Henry Dodd

Henry Dodd, Bi-Centenary 1801 – 2001

Born in Hackney on the 29 October 1801, Henry Dodd started his working life at eleven years old as a ploughboy in the fields near St Paul’s Cathedral. With an aptitude for hard work and a keen business acumen, Dodd saw a career in the collection and disposal of London’s rubbish, as the way to improve his lot.

The rapid expansion of London during the 19^th century was a fortuitous time for an ambitious man in the rubbish business. By 1841 he had moved his thriving business to City Wharf on the Regents Canal, one of the first contractors to do so. In 1847 Dodd registered the ownership of his first three vessels, two of which were sailing barges. These vessels were used to take away the sorted rubbish. Although his business grew he continued to maintain a great interest in the condition of his craft and the welfare of his crews. By 1860 he had five sailing barges.

Henry Dodd organises the first match

Developing the idea he formed from listening to the heated argument of two of his skippers over who could sail faster, Dodd’s first race, held under the auspices of the Prince of Wales Yacht Club was won by his own barge W. H. D. (named after the initials of his son)

The second match sailed in 1864, attracted 40 entries. There were first prizes to owners of between £15 and £18 and to the crews of around £10. The matches were continued annually with a few exceptions until 1908. The interest in the races grew, and new barges built to beat rivals and high stakes were waged on the outcome.

Death of Henry Dodd and the support of Dickens

By the time of his death at Rotherfield on 27 April 1881, Henry Dodd’s personal fortune had made him a ‘man of substance’. He was buried in the churchyard at Farnham Royal, Slough, in a vault he had designed himself. It was decorated with bronze plaques of sailing barges and ploughing teams, together with the motto 'Originator of the Sailing Barge Matches, True School For The Navy' From his fortune he had placed £5000 in trust to the Fishmongers’ Company to provide prizes for the Match.

Dickens knew Dodd and very probably used his character as the basis of his ‘Mr Boffin’, the ‘Golden Dustman’ of Our Mutual Friend. After Dickens death his eldest son, [also Charles], in his Dictionary of the Thames, 1880, upheld the sailormen (barge crews) as worthy of high praise for their seamanship.

F. S. Cooper in his book Racing Sailormen (Percival Marshall & Co., 1963) wrote of Dodd’s promotion of the Matches that 'it is doubtful whether the barges would have developed in the same way, without his

encouragement, before their useful period in transport business came to be terminated by the march of progress.'

Dodd’s Legacy – Barge Racing in the 21^st Century

In 1953, when Mr Maurice Gill of the London & Rochester Trading Company promoted a Match to celebrate the Coronation of Elizabeth II, the Evening News, 18 May, wrote pessimistically "For what may be the last time four Thames Barges (bowsprit class) with their spritsail rigs carrying every possible inch of the typical red canvas and with their spars and paintwork gleaming, will battle their way down the Thames on Thursday for the championship of the river. The picturesque Thames sailing barge is rapidly dying out."

The advent of the yacht barges in large numbers gradually boosted the entries of the Match in the late 50’s and early 60’s from as low as six barges to twenty-one in 1963. Jack Jeffs wrote of the barges in that year’s Centenary Match, "tomorrow they will be fighting it out again on the Thames perhaps for the last time….the memory of the last of Henry Dodd’s races may prove the barges’ greatest memorial."

Though barge racing did cease on the Thames for 32 years, the revived Match draws up to sixteen entries a year; a testament to the longevity of the hulls which the early races did so much to improve, and to the current owners whose time, effort and money keeps what is primarily a privately owned fleet of historical coastal vessels, sailing into the 21^st century.

Anon n. d.

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Page last edited: July 25, 2006

London's rubbish ...

'Where I live,' said Mr Boffin, 'is called The Bower. Boffin's Bower is the name Mrs Boffin christened it when we come into it as a property. If you should meet with anybody that don't know it by that name (which hardly anybody does), when you've got nigh upon about a odd mile, or say and a quarter if you like, up Maiden Lane, Battle Bridge, ask for Harmony Jail, and you'll be put right. I shall expect you, Wegg,' said Mr Boffin, clapping him on the shoulder with the greatest enthusiasm, 'most joyfully. I shall have no peace or patience till you come. [...]

The Bower was as difficult to find, as Fair Rosamond's without the clue. Mr Wegg, having reached the quarter indicated, inquired for the Bower half a dozen times without the least success, until he remembered to ask for Harmony Jail. This occasioned a quick change in the spirits of a hoarse gentleman and a donkey, whom he had much perplexed.

'Why, yer mean Old Harmon's, do yer?' said the hoarse gentleman, who was driving his donkey in a truck, with a carrot for a whip. 'Why didn't yer niver say so? Eddard and me is a goin' by HIM! Jump in.' [...]

Presently, Edward stopped at a gateway, and Wegg discreetly lost no time in slipping out at the back of the truck. [...]

Pushing the gate, which stood ajar, Wegg looked into an enclosed space where certain tall dark mounds rose high against the sky, and where the pathway to the Bower was indicated, as the moonlight showed, between two lines of broken crockery set in ashes. A white figure advancing along this path, proved to be nothing more ghostly than Mr Boffin, easily attired for the pursuit of knowledge, in an undress garment of short white smock-frock. [...]

'So now, Wegg,' said Mr Boffin, wiping his mouth with an air of much refreshment, 'you begin to know us as we are. This is a charming spot, is the Bower, but you must get to apprechiate [sic] it by degrees. It's a spot to find out the merits of; little by little, and a new'un every day. There's a serpentining walk up each of the mounds, that gives you the yard and neighbourhood changing every moment. When you get to the top, there's a view of the neighbouring premises, not to be surpassed. The premises of Mrs Boffin's late father (Canine Provision Trade), you look down into, as if they was your own. And the top of the High Mound is crowned with a lattice-work Arbour, in which, if you don't read out loud many a book in the summer, ay, and as a friend, drop many a time into poetry too, it shan't be my fault.'

Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, 1865. [copyright expired]

Source: Project Gutenberg Etext No. 883, 1st. rel. April 1997, ID: 903

Charles Dickens Snr. (1812-1870)

M. W. 2003