Children of the Dead End: The Autobiography of a Navvy (London: H. Jenkins, 1914), pp. 129–145, 209–212, 225–229, 254–262

The law has it that no man must work as a platelayer on the running lines until he is over twenty-one years of age. If my readers look up the books of the—Railway Company, they’ll find that I started work in the service of the company at the age of twenty-two. My readers must not believe this. I was only eighteen years of age when I started work on the railway, but I told a lie in order to obtain the post.