Part 30

conveniences for the melting of pewter pots (called “cats and kittens” by the young thieves, according to the size of the vessels), but I never heard them speak of any connection, or indeed any transactions, with street-folk.

Among the things purchased in great quantities by the street-buyers of old metal are keys. The keys so bought are of every size, are generally very rusty, and present every form of manufacture, from the simplest to the most complex wards. On my inquiring how such a number of keys without locks came to be offered for street-sale, I was informed that there were often duplicate or triplicate keys to one lock, and that in sales of household furniture, for instance, there were often numbers of odd keys found about the premises and sold “in a lump;” that locks were often spoiled and unsaleable, wearing out long before the keys. Twopence a dozen is an usual price for a dozen “mixed keys,” to a street-buyer. Bolts are also freely bought by the street-people, as are holdfasts, bed-keys, and screws, “and everything,” I was told, “which some one or other among the poor is always a-wanting.”

A little old man, who had been many years a street-buyer, gave me an account of his purchases of _bottles_ and _glass_. This man had been a soldier in his youth; had known, as he said, “many ups and downs;” and occasionally wheels a barrow, somewhat larger and shallower than those used by masons, from which he vends iron and tin wares, such as cheap gridirons, stands for hand-irons, dust-pans, dripping trays, &c. As he sold these wares, he offered to buy, or swop for, any second-hand commodities. “As to the bottle and glass buying, sir,” he said, “it’s dead and buried in the streets, and in the country too. I’ve known the day when I’ve cleared 2_l._ in a week by buying old things in a country round. How long was that ago, do you say, sir? Why perhaps twenty years; yes, more than twenty. Now, I’d hardly pick up odd glass in the street.” [He called imperfect glass wares “odd glass.”] “O, I don’t know what’s brought about such a change, but everything changes. I can’t say anything about the duty on glass. No, I never paid any duty on my glass; it ain’t likely. I buy glass still, certainly I do, but I think if I depended on it I should be wishing myself in the East Injes again, rather than such a poor consarn of a business--d----n me if I shouldn’t. The last glass bargain I made about two months back, down Limehouse-way, and about the Commercial-road, I cleared 7_d._ by; and then I had to wheel what I bought--it was chiefly bottles--about five mile. It’s a trade would starve a cat, the buying of old glass. I never bought glass by weight, but I’ve heard of some giving a halfpenny and a penny a pound. I always bought by the piece: from a halfpenny to a shilling (but that’s long since) for a bottle; and farthings and halfpennies, and higher and sometimes lower, for wine and other glasses as was chipped or cracked, or damaged, for they could be sold in them days. People’s got proud now, I fancy that’s one thing, and must have everything slap. O, I do middling: I live by one thing or other, and when I die there’ll just be enough to bury the old man.” [This is the first street-trader I have met with who made such a statement as to having provided for his interment, though I have heard these men occasionally express repugnance at the thoughts of being buried by the parish.] “I have a daughter, that’s all my family now; she does well as a laundress, and is a real good sort; I have my dinner with her every Sunday. She’s a widow without any young ones. I often go to church, both with my daughter and by myself, on Sunday evenings. It does one good. I’m fond of the music and singing too. The sermon I can very seldom make anything of, as I can’t hear well if any one’s a good way off me when he’s saying anythink. I buy a little old metal sometimes, but it’s coming to be all up with street glass-people; everybody seems to run with their things to the rag-and-bottle-shops.”

The same body of traders buy also _old sacking, carpeting, and moreen bed-curtains and window-hangings_; but the trade in them is sufficiently described in my account of the buying of rags, for it is carried on in the same way, so much per pound (1_d._ or 1-1/2_d._ or 2_d._), or so much for the lot.

Of _Bones_ I have already spoken. They are bought by any street-collector with a cart, on his round in town, at a halfpenny a pound, or three pounds for a penny; but it is a trade, on account of the awkwardness of carriage, little cared for by the regular street-buyers. Men, connected with some bone-grinding-mill, go round with a horse and cart to the knackers and butchers to collect bones; but this is a portion, not of street, but of the mill-owner’s, business. These bones are ground for manure, which is extensively used by the agriculturists, having been first introduced in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire about 30 years ago. The importation of bones is now very great; more than three times as much as it was 20 years back. The value of the foreign bones imported is estimated at upwards of 300,000_l._ yearly. They are brought from South America (along with hides), from Germany, Holland, and Belgium.

The men who most care to collect bones in the streets of London are old and infirm, and they barter toys for them with poor children; for those children sometimes gather bones in the streets and put them on one side, or get them from dustholes, for the sake of exchanging them for a plaything; or, indeed, for selling them to any shopkeeper, and many of the rag-and-bottle-tradesmen buy bones. The toys most used for this barter are paper “wind-mills.” These toy-barterers, when they have a few pence, will buy bones of children or any others, if they cannot become possessed of them otherwise; but the carriage of the bones is a great obstacle to much being done in this business.

In the regular way of street-buying, such as I have described it, there are about 100 men in London and the suburbs. Some buy only during a portion of the year, and none perhaps (except in the way of barter) the year round. They are chiefly of the costermonger class, some of the street-buyers however, have been carmen’s servants, or connected with trades in which they had the care of a horse and cart, and so became habituated to a street-life.

There are still many other ways in which the commerce in refuse and the second-hand street-trade is supplied. As the windmill-seller for bones, so will the puppet-show man for old bottles or broken table-spoons, or almost any old trifle, allow children to regale their eyes on the beauties of his exhibition.

The trade expenditure of the street-buyers it is not easy to estimate. Their calling is so mixed with selling and bartering, that very probably not one among them can tell what he expends in _buying_, as a separate branch of his business. If 100 men expend 15_s._ each weekly, in the purchase of rags, old metal, &c., and if this trade be prosecuted for 30 weeks of the year, we find 2250_l._ so expended. The profits of the buyers range from 20 to 100 per cent.

OF THE “RAG-AND-BOTTLE,” AND THE “MARINE-STORE,” SHOPS.

The principal purchasers of any refuse or worn-out articles are the proprietors of the rag-and-bottle-shops. Some of these men make a good deal of money, and not unfrequently unite with the business the letting out of vans for the conveyance of furniture, or for pleasure excursions, to such places as Hampton Court. The stench in these shops is positively sickening. Here in a small apartment may be a pile of rags, a sack-full of bones, the many varieties of grease and “kitchen-stuff,” corrupting an atmosphere which, even without such accompaniments, would be too close. The windows are often crowded with bottles, which exclude the light; while the floor and shelves are thick with grease and dirt. The inmates seem unconscious of this foulness,--and one comparatively wealthy man, who showed me his horses, the stable being like a drawing-room compared to his shop, in speaking of the many deaths among his children, could not conjecture to what cause it could be owing. This indifference to dirt and stench is the more remarkable, as many of the shopkeepers have been gentlemen’s servants, and were therefore once accustomed to cleanliness and order. The door-posts and windows of the rag-and-bottle-shops are often closely placarded, and the front of the house is sometimes one glaring colour, blue or red; so that the place may be at once recognised, even by the illiterate, as the “red house,” or the “blue house.” If these men are not exactly street-buyers, they are street-billers, continually distributing hand-bills, but more especially before Christmas. The more aristocratic, however, now send round cards, and to the following purport:--

No. -- No. --

THE ---- HOUSE IS ----’S RAG, BOTTLE, AND KITCHEN STUFF WAREHOUSE, ---- STREET, ---- TOWN, Where you can obtain Gold and Silver to any amount.

ESTABLISHED ----.

THE HIGHEST PRICE GIVEN For all the undermentioned articles, viz:--

Wax and Sperm Pieces Kitchen Stuff, &c. Wine & Beer Bottles Eau de Cologne, Soda Water Doctors’ Bottles, &c. White Linen Rags Bones, Phials, & Broken Flint Glass Old Copper, Brass, Pewter, &c. Lead, Iron, Zinc, Steel, &c., &c. Old Horse Hair, Mattresses, &c. Old Books, Waste Paper, &c. All kinds of Coloured Rags

The utmost value given for all kinds of Wearing Apparel.

Furniture and Lumber of every description bought, and full value given at his Miscellaneous Warehouse.

Articles sent for.

Some content themselves with sending hand-bills to the houses in their neighbourhood, which many of the cheap printers keep in type, so that an alteration in the name and address is all which is necessary for any customer.

* * * * *

I heard that suspicions were entertained that it was to some of these traders that the facilities with which servants could dispose of their pilferings might be attributed, and that a stray silver spoon might enhance the weight and price of kitchen-stuff. It is not pertaining to my present subject to enter into the consideration of such a matter; and I might not have alluded to it, had not I found the regular street-buyers fond of expressing an opinion of the indifferent honesty of this body of traders; but my readers may have remarked how readily the street-people have, on several occasions, justified (as they seem to think) their own delinquencies by quoting what they declared were as great and as frequent delinquencies on the part of shopkeepers: “I know very well,” said an intelligent street-seller on one occasion, “that two wrongs can never make a right; but tricks that shopkeepers practise to grow rich upon we must practise, just as they do, to live at all. As long as they give short weight and short measure, the streets can’t help doing the same.”

The _rag-and-bottle_ and the _marine-store shops_ are in many instances but different names for the same description of business. The chief distinction appears to be this: the marine-store shopkeepers (proper) do not meddle with what is a very principal object of traffic with the rag-and-bottle man, the purchase of dripping, as well as of every kind of refuse in the way of fat or grease. The marine-store man, too, is more miscellaneous in his wares than his contemporary of the rag-and-bottle-store, as the former will purchase any of the smaller articles of household furniture, old tea-caddies, knife-boxes, fire-irons, books, pictures, draughts and backgammon boards, bird-cages, Dutch clocks, cups and saucers, tools and brushes. The-rag-and-bottle tradesman will readily purchase any of these things to be disposed of as old metal or waste-paper, but his brother tradesman buys them to be re-sold and re-used for the purposes for which they were originally manufactured. When furniture, however, is the staple of one of these second-hand storehouses, the proprietor is a furniture-broker, and not a marine-store dealer. If, again, the dealer in these stores confine his business to the purchase of old metals, for instance, he is classed as an old metal dealer, collecting it or buying it of collectors, for sale to iron-founders, coppersmiths, brass-founders, and plumbers. In perhaps the majority of instances there is little or no distinction between the establishments I have spoken of. The _dolly_ business is common to both, but most common to the marine-store dealer, and of it I shall speak afterwards.

These shops are exceedingly numerous. Perhaps in the poorer and smaller streets they are more numerous even than the chandlers’ or the beer-sellers’ places. At the corner of a small street, both in town and the nearer suburbs, will frequently be found the chandler’s shop, for the sale of small quantities of cheese, bacon, groceries, &c., to the poor. Lower down may be seen the beer-seller’s; and in the same street there is certain to be one rag-and-bottle or marine-store shop, very often two, and not unfrequently another in some adjacent court.

I was referred to the owner of a marine-store shop, as to a respectable man, keeping a store of the best class. Here the counter, or table, or whatever it is to be called, for it was somewhat nondescript, by an ingenious contrivance could be pushed out into the street, so that in bad weather the goods which were at other times exposed in the street could be drawn inside without trouble. The glass frames of the window were removable, and were placed on one side in the shop, for in the summer an open casement seemed to be preferred. This is one of the remaining old trade customs still seen in London; for previously to the great fire in 1666, and the subsequent rebuilding of the city, shops with open casements, and protected from the weather by overhanging eaves, or by a sloping wooden roof, were general.

The house I visited was an old one, and abounded in closets and recesses. The fire-place, which apparently had been large, was removed, and the space was occupied with a mass of old iron of every kind; all this was destined for the furnace of the iron-founder, wrought iron being preferred for several of the requirements of that trade. A chest or range of very old drawers, with defaced or worn-out labels--once a grocer’s or a chemist’s--was stuffed, in every drawer, with old horse-shoe nails (valuable for steel manufacturers), and horse and donkey shoes; brass knobs; glass stoppers; small bottles (among them a number of the cheap cast “hartshorn bottles”); broken pieces of brass and copper; small tools (such as shoemakers’ and harness-makers’ awls), punches, gimlets, plane-irons, hammer heads, &c.; odd dominoes, dice, and backgammon-men; lock escutcheons, keys, and the smaller sort of locks, especially padlocks; in fine, any small thing which could be stowed away in such a place.

In one corner of the shop had been thrown, the evening before, a mass of old iron, then just bought. It consisted of a number of screws of different lengths and substance; of broken bars and rails; of the odds and ends of the cogged wheels of machinery, broken up or worn out; of odd-looking spikes, and rings, and links; all heaped together and scarcely distinguishable. These things had all to be assorted; some to be sold for re-use in their then form; the others to be sold that they might be melted and cast into other forms. The floor was intricate with hampers of bottles; heaps of old boots and shoes; old desks and work-boxes; pictures (all modern) with and without frames; waste-paper, the most of it of quarto, and some larger sized, soiled or torn, and strung closely together in weights of from 2 to 7 lbs.; and a fire-proof safe, stuffed with old fringes, tassels, and other upholstery goods, worn and discoloured. The miscellaneous wares were carried out into the street, and ranged by the door-posts as well as in front of the house. In some small out-houses in the yard were piles of old iron and tin pans, and of the broken or separate parts of harness.

From the proprietor of this establishment I had the following account:--

“I’ve been in the business more than a dozen years. Before that, I was an auctioneer’s, and then a furniture broker’s, porter. I wasn’t brought up to any regular trade, but just to jobbing about, and a bad trade it is, as all trades is that ain’t regular employ for a man. I had some money when my father died--he kept a chandler’s shop--and I bought a marine.” [An elliptical form of speech among these traders.] “I gave 10_l._ for the stock, and 5_l._ for entrance and good-will, and agreed to pay what rents and rates was due. It was a smallish stock then, for the business had been neglected, but I have no reason to be sorry for my bargain, though it might have been better. There’s lots taken in about good-wills, but perhaps not so many in my way of business, because we’re rather ‘fly to a dodge.’ It’s a confined sort of life, but there’s no help for that. Why, as to my way of trade, you’d be surprised, what different sorts of people come to my shop. I don’t mean the regular hands; but the chance comers. I’ve had men dressed like gentlemen--and no doubt they was respectable when they was sober--bring two or three books, or a nice cigar case, or anythink that don’t show in their pockets, and say, when as drunk as blazes, ‘Give me what you can for this; I want it sold for a particular purpose.’ That

## particular purpose was more drink, I should say; and I’ve known the

same men come back in less than a week, and buy what they’d sold me at a little extra, and be glad if I had it by me still. O, we sees a deal of things in this way of life. Yes, poor people run to such as me. I’ve known them come with such things as teapots, and old hair mattresses, and flock beds, and _then_ I’m sure they’re hard up--reduced for a meal. I don’t like buying big things like mattresses, though I do purchase ’em sometimes. Some of these sellers are as keen as Jews at a bargain; others seem only anxious to get rid of the things and have hold of some bit of money anyhow. Yes, sir, I’ve known their hands tremble to receive the money, and mostly the women’s. They haven’t been used to it, I know, when that’s the case. Perhaps they comes to sell to me what the pawns won’t take in, and what they wouldn’t like to be seen selling to any of the men that goes about buying things in the street.

“Why, I’ve bought everythink; at sales by auction there’s often ‘lots’ made up of different things, and they goes for very little. I buy of people, too, that come to me, and of the regular hands that supply such shops as mine. I sell retail, and I sell to hawkers. I sell to anybody, for gentlemen’ll come into my shop to buy anythink that’s took their fancy in passing. Yes, I’ve bought old oil paintings. I’ve heard of some being bought by people in my way as have turned out stunners, and was sold for a hundred pounds or more, and cost, perhaps, half-a-crown or only a shilling. I never experienced such a thing myself. There’s a good deal of gammon about it. Well, it’s hardly possible to say anything about a scale of prices. I give 2_d._ for an old tin or metal teapot, or an old saucepan, and sometimes, two days after I’ve bought such a thing, I’ve sold it for 3_d._ to the man or woman I’ve bought it of. I’ll sell cheaper to them than to anybody else, because they come to me in two ways--both as sellers and buyers. For pictures I’ve given from 3_d._ to 1_s._ I fancy they’re among the last things some sorts of poor people, which is a bit fanciful, parts with. I’ve bought them of hawkers, but often I refuse them, as they’ve given more than I could get. Pictures requires a judge. Some brought to me was published by newspapers and them sort of people. Waste-paper I buy as it comes. I can’t read very much, and don’t understand about books. I take the backs off and weighs them, and gives 1_d._, and 1-1/2_d._, and 2_d._ a pound, and there’s an end. I sell them at about 1/4_d._ a pound profit, or sometimes less, to men as we calls ‘waste’ men. It’s a poor part of our business, but the books and paper takes up little room, and then it’s clean and can be stowed anywhere, and is a sure sale. Well, the people as sells ‘waste’ to me is not such as can read, I think; I don’t know what they is; perhaps they’re such as obtains possession of the books and what-not after the death of old folks, and gets them out of the way as quick as they can. I know nothink about what they are. Last week, a man in black--he didn’t seem rich--came into my shop and looked at some old books, and said ‘Have you any black lead?’ He didn’t speak plain, and I could hardly catch him. I said, ‘No, sir, I don’t sell black lead, but you’ll get it at No. 27,’ but he answered, ‘Not black lead, but black letter,’ speaking very pointed. I said, ‘No,’ and I haven’t a notion what he meant.

“Metal (copper) that I give 5_d._ or 5-1/2_d._ for, I can sell to the merchants from 6-1/2_d._ to 8_d._ the pound. It’s no great trade, for they’ll often throw things out of the lot and say they’re not metal. Sometimes, it would hardly be a farthing in a shilling, if it war’n’t for the draught in the scales. When we buys metal, we don’t notice the quarters of the pounds; all under a quarter goes for nothink. When we buys iron, all under half pounds counts nothink. So when we buys by the pound, and sells by the hundredweight, there’s a little help from this, which we calls the draught.

“Glass bottles of all qualities I buys at three for a halfpenny, and sometimes four, up to 2_d._ a-piece for ‘good stouts’ (bottled-porter vessels), but very seldom indeed 2_d._, unless it’s something very prime and big like the old quarts (quart bottles). I seldom meddles with decanters. It’s very few decanters as is offered to me, either little or big, and I’m shy of them when they are. There’s such a change in glass. Them as buys in the streets brings me next to nothing now to buy; they both brought and bought a lot ten year back and later. I never was in the street-trade in second-hand, but it’s not what it was. I sell in the streets, when I put things outside, and know all about the trade.