Dogs’-dung is called “Pure,” from its cleansing and purifying
properties.
The name of “Pure-finders,” however, has been applied to the men
engaged in collecting dogs’-dung from the public streets only, within
the last 20 or 30 years. Previous to this period there appears to
have been no men engaged in the business, old women alone gathered
the substance, and they were known by the name of “bunters,” which
signifies properly gatherers of rags; and thus plainly intimates that
the rag-gatherers originally added the collecting of “Pure” to their
original and proper vocation. Hence it appears that the bone-grubbers,
rag-gatherers, and pure-finders, constituted formerly but one
class of people, and even now they have, as I have stated, kindred
characteristics.
The pure-finders meet with a ready market for all the dogs’-dung they
are able to collect, at the numerous tanyards in Bermondsey, where
they sell it by the stable-bucket full, and get from 8_d._ to 10_d._
per bucket, and sometimes 1_s._ and 1_s._ 2_d._ for it, according to
its quality. The “dry limy-looking sort” fetches the highest price
at some yards, as it is found to possess more of the alkaline, or
purifying properties; but others are found to prefer the dark moist
quality. Strange as it may appear, the preference for a particular kind
has suggested to the finders of Pure the idea of adulterating it to a
very considerable extent; this is effected by means of mortar broken
away from old walls, and mixed up with the whole mass, which it closely
resembles; in some cases, however, the mortar is rolled into small
balls similar to those found. Hence it would appear, that there is no
business or trade, however insignificant or contemptible, without its
own peculiar and appropriate tricks.
The pure-finders are in their habits and mode of proceeding nearly
similar to the bone-grubbers. Many of the pure-finders are, however,
better in circumstances, the men especially, as they earn more money.
They are also, to a certain extent, a better educated class. Some of
the regular collectors of this substance have been mechanics, and
others small tradesmen, who have been reduced. Those pure-finders who
have “a good connection,” and have been granted permission to cleanse
some kennels, obtain a very fair living at the business, earning from
10_s._ to 15_s._ a week. These, however, are very few; the majority
have to seek the article in the streets, and by such means they can
obtain only from 6_s._ to 10_s._ a week. The average weekly earnings of
this class are thought to be about 7_s._ 6_d._
From all the inquiries I have made on this subject, I have found that
there cannot be less than from 200 to 300 persons constantly engaged
solely in this business. There are about 30 tanyards large and small
in Bermondsey, and these all have their regular Pure collectors from
whom they obtain the article. Leomont and Roberts’s, Bavingtons’,
Beech’s, Murrell’s, Cheeseman’s, Powell’s, Jones’s, Jourdans’, Kent’s,
Moorcroft’s, and Davis’s, are among the largest establishments, and
some idea of the amount of business done in some of these yards may
be formed from the fact, that the proprietors severally employ from
300 to 500 tanners. At Leomont and Roberts’s there are 23 regular
street-finders, who supply them with pure, but this is a large
establishment, and the number supplying them is considered far beyond
the average quantity; moreover, Messrs. Leomont and Roberts do more
business in the particular branch of tanning in which the article
is principally used, viz., in dressing the leather for book-covers,
kid-gloves, and a variety of other articles. Some of the other
tanyards, especially the smaller ones, take the substance only as
they happen to want it, and others again employ but a limited number
of hands. If, therefore, we strike an average, and reduce the number
supplying each of the several yards to eight, we shall have 240 persons
regularly engaged in the business: besides these, it may be said that
numbers of the starving and destitute Irish have taken to picking up
the material, but not knowing where to sell it, or how to dispose of
it, they part with it for 2_d._ or 3_d._ the pail-full to the regular
purveyors of it to the tanyards, who of course make a considerable
profit by the transaction. The children of the poor Irish are usually
employed in this manner, but they also pick up rags and bones, and
anything else which may fall in their way.
I have stated that some of the pure-finders, especially the men, earn
a considerable sum of money per week; their gains are sometimes as
much as 15_s._; indeed I am assured that seven years ago, when they
got from 3_s._ to 4_s._ per pail for the pure, that many of them would
not exchange their position with that of the best paid mechanic in
London. Now, however, the case is altered, for there are twenty now at
the business for every one who followed it then; hence each collects
so much the less in quantity, and, moreover, from the competition gets
so much less for the article. Some of the collectors at present do not
earn 3_s._ per week, but these are mostly old women who are feeble and
unable to get over the ground quickly; others make 5_s._ and 6_s._ in
the course of the week, while the most active and those who clean out
the kennels of the dog fanciers may occasionally make 9_s._ and 10_s._
and even 15_s._ a week still, but this is of very rare occurrence.
Allowing the finders, one with the other, to earn on an average 5_s._
per week, it would give the annual earnings of each to be 13_l._,
while the income of the whole 200 would amount to 50_l._ a week, or
2600_l._ per annum. The kennel “pure” is not much valued, indeed many
of the tanners will not even buy it, the reason is that the dogs of
the “fanciers” are fed on almost anything, to save expense; the kennel
cleaners consequently take the precaution of mixing it with what is
found in the street, previous to offering it for sale.
The pure-finder may at once be distinguished from the bone-grubber and
rag-gatherer; the latter, as I have before mentioned, carries a bag,
and usually a stick armed with a spike, while he is most frequently
to be met with in back streets, narrow lanes, yards and other places,
where dust and rubbish are likely to be thrown out from the adjacent
houses. The pure-finder, on the contrary, is often found in the open
streets, as dogs wander where they like. The pure-finders always carry
a handle basket, generally with a cover, to hide the contents, and have
their right hand covered with a black leather glove; many of them,
however, dispense with the glove, as they say it is much easier to wash
their hands than to keep the glove fit for use. The women generally
have a large pocket for the reception of such rags as they may chance
to fall in with, but they pick up those only of the very best quality,
and will not go out of their way to search even for them. Thus equipped
they may be seen pursuing their avocation in almost every street in and
about London, excepting such streets as are now cleansed by the “street
orderlies,” of whom the pure-finders grievously complain, as being an
unwarrantable interference with the privileges of their class.
The pure collected is used by leather-dressers and tanners, and more
especially by those engaged in the manufacture of morocco and kid
leather from the skins of old and young goats, of which skins great
numbers are imported, and of the roans and lambskins which are the
sham morocco and kids of the “slop” leather trade, and are used by the
better class of shoemakers, bookbinders, and glovers, for the inferior
requirements of their business. Pure is also used by tanners, as is
pigeon’s dung, for the tanning of the thinner kinds of leather, such as
calf-skins, for which purpose it is placed in pits with an admixture of
lime and bark.
In the manufacture of moroccos and roans the pure is rubbed by the
hands of the workman into the skin he is dressing. This is done to
“purify” the leather, I was told by an intelligent leather-dresser, and
from that term the word “pure” has originated. The dung has astringent
as well as highly alkaline, or, to use the expression of my informant,
“scouring,” qualities. When the pure has been rubbed into the flesh and
grain of the skin (the “flesh” being originally the interior, and the
“grain” the exterior part of the cuticle), and the skin, thus purified,
has been hung up to be dried, the dung removes, as it were, all such
moisture as, if allowed to remain, would tend to make the leather
unsound or imperfectly dressed. This imperfect dressing, moreover,
gives a disagreeable smell to the leather--and leather-buyers often use
both nose and tongue in making their purchases--and would consequently
prevent that agreeable odour being imparted to the skin which is found
in some kinds of morocco and kid. The peculiar odour of the Russia
leather, so agreeable in the libraries of the rich, is derived from the
bark of young birch trees. It is now manufactured in Bermondsey.
Among the morocco manufacturers, especially among the old operatives,
there is often a scarcity of employment, and they then dress a few
roans, which they hawk to the cheap warehouses, or sell to the
wholesale shoemakers on their own account. These men usually reside in
small garrets in the poorer parts of Bermondsey, and carry on their
trade in their own rooms, using and keeping the pure there; hence
the “homes” of these poor men are peculiarly uncomfortable, if not
unhealthy. Some of these poor fellows or their wives collect the pure
themselves, often starting at daylight for the purpose; they more
frequently, however, buy it of a regular finder.
The number of pure-finders I heard estimated, by a man well acquainted
with the tanning and other departments of the leather trade, at from
200 to 250. The finders, I was informed by the same person, collected
about a pail-full a day, clearing 6_s._ a week in the summer--1_s._
and 1_s._ 2_d._ being the charge for a pail-full; in the short days
of winter, however, and in bad weather, they could not collect five
pail-fulls in a week.
In the wretched locality already referred to as lying between the Docks
and Rosemary-lane, redolent of filth and pregnant with pestilential
diseases, and whither all the outcasts of the metropolitan population
seem to be drawn, either in the hope of finding fitting associates and
companions in their wretchedness (for there is doubtlessly something
attractive and agreeable to them in such companionship), or else for
the purpose of hiding themselves and their shifts and struggles for
existence from the world,--in this dismal quarter, and branching from
one of the many narrow lanes which interlace it, there is a little
court with about half-a-dozen houses of the very smallest dimensions,
consisting of merely two rooms, one over the other. Here in one of
the upper rooms (the lower one of the same house being occupied by
another family and apparently _filled_ with little ragged children), I
discerned, after considerable difficulty, an old woman, a Pure-finder.
When I opened the door the little light that struggled through the
small window, the many broken panes of which were stuffed with old
rags, was not sufficient to enable me to perceive who or what was in
the room. After a short time, however, I began to make out an old
chair standing near the fire-place, and then to discover a poor old
woman resembling a bundle of rags and filth stretched on some dirty
straw in the corner of the apartment. The place was bare and almost
naked. There was nothing in it except a couple of old tin kettles and a
basket, and some broken crockeryware in the recess of the window. To my
astonishment I found this wretched creature to be, to a certain extent,
a “superior” woman; she could read and write well, spoke correctly, and
appeared to have been a person of natural good sense, though broken up
with age, want, and infirmity, so that she was characterized by all
that dull and hardened stupidity of manner which I have noticed in the
class. She made the following statement:--
“I am about 60 years of age. My father was a milkman, and very well
off; he had a barn and a great many cows. I was kept at school till I
was thirteen or fourteen years of age; about that time my father died,
and then I was taken home to help my mother in the business. After a
while things went wrong; the cows began to die, and mother, alleging
she could not manage the business herself, married again. I soon found
out the difference. Glad to get away, anywhere out of the house, I
married a sailor, and was very comfortable with him for some years; as
he made short voyages, and was often at home, and always left me half
his pay. At last he was pressed, when at home with me, and sent away;
I forget now where he was sent to, but I never saw him from that day
to this. The only thing I know is that some sailors came to me four
or five years after, and told me that he deserted from the ship in
which he had gone out, and got on board the _Neptune_, East Indiaman,
bound for Bombay, where he acted as boatswain’s mate; some little time
afterwards, he had got intoxicated while the ship was lying in harbour,
and, going down the side to get into a bumboat, and buy more drink,
he had fallen overboard and was drowned. I got some money that was
due to him from the India House, and, after that was all gone, I went
into service, in the Mile-end Road. There I stayed for several years,
till I met my second husband, who was bred to the water, too, but as a
waterman on the river. We did very well together for a long time, till
he lost his health. He became paralyzed like, and was deprived of the
use of all one side, and nearly lost the sight of one of his eyes; this
was not very conspicuous at first, but when we came to get pinched, and
to be badly off, then any one might have seen that there was something
the matter with his eye. Then we parted with everything we had in the
world; and, at last, when we had no other means of living left, we
were advised to take to gathering ‘Pure.’ At first I couldn’t endure
the business; I couldn’t bear to eat a morsel, and I was obliged to
discontinue it for a long time. My husband kept at it though, for he
could do _that_ well enough, only he couldn’t walk as fast as he ought.
He couldn’t lift his hands as high as his head, but he managed to work
under him, and so put the Pure in the basket. When I saw that he, poor
fellow, couldn’t make enough to keep us both, I took heart and went out
again, and used to gather more than he did; that’s fifteen years ago
now; the times were good then, and we used to do very well. If we only
gathered a pail-full in the day, we could live very well; but we could
do much more than that, for there wasn’t near so many at the business
then, and the Pure was easier to be had. For my part I can’t tell where
all the poor creatures have come from of late years; the world seems
growing worse and worse every day. They have pulled down the price of
Pure, that’s certain; but the poor things must do something, they can’t
starve while there’s anything to be got. Why, no later than six or
seven years ago, it was as high as 3_s._ 6_d._ and 4_s._ a pail-full,
and a ready sale for as much of it as you could get; but now you can
only get 1_s._ and in some places 1_s._ 2_d._ a pail-full; and, as
I said before, there are so many at it, that there is not much left
for a poor old creature like me to find. The men that are strong and
smart get the most, of course, and some of them do very well, at least
they manage to live. Six years ago, my husband complained that he was
ill, in the evening, and lay down in the bed--we lived in Whitechapel
then--he took a fit of coughing, and was smothered in his own blood. O
dear” (the poor old soul here ejaculated), “what troubles I have gone
through! I had eight children at one time, and there is not one of them
alive now. My daughter lived to 30 years of age, and then she died in
childbirth, and, since then, I have had nobody in the wide world to
care for me--none but myself, all alone as I am. After my husband’s
death I couldn’t do much, and all my things went away, one by one,
until I’ve nothing but bare walls, and that’s the reason why I was
vexed at first at your coming in, sir. I was yesterday out all day, and
went round Aldgate, Whitechapel, St. George’s East, Stepney, Bow, and
Bromley, and then came home; after that, I went over to Bermondsey,
and there I got only 6_d._ for my pains. To-day I wasn’t out at all;
I wasn’t well; I had a bad headache, and I’m so much afraid of the
fevers that are all about here--though I don’t know why I should be
afraid of them--I was lying down, when you came, to get rid of my
pains. There’s such a dizziness in my head now, I feel as if it didn’t
belong to me. No, I have earned no money to-day. I have had a piece
of dried bread that I steeped in water to eat. I haven’t eat anything
else to-day; but, pray, sir, don’t tell anybody of it. I could never
bear the thought of going into the ‘great house’ [workhouse]; I’m so
used to the air, that I’d sooner die in the street, as many I know have
done. I’ve known several of our people, who have sat down in the street
with their basket alongside them, and died. I knew one not long ago,
who took ill just as she was stooping down to gather up the Pure, and
fell on her face; she was taken to the London Hospital, and died at
three o’clock in the morning. I’d sooner die like them than be deprived
of my liberty, and be prevented from going about where I liked. No,
I’ll never go into the workhouse; my master is kind to me” [the tanner
whom she supplies]. “When I’m ill, he sometimes gives me a sixpence;
but there’s one gentleman has done us great harm, by forcing so many
into the business. He’s a poor-law guardian, and when any poor person
applies for relief, he tells them to go and gather Pure, and that
he’ll buy it of them (for he’s in the line), and so the parish, you
see, don’t have to give anything, and that’s one way that so many have
come into the trade of late, that the likes of me can do little or no
good at it. Almost every one I’ve ever known engaged at Pure-finding
were people who were better off once. I knew a man who went by the
name of Brown, who picked up Pure for years before I went to it; he
was a very quiet man; he used to lodge in Blue Anchor-yard, and seldom
used to speak to anybody. We two used to talk together sometimes,
but never much. One morning he was found dead in his bed; it was of
a Tuesday morning, and he was buried about 12 o’clock on the Friday
following. About 6 o’clock on that afternoon, three or four gentlemen
came searching all through this place, looking for a man named Brown,
and offering a reward to any who would find him out; there was a whole
crowd about them when I came up. One of the gentlemen said that the man
they wanted had lost the first finger of his right hand, and then I
knew that it was the man that had been buried only that morning. Would
you believe it, Mr. Brown was a real gentleman all the time, and had a
large estate, of I don’t know how many thousand pounds, just left him,
and the lawyers had advertised and searched everywhere for him, but
never found him, you may say, till he was dead. We discovered that his
name was not Brown; he had only taken that name to hide his real one,
which, of course, he did not want any one to know. I’ve often thought
of him, poor man, and all the misery he might have been spared, if the
good news had only come a year or two sooner.”
Another informant, a Pure-collector, was originally in the Manchester
cotton trade, and held a lucrative situation in a large country
establishment. His salary one year exceeded 250_l._, and his regular
income was 150_l._ “This,” he says, “I lost through drink and neglect.
My master was exceedingly kind to me, and has even assisted me since I
left his employ. He bore with me patiently for many years, but the love
of drink was so strong upon me that it was impossible for him to keep
me any longer.” He has often been drunk, he tells me, for three months
together; and he is now so reduced that he is ashamed to be seen. When
at his master’s it was his duty to carve and help the other assistants
belonging to the establishment, and his hand used to shake so violently
that he has been ashamed to lift the gravy spoon.
At breakfast he has frequently waited till all the young men had left
the table before he ventured to taste his tea; and immediately, when he
was alone, he has bent his head down to his cup to drink, being utterly
incapable of raising it to his lips. He says he is a living example of
the degrading influence of drink. All his friends have deserted him. He
has suffered enough, he tells me, to make him give it up. He earned the
week before I saw him 5_s._ 2_d._; and the week before that, 6_s._
Before leaving me I prevailed upon the man to “take the pledge.” This
is now eighteen months ago, and I have not seen him since.