I suppose I am officially listed as a bad case. Aged forty, able-bodied; two weeks work in the last five years, and barely ten months between 1926 and ‘37. From ‘23 to ‘26 I was in America and prior to that was unemployed for two years; making my English working record less than one year's work in twelve.

It was not my first sample. That began as a boy of fourteen after leaving a slum school in Sprayport's [sic] dockland. Straight to the ships I had to go as a casual boy-labourer to barrow coal, and was picked occasionally from the other poor boys who hung around the cargo-sheds for a job. Some had run away from their homes, and in the dinner hours begged bread from the dockers; a currant scone being a luxury they all rushed to grab. At night they slept in empty houses, warehouse doors, and smelly urinals, until the police bundled them off to a reformatory for five years, and jailed their fathers for not paying their maintenance.

I had some of this sleeping-out, mostly in an old stable near the docks that was rented by a man who carried seamen's baggage. He took me to the ships at all hours of the night, and I helped him hump the bags into the forecastles. Many a time I sat on a form, hoping one of the men would not turn up, but was always baulked when the boarding-house keepers brought their supply of substitutes aboard.

At last I had to do what many boys were doing, stow away to sea; and hid myself in the poop of a tramp bound for Buenos Aires. Two days out, the bosun found me and yanked me up to the skipper. After a lecture and a meal, I was put into the bunker to shovel coal, and bullied into shifting a man's share. This continued for a week. Then they sent me down the hot stokehold. It was not work; it was torture. Secretly I cried. My hands were like raw meat. My body was racked with pain. Off watch, I lay in a wooden bunk without bed or bedding. The crew had only brought sufficient covering for themselves. The ship was hard for them, so there was little sympathy for me