Charles was one of thousands; there was nothing unusual In the early nineteenth century about a twelve-year old boy going to work. Six shillings a week was not a bad wage for a boy, and the hours at the warehouse were not prolonged. He began at 8 in the morning and finishing at 8 in the evening, with a break of one hour for dinner and half an hour for tea.

The blacking warehouse was a crazy tumbledown old place, abutting on the river at Hungerford Stairs. Dirty and decayed, its cold rooms and rotten floors resounded with the squeaking and shuffling of the rats swarming down in the cellars. Charles sat and worked by himself in a recess of the counting house. His task was to cover the pots with paste-blacking, first with a piece of oilpaper, then with a bit of blue paper. Then he was to tie them round with a string, and then clip the paper close and neat until it looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an apothecary's shop.

But the separate working place was inconvenient, and his small work table was moved downstairs to the common workroom. He wasn't too young to know that he would be slighted and despised if he couldn't work as well as the others, so, despite his unhappiness, he soon made himself quick and efficient.

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