FYI.  Was surprised about a special beer being brewed for the lumpers.

>Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 09:55:21 -0400
>From: Richard Gorrie <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re : Lumpers and Navigators
>Sender: H-Net List for British and Irish History <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Reply-to: H-Net List for British and Irish History <[log in to unmask]>
>Original-recipient: rfc822;[log in to unmask]
>
>Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 19:36:19 +0100
>=46rom: "Jasmin Johnson" <[log in to unmask]>
>
>   Justin Wasserman asks about the meanings of the terms 'navvy' and
>'lumper'. While satisfactory replies to 'navvy' have already been given, I
>feel that more could be said about the term 'lumper', which had a quite
>specific meaning in 19th century London. A brief perusal of Henry Mayhew's
>magnum opus 'London Labour & the London Poor' of 1851 explains that
>'lumpers' were men employed in the London docks, sometimes by the week
>although sometimes on a casual, daily basis, to unload specifically timber,
>either onto lighters for on transport, or onto the dockside. The timber
>appears to have been discharged mainly through Commercial Dock, now heavily
>redeveloped like most of dockside London. The average wage for this
>extremely heavy labour appears to have been 24s a week, which sounds
>reasonable for the time, until one realises that like the somewhat better
>known fate of the 'coal whippers' (men similarly employed in discharging
>collier vessels) the 'lumpers' were in the hands of the notorious dockside
>publicans for work meaning that up to =A31 of their weekly wage would be
>spent in drink (noxious rubbish brewed specifically for their use by the
>rapacious publicans). The drunkenness of coal whippers and timber lumpers
>was legendary and many accidents of the 'fell between vessel and dock and
>drowned' variety can be noted from contemporary records. Jasmin Johnson