William Kenefick considers two views of the dockers and the dockland community in Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries. 'Quixotically generous and economically worthless’! But what does this mean? How does this curious descriptor help us understand the docker or the waterside community? Indeed, does it tell us anything about dock life and work? In truth, the foregoing definition tells us more about the attitudes of wider society than the hidden and often murky world of waterside labour in the 19th and early 20th centuries. From the mid-19th century onward there were several social surveys which were concerned, among other things, with the unusual nature of the waterside community and those who serviced the needs of the great, and the small, ports around Britain.