To Sir Robert Peel   February 16th, 1844

LIVERPOOL MERCURY, February 16th., 1844

Letter V.

To the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, Bart. &c., &c.

Sir,

Duties of a pressing nature requiring for the last few weeks my undivided attention, I was unable to continue my promised series on the Ordnance Survey. I now propose to address you, as briefly as possible, on the treatment which the persons employed on this great public work receive from those to whose superintendence it is entrusted.¹

It might be reasonably expected that an undertaking so expensive, and requiring such an amount of talent for the effectual discharge of its various duties, would afford a decent means of subsistence to those employed on it; yet such is not the case; for though the resources placed at the disposal of the superintendents of the survey are quite sufficient, if properly applied, to render a situation on it comfortable, – nay, respectable, as it should be, – still, owing to mismanagement, the poverty of those connected with it has formed ‘a proverb and a by-word’² in every locality where they have been stationed.

Why do not the superintendents of the survey stand by their ‘Form of Recommendation,’³ where six shillings a day, and upwards, are said to be awarded to efficient draftsmen? Is it a lure – a decoy – first to woo the young aspirant, and afterwards to furnish him with the ‘flattering unction’⁴ that he shall one day receive the pay of an efficient draftsman? I could point this moment to some of the best draftsmen on the survey who are compelled to barter health and talents for a pittance which was refused, not long ago, by the common labourers in the docks at Liverpool – namely three shillings a day. This ‘Form of Recommendation’ then is no standard. What then is? I reply, that the information obtained from a savings bank established by the superintendents of the survey in 1826-7 at Castleknock,⁵ near Dublin, together with reports collected from herring vendors, potato merchants, &c., form the reputable premises whence the minimum expense of the Ordnance Surveyor’s subsistence is inferred, and by which his pay is regulated. Is there another situation under the British Government where such means are resorted to? No, Sir. In this respect the ordnance survey stands alone in its glory; on it alone exists the anomaly of a first-rate draftsman working for three shillings a day, while his superintending captain of engineers⁶ – the brightest evidence of whose ability or usefulness probably exists in his statistics of a huckster’s⁷ shop – makes the public purse available to himself for fifteen times the sum. If the unfortunate assistant fall sick, his pay is altogether withdrawn, and he may die like a dog, if his poverty stricken comrade assist him not. I am sure I am under the mark when I say that the average number of appeals from destitute ordnance surveyors to their brethren amount to seventy yearly. I may add that the ordnance surveyor has died while actually engaged in the duties of his situation, and his body, altogether unheeded by his employer, was left to the tender mercies of the parish authorities.

The wages of the great majority of those employed on the survey vary from twelve to fourteen shillings a week, a sum altogether inadequate to afford even a single man the means of repairing the bodily waste incurred by the muscular exertion which some of the ordnance surveyors undergo. I have seen men in the county of Lancaster⁸ walk ten miles to their work, return after a day’s incessant toil, and sit down to a meal which an engineer officer would think unfit for his dog – a mess of bruised potatoes and melted hog’s lard formed the oft-repeated repast. I have seen men, after having been discharged, offer their services to the recruiting sergeant, and rejected on account of their functional debility induced through over exertion on the survey. I have seen some apply to the poorhouse for relief, and repulsed as impostors. But why continue these details? The whole system is made subservient to the ambition of a few engineer-officers, who, to secure a quiet continuance of their own lucrative success, have reduced those beneath then to a state of obsequious and abject vassalage.

Surely, Sir, it will be admitted that there is enough to excite the disgust of a respectable assistant, and to induce him to look beyond the survey for employment. Every possible means, however, is used to deter him from doing so. Witness the following hue-and-cry form, which is circulated through all its divisions and outposts, whenever such an event occurs: –

Name A.B.9	Age 23 years		Height 5ft.9in.	Complexion Dark	Eyes Dark		Nose Hooked
Marks pock-pitted.		Address good		Native of Limerick, Ireland		Remarks Insubordinate.

Thus is a respectable man reduced to the position of a common felon! Is there credit to be gained by the survey? – the engineer-officers have it. Is there blame incurred? – it presses on the men. Is a bundle of erroneous documents committed to the flames? – the officers may smile at the conflagration, their emoluments¹⁰ are undiminished. The efficient assistants and sappers¹¹ are the only sufferers. In the eulogiums¹² heaped upon the survey before Parliament and learned societies, those are quite forgotten to whom the credit is justly due. Look at an engraved map, ‘drawn’ forsooth ‘by Captain Tucker’ who never placed a pen on it, engraved by someone else, while the name of him who first gave the thing an existence is consigned to utter oblivion.

The effects of this system are such as every reflecting mind must expect. In a moral and religious point of view they are most pernicious. Nor can the plea of economy be urged in its vindication; the fact of the officers being so well provided for, ought, in itself, to render their use of this plea suspicious, especially when we recall the doings of 1832. But my sixth letter,¹³ in which I shall have occasion to remark on the history of the English survey from 1841 to the present, will prove that if the funds now wasted in the revision of botchery, resulting from the combined causes of apathy and inability, were applied to the encouragement of talent, the ordnance survey would be what it assuredly is not at present – a credit to the nation.

Spectator.¹⁴ | Dublin, Jan. 13, 1844.

RI MS JT/1/TYP/11/3916-3918

LT Transcript Only