Father was a dredger, and grandfather afore him; grandfather was a dredger and a fisherman too. A'most as soon as I was able to crawl, father took me with him in the boat to help him to pick the coals, and bones, and other things out of the net, and to use me to the water. When I got bigger and stronger, I was sent to the parish school, but I didn't like it half as well as the boat, and couldn't be got to stay two days together. At last I went above bridge, and went along with a fisherman, and used to sleep in the boat every night. I liked to sleep in the boat; I used to be as comfortable as could be. Lor bless you! there's a tilt to them boats, and no rain can't git at you. I used to lie awake of a night in them times, and listen to the water slapping ag'in the boat, and think it fine fun. I might a got bound 'prentice, but I got aboard a smack, where I stayed three or four years, and if I'd a stayed there, I'd a liked it much better. But I heard as how father was ill, so I com'd home, and took to the dredging, and am at it off and on ever since. I got no larnin', how could I? There's on'y one or two of us dredgers as knows anything of larnin', and they're no better off than the rest. Larnin's no good to a dredger, he hasn't got no time to read; and if he had, why it wouldn't tell him where the holes and furrows is at the bottom of the river, and where things is to be found. To be sure there's holes and furrows at the bottom. I know a god many. I know a furrow off Lime'us Point, no wider nor the dredge, and I can go there, and when others can't git anything but stones and mud, I can git four or five bushels o'coal. You see they lay there; they get in with the set of the tide, and can't git out so easy like. Dredgers don't do so well now as they used to do. You know Pelican Stairs? Well, before the Docks was built, when the ships lay there, I could go under Pelican Pier and pick up four or five shillings of a morning. What was that tho' to father? I hear him say he often made 51. afore the breakfast, and nobody ever the wiser. Them were fine times! there was a good livin' to be picked up on the water them days. About ten years ago, the fishermen at Lambeth, them as sarves their time 'duly and truly' thought to put us off the water, and went afore the Lord Mayor, but they couldn't do nothink after all. They do better nor us, as they go fishin' all the summer, when the dredgin' is bad, and come back in winter. Some on us down there [Rotherhithe] go a deal-portering in the summer, or unloading 'tatoes, or anything else we can get; when we have nothin' else to do, we go on the river. Father don't dredge now, he's too old for that; it takes a man to be strong to dredge, so father goes to ship scrapin'. he on'y sits on a plank outside the ship, and scrapes off the old tar with a scraper. We does very well for all that – why he can make his half bull a day [2s 6d] when he gits work, but that's not always; howsomeever I helps the old man at times, when I'm able. I've found a good many bodies. I got a many rewards, and a tidy bit of inquest money. There's 5s 6d. inquest money at Rotherhithe, and only a shillin' at Deptford; I can't make out how that is, but that's all they give, I know. I never finds anything on the bodies. Lor bless you! people don't have anythink in their pockets when they gits drowned, they are not such fools as all that. Do you see them two marks there on the back of my hand? Well, one day – I was on'y young then – I was grabblin' for old rope in church Hole, when I brings up a body, and just as I was fixing the rope on his leg to tow him ashore, two swells comes down in a skiff, and lays hold of the painter of my boat, and tows me ashore. The hook of the drag went right thro' the trowsers of the drowned man, and my hand, and I couldn't let go no how, and tho' I roared out like mad, the swells didn't care, but dragged me into the stairs. When I got there, my arm and the corpse's shoe and trowsers, was all kivered with my blood. What do you think the gents said? – why, they told me as how they had done me good, in towin' the body in, and ran away up the stairs. Tho' times ain't near so good as they was, I manages purty tidy, and hasn' got no occasion to holler much; but there's some of the dredgers as would holler, if they was ever so well off.