CHILDREN
OF
THE
DEAD
END

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CHILDREN OF
THE DEAD END

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF AN IRISH NAVVY

BY
PATRICK
MACGILL

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 Fifth Avenue

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THE ANCHOR PRESS, LTD., TIPTREE, ESSEX, ENGLAND.

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FOREWORD

"I wish the Kinlochleven navvies had been thrown into the loch. Theywould fain turn the Highlands into a cinderheap," said the late AndrewLang, writing to me a few months before his death.

In the following pages I have endeavoured to tell of the navvy; the lifehe leads, the dangers he dares, and the death he often dies. Most of mystory is autobiographical. Moleskin Joe and Carroty Dan are true tolife; they live now, and for all I know to the contrary may be met withon some precarious job, in some evil-smelling model lodging-house, or,as suits these gipsies of labour, on the open road. Norah Ryan's painfulstory shows the dangers to which an innocent girl is exposed throughignorance of the fundamental facts of existence; Gourock Ellen and Annieare types of women whom I have often met. While asking a littleallowance for the pen of the novelist it must be said that nearly allthe incidents of the book have come under the observation of the writer:that such incidents should take place makes the tragedy of the story.

Patrick MacGill.

The Garden House,
 Windsor.
January, 1914.

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CONTENTS