CANAL BOATMEN
SIR,—Your 'Roundabout' correspondent, writing about canal boatmen, is singularly misinformed. None of my colleagues is particularly inbred, suspicious, tiny or flat-faced. The dry, bricks-and- mortar Canal Acts of 1877 and 1884 and the Regula- tions issued by the Ministry of Health specifically limit the number of people that may sleep in a canal boat. It is absurd to suggest that eleven children can live in one cabin. A boatman's life is no pilgrimage, neither is it endless, slow or circular, Although my day often ends at dusk I have never soaked myself into unconsciousness, observed any other boatmen soaking themselves into unconscious- ness, or even heard tell of a boatman soaking himself into unconsciousness.
The life of a canal boatman is unusual in that it calls for, and engenders, independence. 'Serf' is the most inappropriate description that your corre- spondent could have hit upon.—Yours faithfully,
JOHN tvIATTHEWS
Narrow Boat 'Baldock,' c/o British Waterways, Bull's Bridge Depot, Hayes Road, Middlesex
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