal boat heritage, aren't you?

Oh, yes, very much so.

Now - when I was a child, I was told never to tell anybody

that we came from a boat family, because of the stigma.

They were ostracised quite a lot. But now everybody wants to know.

"Oh, you come from a boat family!" I've been researching for 20 years.

I now have a database of over 9,000 boat people,

and I get e-mails from all over the world.

People have romantic notions of the gaily painted boats

moving along the canal at a slow pace of life.

That is a very romanticised idea,

but the truth is, they were working.

They were like the long-distance lorry drivers of their day.

They had got a job to do.

There's now an appetite amongst historians to discover this

overlooked part of our social history, and rightly so.

Britain's canals, they shaped our landscape and shaped our lives,

and their legacy lives on.

In the factories, fields and mines,

child labour attracted attention,

but it seems canal boat children got lost along the way,

last on the list to be offered safeguards in the grand plan to protect childhood.

Here, children laboured in often hazardous conditions

for very long hours for very low pay.

But there were campaigners who battled for better living conditions on boats,

activists who pressed government for compulsory education, long after it was due.

George Smith, his biography is called The Story Of An Enthusiast.

And thank goodness some people were enthusiastic about reform.

Living apart from society, boat families were

part of a subculture, a community avoided and overlooked.

And what was once a place of hard graft and industry

now attracts and inspires people from everywhere.