Economic History Society Conference April 2011
The relationship between the East India Company and its London warehouse
labourers, 1800-1858
Margaret Makepeace
At the peak of its commercial activities in the early nineteenth century, the East India
Company employed more than three thousand labourers in its London warehouses, the
largest single body of civilian manual workers in the metropolis at that time. In order to
manage this very large body of men, the Company adopted a paternalistic ‘carrot and
stick’ approach, with the aim of keeping the warehouses functioning at an acceptable level
of efficiency and of guarding against transgression. The Company developed a number of
management strategies in which incentives, rewards, and benevolence were blended with
disciplinary measures backed by detailed written regulations.
By 1800, the Company had acquired extensive warehousing near its headquarters
at East India House in Leadenhall Street as well as further east along the Thames at
Ratcliff. The warehouses stored huge quantities of goods shipped to London from Asia,
as well as woollen cloth and military stores for export, and passengers’ baggage.
The East India Company believed that the best way to ensure prudent and secure
management of these valuable commodities was to establish a loyal committed workforce
in its London warehouses, controlled by a multi-layered management structure, with each
grade of employee having clearly defined responsibilities. The ultimate responsibility for
the warehouses lay with the Company directors sitting in the Court and on the Committee
of Buying and Warehouses. Under them came the warehouse-keepers who were
responsible for daily business assisted by two sorts of staff: those who moved paper - the
clerks, and writers (or copyists); and those who moved goods - the teams of labourers and
commodores (or foremen) who were supervised by the elders.
The vast majority of labourers were permanent employees, although there was a
small group of temporary or ‘extra’ labourers who received lower pay and fewer benefits.
By 1800, the appointment of warehouse labourers fell within the personal patronage of the
1
Company directors in the same fashion as the lucrative military cadet and civilian writer
positions overseas. Labourer posts were eagerly sought with applications always greatly
exceeding the number of vacancies. Sometimes the directors knew the men personally, for
example as servants in their household. In other cases, the application to the director
came from a third party, and here complex patronage networks of mutual dependence and
social influence came into play. Holding a nomination card did not guarantee automatic
entry to the warehouse, as the men were screened by age, health, and minimum height
requirements. Entry regulations became even more stringent after the establishment of
the Royal East India Volunteers in 1796 as the Company sought men willing and able to
act efficiently in a dual role of civilian employee and soldier.
The selected men were given many incentives to remain in Company service. Fair
cash wages were distributed regularly and reliably each week: the hourly rate was 2s 9d
for permanent labourers.1 There was a short standard working day of six hours with a
thirty minute rest mid-morning for breakfast at a time when working days of ten or twelve
hours were common.2 Company hours allowed the men to seek sources of supplementary
earnings in the afternoon and evenings: some worked in theatres or kept shops with their
wives, others were artisans continuing the occupations they had followed before joining
the Company warehouses, such as shoemaker or tailor. An hourly supplement of 3d was
paid for ‘extra time’ worked before or after the standard working day. There were
promotion opportunities for ‘deserving’ employees: able warehouse labourers could
progress to the rank of commodore and thence to deputy assistant elder, or be appointed
as a messenger or warehouse writer. Pensions were paid to labourers who were no longer
able to work because of ‘the mechanical injury of a limb, some infirmity, or a slow but
fatal disease’.3
As well as pensions, the Company labourers were provided with a comprehensive
scheme of benefits. A welfare fund was instituted in July 1799 which evolved from
earlier regulations which provided hospital treatment at the Company’s expense for
1
Extra labourers received 2s 6d per hour, and junior labourers under the age of eighteen 2s (these boys were
the sons of labourers who served also as drummers in the Company Volunteers).
2
The men normally worked 8 am to 2 pm until 1829 when warehouse business hours were altered to 9 am
to 3 pm.
3
William Farr, ‘Vital Statistics or the Statistics of Health, Sickness, Diseases and Death’ (1837) reprinted in
Mortality in mid 19th century Britain, Richard Wall (Farnborough, 1974), p. 578.
2
labourers hurt in the discharge of their duty.4 Membership of the fund was compulsory
for all labourers joining the warehouses after June 1816. Labourers each paid 3d per
week towards the fund, with subscriptions suspended during any period of entitlement to
benefits. For as long as they were unable to work through sickness, lameness, blindness,
infirmity, or insanity, commodores and labourers received 10s 6d per week, or 1s 6d per
day including Sundays. Subscribers were given free medical attention either by the
Company surgeon or by a hospital in the case of fracture. Payments were made on the
birth of legitimate children, and on the death of a subscriber, his wife or dependent child,
as well as for loss by fire, being laid off from the warehouse, and imprisonment for debt.
The Company subsidised the scheme: a far greater sum was paid out in benefits than
accumulated from the weekly contributions. All claims on money paid into the labourers’
fund ceased when men quit or were dismissed. This was a powerful incentive to remain
in Company service and, as there was no fixed retirement age, the Company risked tying
itself to an ageing workforce. Elderly men were kept on the warehouse books, some even
into their eighties, and they were allocated tasks requiring little physical exertion.
The directors attempted to promote self-help amongst the labourers, exemplifying
the philosophy that one should ‘anticipate charity by preventing poverty’.5 A subsidised
savings bank was established by the Company in March 1818 in an attempt to try to
persuade its lower paid servants in London to develop habits of thrift and to keep them
out of the debtors’ prisons.6 Sums as low as 3d per week were accepted ‘to give the
poorest Laborer an opportunity of Depositing’.7 Monies collected were invested with the
Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt and interest was paid on accounts.8
Men who invested regularly in the bank were entitled to a higher rate of pension.
In return for a secure job with a number of benefits attached, (a rarity in early
nineteenth century London), the labourers were expected to conform to closely defined
The labourers’ fund thus pre-dated by some years the contributory funds for the benefit of widows and
children of more senior home servants, such as the Regular Widows’ and the Elders’ Widows’ Funds which
were introduced in 1816.
5
For comment on the writings of the philosopher Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), see Solomon Fabricant,
‘An Economist’s View of Philanthropy’ in Philanthropy and Public Policy, ed. Frank G. Dickinson (New
York, 1962), pp. 1-9.
6
The Company subsidised running costs by paying for stationery and printing and by helping with clerical
salaries.
7
BL, IOR: L/AG/30/15/1, pp. 1-2, Savings Bank Trustees’ Minutes 16 February 1819.
8
Interest was paid at a rate of 4¼ per cent at first, although this had dropped to 2¼ per cent by 1834.
4
3
rules for conduct which affected their lives outside the warehouses as well as during
working hours. All the regulations which the labourers needed to know were printed and
affixed in the most conspicuous parts of the warehouses, and discipline was reinforced by
careful documentation of daily routines. The warehouse labourers were mustered every
morning at a set hour, and those who did not answer their call were not employed that
day. If any commodore or labourer was addicted to liquor, or neglectful of his duty, or
misbehaved in any way, the warehouse-keeper was authorised to sack him. Labourers
could only leave the warehouses with the permission of the keepers or elders, and had to
be searched (or ‘rubbed down’) on their way out. The names of labourers discharged for
malpractice were prominently displayed, together with notices stating the Company’s
determination to prosecute any labourer caught pilfering. A reward of one guinea was
given to every man who reported a thief, introducing another means of control through the
encouragement of informants. The Company brought many cases at the Old Bailey
against its labourers for stealing, and deterrent punishments included imprisonment,
transportation, or tying the culprit to a cart and whipping him for one hundred yards in
front of the warehouse where he had worked. Direct employment of the labourers meant
that the Company had the power to dismiss any man who was inefficient or dishonest,
although a general policy of ‘tempered’ management ensured that miscreants were often
given a second chance.
The Company’s attempts to exert control over the labourers extended to their lives
outside the warehouses. The men had to live within a prescribed area, albeit quite a wide
one, to make it easier for the Company surgeons and welfare fund visitors to call at the
men’s homes when they were absent. Restrictions were imposed on labourers’ secondary
occupations. The men were not allowed to deal in any article imported by the Company,
or to be employed as publicans (presumably as it was believed that this would provide
them with an easy outlet for any stolen goods). In March 1815, a regulation was
introduced to ban the labourers from working as night watchmen as it was thought
impossible that men who had worked all night could work with diligence during the day,
although an exception was made for those guarding East India House and the Company
warehouses. There is evidence however that the Company was not always vigilant about
enforcing these orders. James Hill testified at the Old Bailey in June 1799 that although
he had worked in the warehouses for nine years, he had never heard of the Company rule
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excluding publicans and declared ‘there are a great many keep public-houses as well as
myself in the India-house’.9
The most notable way in which the Company influenced the labourers’ lives away
from the warehouses was the obligation of fit and able labourers to serve as soldiers in the
Royal East India Volunteers in regiments officered by their managers from 1796 to 1814
and then again from 1820 to 1834. The men were paid extra time for Volunteer training
and duties outside normal working hours, and they were liable to be called out to suppress
riots or disorder in any part of London.10 The Times remarked: ‘The union of civil and
military dependence is... highly conducive to subordination and punctuality’.11
If director David Scott is to be believed, the Company had taken a risk by arming
the labourers as Volunteer soldiers. Scott wrote of ‘changing that then Dangerous Body of
Seditious Men in the Heart of London to as Loyal a Corps as was in the Kingdom’.12 He
seemingly believed that the warehouse labourers had been tamed and robbed of their
revolutionary potential by focusing their energies into the military routines, and by
inculcating them with patriotic fervour. Rather than being a potential component of the
London mob, the labourers were trained to fight against it, and instead of rallying to the
cause of those who wished to see the government and monarchy overturned, the men
stayed loyal to the regime.13 Perhaps the Company’s Volunteer oath of 1820 did to some
degree reflect the labourers’ mindset: ‘…we hereby pledge ourselves to stand by, defend,
and support to the utmost of our power, the Constitution of these Kingdoms as by Law
established, the Property of our Honorable Employers, the East India Company; and to aid
the Civil Magistrate in preserving the Peace, believing this to be the only means of
ensuring protection to our selves, our children, and our Property’.14
9
Old Bailey Proceedings, 19 June 1799, Trial of Barnett Solomons for coining.
BL, IOR: B/123, pp. 563-5, Court Minutes 24 August 1796.
11
The Times 12 April 1804, p. 4a. The comment was made in relation to both the Royal West India
Regiment of Volunteers which was formed in 1804 and the Royal East India Volunteers.
12
BL, IOR: H/730, pp. 172-4: a most private’ letter dated 28 March 1800 addressed to Henry Dundas,
Secretary of State for War and Colonel in Chief of the Royal East India Volunteers.
13
The general arming of ‘potentially volatile’ social elements in the Volunteer movement during the French
Wars is discussed in Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, 2nd ed. (London, 2005), pp.
283-319.
14
BL, IOR: B/171, pp. 403-4, Court Minutes 2 August 1820.
10
5
The blend of incentives and controls created a relationship of enforced dependence
for the warehouse labourers, and their recognised place at the bottom of the warehouse
hierarchy is clear from the Company archive, both from their own comments and from
those of their managers. Warehouse-keepers and elders are distinguished by the title
‘Mister’ in the records, whilst the commodores and labourers are referred to by their first
names and surnames only. However there is evidence of cordial relations between the
labourers and the higher ranks of the warehouse hierarchy. An example of this is found in
the will of labourer Henry Royle who bequeathed £5 to deputy elder William Barber as a
small token of respect and in consideration of Barber’s trouble in acting as one of his
executors.15
Although the social and managerial distance between the directors and the
workforce would have been maintained at all times, the labourers and their families do not
appear to have been unduly intimidated in their relations with their superiors in the
Company hierarchy. They tried to exploit for their own ends the paternalistic relationship
encouraged by the Company directors, using the lines of communication available to them
as groups or as individuals to express grievances, to ask for pay increases or promotion, or
to plead for help in distressed circumstances. Hundreds of petitions for assistance
submitted by the men and their families have been preserved in the Company archives
together with careful reports on each case from warehouse-keepers and other officials.
The labourers were not afraid to appeal to the Company directors and senior officers such
as the Secretary as well as to their immediate managers in the warehouses. Between 1829
and 1841 William King submitted at least eight petitions following an accident in the
warehouse which injured his spine. He was granted donations totalling £14 by the
directors to enable him to seek treatment at the Royal Sea Bathing Infirmary in Margate
and to take the mineral waters at Bath.16 The labourers’ petitions sometimes harked back
to the patronage links with the directors who had nominated them for a post. Retired
labourer William Parker spoke of the late Richard Plowden as his ‘drector’, suggesting
that he would have been better treated if Plowden had still been alive.17
15
The National Archives: PROB11/1561 ff.316v-317 Will of Henry Royle, signed 9 July 1801, proved 13
Oct 1814.
16
BL, IOR: L/F/2.
17
BL, IOR: L/F/2/56, no. 29 of February 1841. Plowden had nominated Parker for a warehouse labourer
post in 1810 (BL, IOR: L/AG/30/5, no. 1885).
6
Generally the petitions were dealt with as a matter of routine business, but
occasionally the Court was moved to reject an appeal with a clear expression of
annoyance. In February 1800, the Court received a petition from the warehouse
commodores and labourers for a pay increase which was turned down. However the Court
was informed that a further application was to be made during a Volunteer parade, and the
directors were extremely displeased, resolving that any individual or group of men
presuming to make an application whilst in their military capacity was to be instantly
dismissed from Company service.18 Since the vast majority of administrative papers from
the warehouses before 1834 were destroyed in the mid-nineteenth century, it is difficult to
judge exactly how much conflict there was between the labourers and their managers.
However there is certainly no evidence of strikes or major disruption in the minutes of the
Court of Directors.
The directors were prepared to shield the labourers from external criticism,
perhaps motivated both by a sense of loyalty to their employees and by the wish to refute
allegations of indiscipline which reflected on the Company’s ability to manage the men.
For example, in 1829 the keeper of Whitecross Street debtors’ prison reported that a
number of Company labourers had been imprisoned for small debts incurred for porter
drunk in the warehouses and suggested that it might be advisable to limit the amount of
drink allowed on Company premises. An investigation by the Committee of Buying and
Warehouses discovered that the problem was largely caused by two publicans quitting
their business and demanding immediate settlement of the men’s tallies. The Committee
upheld the wisdom of the existing regulations for the ‘moderate admission of
refreshments’ into the warehouses and exonerated the labourers from ‘the general
imputation of Drunkenness and Immorality’. 19
Although some men fell into debt and others pleaded poverty when caught
stealing from the Company, the warehousemen are probably most accurately described as
better-off labourers occupying the middle ground between the poorest working classes
and the artisans. Yet they did fulfil a number of the criteria which Eric Hobsbawm
18
BL, IOR: B/130, p.1008, Court minutes 21 February 1800.
BL, IOR: B/182, (not paginated), Court Minutes 24 April and 15 July 1829; BL, IOR: E/1/265, no.
1748.
19 19
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recognised as being necessary for membership of a ‘labour aristocracy’.20 The Company
labourers received a reasonable regular wage; their prospects of social security were good
because of the welfare fund; they were treated with some respect and dignity by those
above them in the warehouse hierarchy, and there is evidence of friendly relations
between the men and their superiors; their general conditions of living appear to have
been better than those of many members of the London working classes; and they had
some prospect of future advancement for themselves and for their children, through the
possibility of promotion, the opportunity to build up a nest egg in the savings bank, and
the chance to give their children an education at schools often supported in part by
Company subscriptions.
The labourers were certainly a clearly identifiable group within the London
workforce, apparently with a strong sense of collective identity. Former warehouse
labourers retained a sense of belonging for years after the Company's commercial
premises were closed down. In the 1851 census for Bethnal Green, James Fitch described
himself as ‘Foreman London Docks, Pensioner E.I.C. '.21
The East India Company’s general approach to management was consistent from
the early seventeenth century onwards, with policies developed ad hoc in accordance with
an underlying ethos of benevolence. The Company directors were not following
preconceived management theories, yet it is notable that the Company’s method of
directing the warehouses conformed to most of the universal management principles later
identified by Henri Fayol. These were specialisation of labour; the right of managers to
give orders and exact obedience; discipline which was grounded in respect rather than
fear; a chain of command running from the top to the bottom of the organisation; fair
remuneration for employees; centralisation; order; equity, or kindliness and justice in
employee relations; stability of tenure for personnel; and esprit de corps.
The relationship which had been forged between the between East India Company
and the warehouse labourers was overturned by the Charter Act of 1833 which put an end
to the commercial operations of the Company, forcing the sale of most of the warehouses
20
E. J. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men - Studies in the History of Labour (London, 1964), chapter 15.
However, Hobsbawm doubted the existence of a labour aristocracy before the 1840s, by which time most of
the East India Company warehouse labourers had been made redundant.
21
The National Archives: HO107/1541.
8
and the introduction of a rolling programme of redundancy for the labourers and other
staff. Company employees lost the security and stability which they had enjoyed in their
working life and were deprived of the cushion against adversity which had been provided
for them by the Company. Many labourers had fully expected to hold a job with the
Company until retirement or death, and the warehouse closures threw into sharp relief just
how favourable the labourers’ situation had been, with daily existence becoming much
more precarious for many of the men and their families, especially as they lost their jobs
at time of high unemployment in London. Those who had been favoured with light duties
because of their age and infirmities now had to try to secure alternative employment in
direct competition with the young and fit.
Compensation schemes were introduced for the different groups of workers
affected. For the labourers, a scale of weekly pensions was devised according to length of
service and commodores were paid an additional premium. Not all the labourers were
content with the terms proposed by the Company and protested publicly, with the dispute
reaching the pages of The Times. Many were unhappy that they were required to sign
away their future entitlement to receive any relief from the Company welfare fund into
which they had paid their weekly contributions. A large number of the men found that
they were not eligible to enrol with a friendly society because of age or ill-health.22
Another cause of complaint was the system of banding for the compensation payments
which had large jumps between points on the scale. Moreover all redundant labourers
with less than twenty years’ service were given a weekly pension of 7s 6d. This meant
that William Card who had served just one year and eleven months received the same
pension as Richard Dean who had been a labourer for nineteen and a quarter years.23
A small percentage of the labourers escaped redundancy by securing permanent
posts elsewhere within the Company. Jobs in the Military Store were eagerly sought
since this warehouse was to remain open after the rest closed.24 A few men transferred to
East India House as messengers or extra watchmen.25 Hundreds transferred to the dock
companies but not all were lucky enough to be appointed as permanent labourers who
were guaranteed regular employment. Many returned full-time to the occupations they
22
The Times 6 October 1834, p. 1d.
BL, IOR: L/AG/21/6/2.
24
Petitions to the Finance and Home Committee scattered throughout BL, IOR: L/F/2.
25
BL, IOR: L/AG/30/4; BL, IOR: L/F/1 Minutes of the Finance and Home Committee, passim.
23
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had followed before they were admitted to the Company. A number returned to their
place of birth where relations promised them employment, many in Ireland. Others
petitioned to commute their pensions to a lump sum but the Company was only prepared
to consider this if the money was to be used for emigration. Applications for other
purposes were routinely rejected, no matter how worthy they may have seemed: to go into
business; to open a school; to buy tools needed to pursue a trade. The warehouse-keepers
were asked to report on whether commutation would benefit a man or his family. The
keepers gave their judgments on the labourers’ character, often appearing to be father-like
figures saving improvident labourers from ruin by limiting them to the regular drip feed
of their quarterly pension rather than risk sanctioning the payment of a single large sum.
The directors believed that the Company’s duty of care persisted not only with
respect to the small body of labourers retained in the Military Store Department, but also
to the newly expanded group of warehouse pensioners. The former labourers did not
become merely faceless names on a pension list. Labourers’ pensions were paid quarterly
at East India House and since those residing within thirty miles of London were expected
to collect and sign for their money in person on specified days, a large group of
warehouse pensioners did maintain regular personal contact with Company officials and
with each other. Snippets of personal information about the men were entered as
annotations in the pension registers, such as John Weatherby’s suicide when he was
depressed at losing his job at the docks;26 and William Darben’s arrest for being drunk
after thieves plied him with alcohol and stole his pension.27 The families of pensioners
who died often petitioned the Company asking for financial help. Although the widows of
labourers who had retired on compensation pensions were not entitled to burial money,
the Company was sympathetic and frequently made charitable donations towards funeral
costs.
The small cadre of labourers who worked in the Military Store Department after
the other warehouses had closed continued to enjoy good conditions of employment, but
the earlier initiatives which had marked the Company as an exceptional employer, such as
the provision of free medical treatment and a subsidised in-house savings bank, were no
longer financially viable and were abandoned. The patriarchal link between the directors
26
27
BL, IOR: L/AG/35/24; The Times 1 June 1842, p. 9a.
BL, IOR: L/AG/35/24; The Times 4 August 1843, p. 7b.
10
and their warehouse labourers past and present was severed once and for all by the
Government of India Act of 1858 which replaced the East India Company with the India
Office, a Crown department headed by a Secretary of State. The India Office introduced
revised working conditions for the labourers together with new admission regulations
which were subject to supervision by the Civil Service Commissioners.28
Political economist and reformer Patrick Colquhoun believed that a careful blend
of benevolence and coercion could be used to create an authoritarian, but not repressive,
framework for social order.29 The regime established in the microcosm of the East India
Company London warehouses was proof that such a concept could be successful. An
intermingling of incentives and constraints was used to maintain the organisational
hierarchy and to try to create a stable and committed work force. The Company succeeded
in forging a largely non-confrontational relationship with its warehouse labourers,
whereby the men were to a degree controlled but certainly not overawed by their
managers.
28
BL, IOPP: MSS Eur F 249, Rules, regulations and memoranda compiled by Henry G. Bedford, Chief
Clerk, and his successors in the India Office Store Department 1858-1909.
29
A. P. Donajgrodzki, ‘“Social Police” and the Bureaucratic Elite: A Vision of Order in the Age of
Reform’, in A. P. Donajgrodzki, Social Control in Nineteenth Century Britain (London, 1977), pp. 51-76.
11