Describe the characteristics of the Workers in this artwork's Characters and action.
The principal figure of the young workman is shovelling soil from a platform hanging in a hole onto a large pile behind him. Beneath him in the underground shaft another workman is digging the soil and shovelling it onto the platform. He is only visible in the form of a hand and a shovel appearing from the hole. To his right an older navvy is seen shovelling unsifted lime into a sieve. The fine powder accumulates in a pile on the left.
The lime is to be used to make mortar which is being mixed by other navvies at the right of the composition. A hodcarrier, visible behind the main navvy, is transporting bricks down into the hole. The sheet floating in front of him is a copy of a religious tract handed to him by the lady in the blue bonnet at the left, who is attempting to evangelise the navvies. She is carrying copies of a tract called The Hodman's Haven or Drink for Thirsty Souls. The reference to "drink" in the title reflects the emergence of the temperance movement. A navvy on the right, swigging beer, emphasises their rejection of teetotalism. The woman in front of the evangelist represents genteel glamour – a fashionable lady whose only "job" is to look beautiful.
The ragged character on the left in front of the fashionable lady represents the opposite end of the social scale: an itinerant chickweed seller who lives in a flophouse in Flower and Dean Street, Whitechapel, the most notoriously criminalised part of London at the time. He is an urban worker who obtained flowers, reeds and small animals from the countryside to sell in the centre of the city. Such workers had been chronicled in Henry Mayhew's book London Labour and the London Poor. Brown's catalogue describes the character in Work as a man of "effeminate gentleness" but afflicted with paranoia. The man's head is covered with straw, the wearing of which is frequently a symbol of madness in art.All these figures are passing by the workers along a narrow pathway which brings them up against the sifted lime powder, a corrosive which symbolises the cleansing assault on their complacent rejection of useful work.
In the centre of the composition is a countryman who has recently moved to the town, identifiable by his rural smock. He is holding a brick-hod and drinking beer supplied by the man in the red waistcoat who is supposed to be a "bouncer" employed in a local pub. The beer seller's costume includes examples of cheap brummagem jewellery. His persona – including a copy of The Times under his arm – is a pastiche of a gentleman-flaneur. The two men behind him are imported Irish labourers, recognisable by their costume. This aspect of the painting is directly influenced by Hogarth's Beer Street.
In the foreground are a group of ragged children who have recently suffered a bereavement, evidenced by the black band on the baby's arm. As Brown says in his description, their ragamuffin status suggests that it was their mother who died. The oldest child, wearing borrowed clothing too old for her, tries to control her wayward brother, who is playing with the navvies' wheelbarrow. The younger girl sucks a carrot in lieu of a dummy and looks into the hole created by the workers. Their mongrel pet dog challenges the fashionable lady's pet dog, because, writes Brown, he hates "minions of aristocracy in jackets". The baby, who looks challengingly out at the viewer, occupies a central position in the composition. Brown's description emphasises this challenge by suddenly moving from a first-person narrative to the second person – speaking to his fictional fashionable lady about the perilous situation of the impoverished children.
On the embankment between the upper and the lower road a group of unemployed rural labourers are sleeping in uneasy postures. A scythe wrapped in protective rope hangs over the railing that separates the productive from the unproductive figures in the composition. The Irish couple by the tree are feeding their baby with gruel, while an older man stands by the tree looking resentful. This aspect of the painting recalls Carlyle's discussion of unemployed Irish migrants in his book Past and Present.
Beneath these figures on the road children can be seen playing, while genteel couples and sandwich-board carriers wander through the sun-dappled lower street. At the extreme right a policeman pushes a female orange seller who is resting her basket on a bollard (technically illegal, because she is setting up shop).
Beer Street lime temperance movement Henry Mayhew dummy brummagem right flophouse The Times chickweed navvies flaneur mortar smock scythe London Labour and the London Poor waistcoat Flower and Dean Street second person left first-person narrative navvy Whitechapel