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Children of the Dead End
order this bookPatrick MacGill Price £16.00 "Has that freshness and force which is the mark of true literature . . . the structure is perfect. I heartily recommend it." Irish Press "Splendid . . . a superb account of its time." From Chapter 27, "De Profundis": "We toiled on the face of the mountain, and our provisions came up on wires that stretched from the summit to the depths of the valley below. Hampers of bread, casks of beer, barrels of tinned meat and all manner of parcels followed one another up through the air day and night in endless procession, and looked for all the world like great gawky birds which still managed to fly, though deprived of their wings. "The postman came up amongst us from somewhere every day, bringing letters from Ireland, and he was always accompanied by two policemen armed with batons and revolvers. The greenhoms from Ireland wrote home and received letters now and again, but the rest of us had no friends, or if we had we never wrote to them. "Over an area of two square miles thousands of men laboured, some on the day-shift, some on the night-shift, some engaged on blasting operations, some wheeling muck, and others building dams and hewing rock facings. A soil of rude order prevailed, but apart from the two policemen who accompanied the letter-carrier on his daily rounds ne other minion of the law ever came near the place. This allowed the physically strong man to exert considerable influence, and fistic arguments were constantly in progress. "Sometimes a stray clergyman, ornamented with a stain less white collar, had the impudence to visit us and tell m what we should do. These visitors were most amusing, and we enjoyed their exhortations exceedingly. Once I told one of them that if he was more in keeping with the Work man whom he represented, some of the navvies stupider than myself might endure his presence, but that no one took any heed of the apprentice who dressed better than his Divine Master. We usually chased these faddists away, and as they seldom had courage equal to their impudence, they never came near us again." |
First published in 1914, Children of the Dead End is Patrick MacGill's autobiography. The book starts with an account of his childhood in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century, and includes a detailed description of a hard life of great poverty and extreme suffering. As an adult, MacGill migrated to Scotland with a number of his fellow-Irishmen, and the book describes in both a humorous and moving way the life of a navvy in Scotland and England at the beginning of this century. The songs, sayings and life of an itinerant navvy are revealed in their full colour by this evocative autobiography.