There are, strictly speaking, none who make a living by picking up the
ends of cigars thrown away as useless by the smokers in the streets,
but there are very many who employ themselves from time to time in
collecting them. Almost all the street-finders, when they meet with
such things, pick them up, and keep them in a pocket set apart for
that purpose. The men allow the ends to accumulate till they amount to
two or three pounds weight, and then some dispose of them to a person
residing in the neighbourhood of Rosemary-lane, who buys them all
up at from 6_d._ to 10_d._ per pound, according to their length and
quality. The long ends are considered the best, as I am told there is
more sound tobacco in them, uninjured by the moisture of the mouth.
The children of the poor Irish, in particular, scour Ratcliff-highway,
the Commercial-road, Mile-end-road, and all the leading thoroughfares
of the East, and every place where cigar smokers are likely to take an
evening’s promenade. The quantity that each of them collects is very
trifling indeed--perhaps not more than a handful during a morning’s
search. I am informed, by an intelligent man living in the midst of
them, that these children go out in the morning not only to gather
cigar-ends, but to pick up out of dust bins, and from amongst rubbish
in the streets, the smallest scraps and crusts of bread, no matter how
hard or filthy they may be. These they put into a little bag which
they carry for the purpose, and, after they have gone their rounds
and collected whatever they can, they take the cigar-ends to the man
who buys them--sometimes getting not more than a halfpenny or a penny
for their morning’s collection. With this they buy a halfpenny or a
pennyworth of oatmeal, which they mix up with a large quantity of
water, and after washing and steeping the hard and dirty crusts, they
put them into the pot or kettle and boil all together. Of this mass the
whole family partake, and it often constitutes all the food they taste
in the course of the day. I have often seen the bone-grubbers eat the
black and soddened crusts they have picked up out of the gutter.
It would, indeed, be a hopeless task to make any attempt to get at the
number of persons who occasionally or otherwise pick up cigar-ends with
the view of selling them again. For this purpose almost all who ransack
the streets of London for a living may be computed as belonging to
the class; and to these should be added the children of the thousands
of destitute Irish who have inundated the metropolis within the last
few years, and who are to be found huddled together in all the low
neighbourhoods in every suburb of the City. What quantity is collected,
or the amount of money obtained for the ends, there are no means of
ascertaining.
Let us, however, make a conjecture. There are in round numbers
300,000 inhabited houses in the metropolis; and allowing the married
people living in apartments to be equal in number to the unmarried
“housekeepers,” we may compute that the number of families in London
is about the same as the inhabited houses. Assuming one young or old
gentleman in every ten of these families to smoke one cigar per diem in
the public thoroughfares, we have 30,000 cigar-ends daily, or 210,000
weekly cast away in the London streets. Now, reckoning 150 cigars to go
to a pound, we may assume that each end so cast away weighs about the
thousandth part of a pound; consequently the gross weight of the ends
flung into the gutter will, in the course of the week, amount to about
2 cwt.; and calculating that only a sixth part of these are picked up
by the finders, it follows that there is very nearly a ton of refuse
tobacco collected annually in the metropolitan thoroughfares.
The aristocratic quarters of the City and the vicinity of theatres
and casinos are the best for the cigar-end finders. In the Strand,
Regent-street, and the more fashionable thoroughfares, I am told,
there are many ends picked up; but even in these places they do not
exclusively furnish a means of living to any of the finders. All the
collectors sell them to some other person, who acts as middle-man
in the business. How he disposes of the ends is unknown, but it is
supposed that they are resold to some of the large manufacturers of
cigars, and go to form the component part of a new stock of the “best
Havannahs;” or, in other words, they are worked up again to be again
cast away, and again collected by the finders, and so on perhaps, till
the millennium comes. Some suppose them to be cut up and mixed with the
common smoking tobacco, and others that they are used in making snuff.
There are, I am assured, five persons residing in different parts of
London, who are known to purchase the cigar-ends.
In Naples the sale of cigar-ends is a regular street-traffic, the
street-seller carrying them in a small box suspended round the neck.
In Paris, also, _le Remasseur de Cigares_ is a well-known occupation:
the “ends” thus collected are sold as cheap tobacco to the poor. In
the low lodging-houses of London the ends, when dried, are cut up, and
frequently vended by the finders to such of their fellow-lodgers as are
anxious to enjoy their pipe at the cheapest possible rate.