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Updated: June 18, 2025
Two of them afterwards assisted the sailors in collecting the chips of stone and carrying them out of the way of the pickmen; but the third complained of a pain in his head, and was still unable to do anything. Instead of returning to the tender with the boats, these three men remained on the beacon all day, and had their victuals sent to them along with the smiths'. From Mr.
Of course a scuffle might have ensued, and it is hard to say, in the ardour of men contending for life, where it might have ended. It has even been hinted to the writer that a party of the PICKMEN were determined to keep exclusively to their own boat against all hazards.
It often happened that after the flood-tide had obliged the pickmen to strike work, a sea would come rolling over the rocks, while the smith was in the middle of a ‘favourite heat,’ dashing out the fire, and endangering his indispensable instrument, the bellows; or if the sea was smooth, the smith had often to stand at work knee deep in water, and the tide would rise imperceptibly, first cooling the exterior of the fire-place or hearth, and then quickly blackening and extinguishing the fire from below.
The mine was a large open cutting, and the prisoners were employed in digging the sand and carrying it on hand-barrows to the place where it was to be washed. The work was not entirely performed by prisoners, as there were many free labourers also employed. Godfrey was given a shovel, and his work consisted in loading the sand and gravel, as the pickmen got it down, on to the barrows.
Few, again, were they whose bodies were accompanied to the church by more than half a score or a dozen of their neighbours, and of these no worshipful and illustrious citizens, but a sort of blood-suckers, sprung from the dregs of the people, who styled themselves pickmen and did such offices for hire, shouldered the bier and bore it with hurried steps, not to that church which the dead man had chosen before his death, but most times to the nearest, behind five or six priests, with little light and whiles none at all, which latter, with the aid of the said pickmen, thrust him into what grave soever they first found unoccupied, without troubling themselves with too long or too formal a service.
How strange that men can work in rain, cold and heat at the shovel for a whole day, then drink up the whole in two hours at the gin-shop! These pickmen pioneers of the Iron Horse, with their worst habits, are yet a kind of John-the-Baptists to the march and mission of civilization, preparing its way in the wilderness, and bringing secluded and isolated populations to its light and intercourse.
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