LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE CANAL-BOAT POPULATION.
(To Its EDITOR OF :HZ "SPECTATOR."] have read some of your correspondent's letters upon this subject. I have had for many years a great deal to do with boating population upon the Canals, having steadily visited their boat-homes, baptised their babies, administered to their sick, buried their dead. On the whole, I think fairly well of them. They are not hypocritical ; there is, of course, ignorance amongst their children, while they have a redundancy of expression for any wayfarer they fall out with. Still, in sickness they seem very sympathetic, while at funerals they assist with zeal. Boat people have always received my visits well, and accepted my remarks about their children with attention. I have known them send their children to school on Sundays, while I have seen them attend church in boat clothes. I have often thought much about how the con- dition of boat people could be mended, and I must say the difficulty of poor people, who have no fixed home, getting their children schooled seems insurmountable; and, as the longer I
think about it the more difficult it seems, I have been driven to think,—Can not some method be adopted by which boat- people may be enabled to remain at home, like post-boys, only plying over a certain stage or length of canal ? In this way there need be no cabinboats, they might be wholly employed for freight. Good homes for poor people's children must be fixed homes,—if children are to do any good at school, they must attend the same schools regularly. Companies should be formel to carry on the canal-boat work. Boat people are often in very poor circumstances, and have wretched screws to drag their boats ; they often cannot-buy enough food for their horses, and at the end of a week's frost they are often starving—away from their native place—without credit or food. I have been told tales of dreadful hardship suffered by poor boat people, who have generally scarcely any capital to fall back upon. If substantial companies, like our Omnibus or Tram Companies, would take the canal carrier-work in hand, and pay the boat- men regular wages to ply over a fixed length of the canal, much misery, much suffering and degradation, and cruelty would be stopped, and the children of our boat population would no longer be wandering and unschooled.—I am, Sir, &c., A VICAR A310.NGST BOAT PEOPLE.
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