CHAPTER VI 



LONDON WORKERS, SECULARISTS AND OWENITES 



Having finally left school at Christmas, 1836, I think it was 

 early in 1837 that I was sent to London to live at Mr, 

 Webster's in Robert Street, Hampstead Road, where my 

 brother John was apprenticed. My father and mother were 

 then about to move to the small cottage at Hoddesdon, and 

 it was convenient for me to be out of the way till my brother 

 William could arrange to have me with him to learn land- 

 surveying. As I shared my brother's bedroom and bed, I 

 was no trouble, as I suppose I was boarded at a very low 

 rate. As the few months I spent here at the most impres- 

 sionable age had some influence in moulding my character, 

 and also furnished me with information which I could have 

 obtained in no other way, I devote the present chapter to 

 giving a short account of it. 



Mr. Webster was a small master builder, who had a work- 

 shop in a yard about five minutes' walk from the house, where 

 he constantly employed eight or ten men preparing all the 

 joinery work for the houses he built. At that time there were 

 no great steam-factories for making doors and windows, work- 

 ing mouldings, etc., everything being done by hand, except 

 in the case of the large builders and contractors, who had 

 planing and sawing-mills of their own. Here in the yard was 

 a sawpit in which two men, the top- and bottom-sawyers, were 

 always at work cutting up imported balks of timber into the 

 sizes required, while another oldish man was at work day 

 after day planing up floor-boards. In the shop itself windows 

 and doors, cupboards, staircases, and other joiner's work was 

 always going on, and the men employed all lived in the small 

 streets surrounding the shop. The working hours were from 



79 



