Introduction
In June 2025, James Moxham emailed me saying:
I'm writing up my late grandfather's diaries, I've now gotten to the time that he started working as a docker at Bristol Port Docks in the city centre in 1954. He talks quite a bit about the "pen" where casual dockers would be selected for work. At one point he says "the old pen still stands at the end of Prince Street", he wrote this in around 1992. I've been trying to figure out if this was an actual building he's referring to or just a general area.
At the time I couldn't find anything about the pen in Prince Street. At a guess, as he says "at the end of Prince Street", I would have thought he meant at the southern end of Prince Street or western end of The Grove, amongthe docks and warehouses there.
Prince Street and The Grove in 1947
Map - Know Your Place
James' email got me interested in dock labour and how it was organised, and so this page was written.
Bales of waste paper destined for Waterford, Ireland, are loaded by crane onto MV 'Saturnus' at The Grove. On the far side of the harbour MV 'Valbella' is berthed at Bathurst Wharf, a row of transit sheds behind. The tall chimney beyond belonged to a packing factory on Wapping Road.
Port of Bristol photographs: The Grove, December 16, 1957, PBAN1333
Map - Know Your Place
A Short History
In the city, the first quays were built along the River Frome near where it joins the River Avon in what is now the centre of Bristol in 1239. By the 14th Century Bristol was trading with countries such as Spain, Portugal & Iceland. Canal Engineer, William Jessop was commissioned to design the Floating Harbour which opened in 1809. By the 1980's the last ships to use the port of Bristol commercially were gone. The docks took on a new life as the developers moved in and converted many of the old warehouses into exclusive apartments and studio flats.
The Sand Sapphire - Hotwells - December 30, 1980
The Sand Diamond, Hotwells - December 30, 1980
I didn't realise it at the time I toook the photos, but this sand company was to be the last company using the City docks commercially. Within a very short time these too were gone.
Avonmouth Dock opened in 1877, with an extension Royal Edward Dock opened in 1908. Royal Portbury Dock was opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 1977.
Early Stevadores
Unloading and loading ship is more complicated than simply moving things around. A large proportion of the work is highly skilled and varied in character, and men becme experts in certain types of cargo.
A stevedore is a worker responsible for loading and unloading cargo from ships at ports. One of the first, if not the first, in Bristol was Christopher King. He was born in Chiseldon, Wiltshire in 1827. He arrived in Bristol in the mid-1840s and by 1850, at the age of 23, he was a master stevedore. In 1859 Christopher acquired his first steam tug, the "Merrimac", and in a decade had become the owner of the first fleet of purpose-built harbour tugs at Bristol. In 1882 he died, leaving the company in the hands of his two sons Christopher John (known as John King) and Samuel James King. The "Merrimac" was scrapped in 1884.
Work Selection
In 1889, the typical wage for a dock worker in London was just 3 - 7 shillings per week, in contrast to the agricultural labourers' average pay of 13 shillings per week. With little mechanisation, the loading and discharging of ships often had to be performed manually, which was a difficult and dangerous task.
In 1897, Bristol docks employed around 5,000 people.
In 1919, a registration was set up. Books were issued to registered casual workers showing the holder's name, age, address and registration number. No one not in possession of a book was engaged until all available and efficient registered men are engaged. The books were stamped by the employer in respect of each day's work. They were collected by the employer's representative at each engagement and retained till the completion of the work for which the holder was engaged. The system was open to abuse with men reported others had bribed the foremen to choose them.
In 1930, a Bristol docker could expect to earn around £3, 16s 10d with 6s 5d unemplyment money, making a total of £4 3s 3d a week.
Decasualisation of Dock Labour at the Port of Bristol by W. Hamilton Whyte in 1932 sys that:
Engagements are made (a) at the ship's side irrespective of starting time; (b) at 8 a.m. and I2 noon at ship quay or shed according to place of employment; and (c) all other calls are made at the surplus labour stand. As regards engagements made under (a) and (b) a period of thirty minutes is allowed before any vacancies are filled from the surplus stand. This is to enable all registered workers who fail to obtain employment to congregate at the surplus stand within thirty minutes of call time. Engagement at the surplus stand may be made by the foreman or by an official of the Ministry of Labour and employers are urged to notify the surplus stand of all engagements they propose to make after 8 a.m. This is done by telephone and the engagement is binding on the employer. It is important to note that employers are obliged to make up shortages from the surplus stand.
Men not engaged at the City Docks, a Dock Employment Exchange was near the Call Stand, both were situated at the south end of Prince Street. Although the surrounding warehouses and offcies were solidly buil of brick, these other buildings might not have been as this photograph of the river police building, also at the southern end of Prince Street, taken on July 15, 1954, shows.
Rive Police station, Prince Street, July 15, 1954
Unions
Dockers have long needed to join some sort of labour organisation. In 1873, many belonged to the newly formed Bristol, West of England and South Wales Operatives. Part of hte reason for this was the change from sail to steam. Therrival of steamships meant that their time in port had to be kept to a minimum and this meant a faster pace of work and longer hours worked at a stretch.
The Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers Union (DWRGLU), often known as the Dockers' Union, was a British trade union representing dock workers in the United Kingdom, founded in 1887. The Dockers' Union rapidly became the principal union for dockworkers in London, Bristol, Cardiff, and other ports in the south and south-west. The union was renamed the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Workers' Union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1899. Then merged into the Transport and General Workers' Union in 1922.
A Bristol docks dispute opened on November 5, 1892, when Bristol timber merchants hired non-union labourers to work alongside Dockers' Union members. The dockers downed tools and went on strike.
A lantern procession on December 23, 1892, to build support for the strike. It attracted a crowd of about 20,000 people in the Horsefair in the centre of Bristol. A brass band played "Rule Britannia", speeches were delivered urging calm and orderly conduct in spite of, or perhaps because of, the presence nearby of Dragoon Guards and Hussars who had been called in from Aldershot, Hampshire. One or two leaders of the demonstration were arrested after the speeches, and the police line which blocked the route over Bristol Bridge was broken through by determined demonstrators. It was then that about 200 cavalry were called to break up the demonstration and drive everyone off the streets. They charged shoppers and demonstrating workers alike, pursuing them through the centre of Bristol. Fifty-seven Bristolians, many suffering head injuries from the cavalry's sabres and batons, and fifty-one police were injured. It became known as Black Friday. Dockers' leader Ben Tillet was charged with incitement to riot even though he wasn't even present! The magistrates were very biased and even included Charles Wills, who had ridden with the military and who had ordered the cavalry charge.
Most dock workers were employed on a casual, day-to-day basis, with few securing regular employment. The dock companies received very little advance notice of a ship's arrival and, as such, they were keen to ensure that there was a large workforce readily available without having to endure the expense of paying for surplus workers during quieter periods. As a result, a 'call-on' system was adopted, whereby a number of times a day, workers would congregate at each of the docks and a foreman would select which ones to hire, often for less than a few hours at a time, based on the availability of work. The system was degrading and encouraged both favouritism and petty corruption, as trade union leader Ben Tillett describes: "We are driven into a shed, iron-barred from end to end, outside of which a foreman or contractor walks up and down with the air of a dealer in a cattle market, picking and choosing from a crowd of men, who, their eagerness to obtain employment, trample each other under foot, and where like beasts they fight for the chances of a day's work."
In September 1923, around 67,000 dockers around the UK went on strike, including those from Avonmouth and Bristol. The strike was started because of cuts to wages and an increase in the cost of living, and was taken without official union approval.
In Mid-October 1945, workers in Avonmouth joined an ongoing strike that had started in Birkenhead that September and spread to Glasgow, the Humber, Leith, Liverpool, London and Tyneside. The strike was about raising the wages of workers from 16 shillings per day to 25 shillings5. The government refused to meet the strike and instead used 21,000 conscripted troops to work the docks. At the height of the strike 43,000 workers were on the pickets and they did not return to work until November. They had not managed to win their full demands, but did gain a three shilling per day pay increase.
The National Dock Labour Scheme (NDLS) was introduced in 1947. It was formed because of the experience of decasualisation and the brought together port employers and trade unions to regulate the labour supply in the dock industry during the Second World War. One important benefit of the NDLS was the establishment of registered dockers which provided job security and removed the ability to favour the hire of one individual over another.
The NDLS was abolished in 1989. This state intervention was not only decisive in curtailing the ability of trade unions to take strike action but also gave the port employers the power to dismiss registered dock workers, and hire casual workers as replacements.
Sources & Resources
Black Friday and The Dockers' Strikes of 1892-3 - A fantastic collection of maps and other material by the City of Bristol
Decasualization of Dock Labour with Special Reference to the Port of Bristol - by W. Hamilton Whyte, 1932
Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers' Union - Wikipedia
Know Your Place - A fantastic collection of maps and other material by the City of Bristol
New unionism - When Mass Workers' Action Changed Britain
Pictures show the history of Bristol's city docks through the years - Bristol Live
Records of C J King and Sons (Holdings) Limited, steam tug company, 1841 - 1985 - Bristol Archives
Sail, steam and emergent dockers' unionism in Britain, 1850-1914 by John Lovell, 1987 - JStor
State intervention and the abolition of the National Dock Labour Scheme: The Bristol experience by Michael Richardson, 2008 - Bristol Radical History Group
The Bristol Dock Company, 1803-1848 by Peter Malpass, 2010 - Avon Local History & Archaeology
The Great Dock Strike, 1889
The history of struggle at Avonmouth Docks
The life of a Dock Labourer 1882 - Old Mersey Times
The Port of Bristol and the Inter-War Recession by Frank Smith, 2003
The position of dockers and sailors in 1897 and the International Federation of Ship, Dock and River Workers
Wrecks on the River Avon - Bristol Radical History Group