82 



STOPPAGE OF DAGENHAM BHEACll. 



PART I. 



supplying the stone and timber required for the new 

 works at excessive prices, and others forming what was 

 called " the family compact," or a secret arrangement 

 for dividing the spoil amongst them. The plan of Perry 

 was only carried out to a limited extent ; and though 

 the pier-heads and stone sluice were built, the most im- 

 portant part of the work, the cutting of the new channel, 

 was only partly executed, when the undertaking was 

 suspended for want of funds. 



From that time forward, Perry's engineering ability 

 was very much confined to making reports as to what 

 things should be done, rather than in being employed to 

 do them. In 1727 he published his "Proposals for 

 Draining the Fens in Lincolnshire ;" and he seems to 

 have been employed there as well as in Hatfield Level, 

 where " Perry's Drain " still marks one of his work*. 

 He was acting as engineer for the adventurers who 

 undertook the drainage of Deeping Fen, in 1732, when 

 he was taken ill and died at Spalding, in the sixty-third 

 year of his age ; and he lies buried in the churchyard of 

 that town. 



THE THALIES FROM DAGENHA11 BANK, LOOKING UP THE ! 

 [By E. P. Leitch, after a Sketch by the Author ] 



