3-056-382 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

After dinner at the Sailors' Home, East End, 1873. 'In that most useful institution...[in] Wells-street, near the London Docks,...11,000 men belonging to the merchant-vessels that visit this port were last year provided with comfortable lodging and wholesome food...The seamen discharged from a vessel on her arrival in port have the opportunity here of passing, without too much waste of their hard-earned wages, the time which may intervene before they are taken on board another ship for a different voyage. Amusements of a healthy kind, and suitable arrangements for studying useful knowledge, are placed within the reach of those who choose to profit by them. Some will play at a harmless game, while others read the newspaper, the Bible, or some entertaining book; others, again, will write long letters to their friends; some will talk endless yarns of their adventures in distant parts of the world. Now and then, as we see in the Illustration, an expert dancer is invited to please his comrades by the exhibition of a "sailor's hornpipe." They smoke at their ease, admiring his nimble performance, which goes on to a merry tune from the harp-strings of the attendant minstrel; or, if the minstrel be a fiddler, he will do just as well'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.