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.