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:--