Chapter 20
of the street buyers of waste paper beyond all others the street purchase of waste paper is the most curious of any in the hands of the class i now treat of some may have formed the notion that waste paper is merely that which is soiled or torn or old numbers of newspapers or other periodical publications, but this is merely a portion of the trade, as the subsequent account will show. The men engaged in this business have not unfrequently an apartment
or a large closet or recess for the reception of their purchases of paper. They collect their paper street by street, calling upon every publisher, coffee shopkeeper, printer or publican, who may be a seller of waste. I heard the refuse paper called nothing but waste, after the general elliptical fashion.
Attorneys' offices are often visited by these buyers, as are the offices of public men, such as tax or rate collectors generally. One man told me that until about ten years ago, and while he was a youth, He was employed by a relation in the trade to carry out waste paper, sold to or ordered by cheesemongers, and so on, but that he never collected or bought paper himself. At last he thought he would start on his own account, and the first person he called upon, he said, was a rich landlady, not far from Hungerford Market, whom he saw sometimes at her bar, and who was always very civil.
He took an opportunity to ask her if she happened to have any waste in the house, or would have any in a week or so. Seeing the landlady look surprised, and not very well pleased, at what certainly appeared an impertinent inquiry, he hastened to explain that he meant old newspapers, or anything that way,
which he would be glad to buy at so much a pound. The landlady, however, took in but one daily and one weekly paper, both sent into the country when a day or so old, and having had no dealings with men of my informant's avocation, could not understand his object in putting such questions.
Every kind of paper is purchased by the waste men. One of these dealers said to me, I've often in my time cleared out a lawyer's office. I've bought old briefs and other law papers, and forms that weren't the regular forms then,
and any damned thing they had in my line. You'll excuse me, sir, but I couldn't help thinking what a lot of misery was caused, perhaps, by the hundredweights of waste I've bought at such places. If my father hadn't got mixed up with law,
he wouldn't have been ruined, and his children wouldn't have had such a hard fight of it. So I hate law. All that happened when I was a child, and I never understood the rights or the wrongs of it,
and don't like to think of people that's so foolish. I gave a penny-haet-ney a pound for all I bought at the lawyers, and done pretty well with it, but very likely that's the only good turn such paper ever did anyone, unless it were the lawyers themselves. The waste dealers do not confine their purchases, to the tradesmen I have mentioned. They buy of anyone, and sometimes act as middlemen or brokers. For instance, many small stationers
or news vendors, sometimes tobacconists in no extensive way of trade, sometimes chandlers, announce by a bill in their windows, waste paper bought and sold in any quantity. While more frequently, perhaps, the trade is carried on as an understood part of these small shopmen's business, without any announcement. Thus, the shopkeepers have such miscellaneous waste brought to them, and perhaps for only some particular kind have they a demand by their retail customers.
The regular itinerant waste dealer then calls and clears out everything, the everything being not an unmeaning word. One man, who did largely in waste, at my request endeavoured to enumerate all the kinds of paper he had purchased as waste, and the packages of paper he showed me, ready for delivery to his customers on the following day,
confirmed all he said as he opened them and showed me of what they were composed. He had dealt, he said, and he took great pains and great interest in the inquiry, as one very curious and was a respectable and intelligent man, in books on every subject, I give his own words, on which a book can be written. After a little consideration he added,
Well, perhaps every subject is a wide range. But if there are any exceptions, it's on subjects not known to a busy man like me, who is occupied from morning till night every weekday. The only worldly labour I do on a Sunday is to take my family's dinner to the bakehouse, bring it home after chapel, and read Lloyd's Weekly.
I've had Bibles. The backs are taken off in the waste trade, or it wouldn't be fair weight. Testaments, prayer books, companions to the altar, and sermons and religious works. Yes, I've had the Roman Catholic books, as is used in their public worship. At least so, I suppose, for I never was in a Roman Catholic chapel.
Well, it's hard to say about proportions, but in my opinion, as far as it's good for anything, I've not had them in anything like the proportion that I've had prayer books and Watson Wesley's hymns. More shame. But you see, sir, perhaps a godly old man dies, and those that follow him care nothing for hymn-books,
and so they come to such as me, for they're so cheap now, they're not to be sold second-hand at all, I fancy. I've dealt in tragedies and comedies, old and new, cut and uncut.
They're best uncut, for you can make them into sheets then, and farces and books of the opera. I've had scientific and medical works of every possible kind, and histories and travels and lives and memoirs. I needn't go through them, everything from a needle to an anchor, as the saying is.
Poetry, aye, many a hundredweight. Latin and Greek, sometimes. And French and other foreign languages. Well now, sir, as you mention it, I think I never did have a Hebrew work. I think not, and I know the Hebrew letters when I see them.
Black letter, not once in a couple of years. no, nor in three or four years when I think of it. I have met with it, but I always take anything I've got that way to Mr. Blank, the bookseller, who uses a poor man well. Don't you think, sir, I am complaining of poverty,
though I have been very poor when I was recovering from cholera at the first break out of it, and I'm anything but rich now. Pamphlets I've had by the ton in my time. I think we should both be tired if I could go through all they were about. Very many were religious, more's the pity.
I've heard of a page round a quarter of cheese, though, touching a man's heart. In corroboration of my informant statement, I may mention that in the course of my inquiry into the conditions of the fancy cabinet-makers of the metropolis, one elderly and very intelligent man, a first-rate artisan in skill, told me he had been so reduced in the world by the underselling of slopmasters, called butchers or slaughterers by the workmen in the trade, that though in his youth he could take in the news and examiner papers, each he believed
ninepence at that time, but was not certain, he could afford and enjoyed no reading when I saw him last autumn, beyond the book leaves in which he received his quarter of cheese, his small piece of bacon or fresh meat, or his savaloys, and his wife schemed to go to the shops who wrapped up their things from books, in order that he might have something to read after his day's work. My informant went on with his specification. Missionary papers of all kinds, parliamentary
papers, but not so often new ones very largely, railway prospectuses, with plans to some of them, nice engravings, and the same with other joint stock companies, children's copy books and ciphering books, old account books of every kind. A good many years ago I had some that must have belonged to a West End perfumer. There was such French items for Lady this or the Honourable Captain that. I remember there was an Honourable Captain G, and almost at every second page was
one hundred toothpicks, three shillings and sixpence. I think it was three shillings and sixpence. In arranging this sort of waste, one now and then gives a glance to it. Dictionaries of every sort I've had, but not so commonly. Music books, lots of them. Manuscripts, but only if they're rather old. Well, twenty or thirty years or so, I call that old. Letters on every possible subject, but not in my experience any very modern ones. An old man dies, you see, and his papers are
sold off, letters and all. That's the way, get rid of all the old rubbish as soon as the old boy's pointing his toes to the sky. What's old letters worth when the writers are dead and buried? Why, perhaps a penny-hape-ne-a-pound, and it's a rattling big letter that will weigh half an ounce. Oh, it's a queer trade, but there's many worse. The letters which I saw in another waste-dealer's possession were forty-five in number,
a small collection, I was told. For the most part, they were very dull and commonplace. Among them, however, was the following, in an elegant, and I presume a female, hand, but not in the modern, fashionable style of handwriting. The letter is evidently old. The address is of West End gentility, but I leave out name and other particularities.
Mrs. Blank. Note, it is not easy to judge whether the flourished letters are Mrs. or Miss, but certainly more like Mrs. End note. Mrs. Blank, zoological artist, presents her compliments to Mr. Blank, and being commissioned to communicate with a gentleman of the name recently arrived at charing cross and presumed by description to be himself in a matter of delicacy and confidence
indispensably verbal begs to say that if interested in the enclarcissement and necessary to the same she may be found in attendance any afternoon of the current week from three to six o'clock and no other hours blank street blank square monday morn for the afternoon at home among the books destined to a butcher i found three perfect numbers of a sixpenny periodical published a few years back three or rather two and a half numbers of a shilling periodical with coloured engravings of the fashions two imperfect volumes of french plays an excellent edition among the plays were atelier iphigénie phedre les frères ennemis alexandre andromaque les plaidours and esther a music sheet headed a lonely thing i would not be a few pages of what seems to have been a book of tales album d'un
thirty six pages in the pamphlet form quite new all these constituted about tupenieworth to the butcher notwithstanding the variety of sources from which the supplies derived i heard from several quarters that waste never was so scarce as at present it was hardly to be had at all the purchasers of the waste paper from the collectors are cheesemongers buttermen butchers fishmongers poultrers pork and sausage sellers sweet-stuff sellers tobacconists chandlers and indeed all who sell provisions or such luxuries as i have mentioned in retail some of the wholesale provision houses buy very largely and sell the waste again to their customers who pay more for it by such a medium of purchase but they have it thus on credit any retail trader in provisions at all in a large way will readily buy six or seven hundredweight at a time the price given by them varies from a penny farthing to a threepence halfpenny the pound but it is very rarely either so low or so high the average price may be taken at eighteen shillings the hundredweight which is not quite tuppence a pound and at this rate i learn from the best informed parties there are twelve tons sold weekly or one thousand six hundred and twenty four tons yearly
one million three hundred and ninety seven thousand seven hundred and sixty pounds at the cost of eleven thousand two hundred and thirty two pounds one man in the trade was confident the value of the waste paper sold could not be less than twelve thousand pounds in a year there are about sixty men in this trade nearly fifty of whom live entirely as it was described to me by their waste and bring up their families upon it. The others unite some other avocation with it. The earnings of the regular collectors vary from 15 shillings weekly to 35 shillings, accordingly as they meet with a supply on favourable terms, or as they call it,
a good pool in a lot of waste. They usually reside in a private room with a recess, or a second room, in which they sort, pack and keep their paper. One of these traders told me that he was satisfied that stolen paper seldom found its way directly into the collector's hands, particularly publisher's paper, he added. Why, not long since, there was a lot of sheets stolen from Alderman Kelly's warehouse, and the thief didn't take them to a waste dealer. He knew better.
he took them sir to a tradesman in a large respectable way over the water a man that uses great lots of waste and sold them at just what was handed to him i suppose no questions asked the thief was tried and convicted but nothing was done to the buyer it must not be supposed that the waste paper used by the london tradesmen costs no more than twelve thousand pounds in a year a large quantity is bought direct by butchers and others from poor persons going to them with a small quantity of their own accumulating or with such things as copy-books of the street buyers of umbrellas and parasols the street traders in old umbrellas and parasols are numerous but the buying is but one part and the least skilled part of the business men some tolerably well dressed some swarthy-looking like gipsies and some with a vagabond aspect may be seen in all quarters of the town and suburbs carrying a few ragged-looking umbrellas or the sticks or ribs of umbrellas under their arms and crying umbrellas to mend or any old umbrellas to sell the traffickers in umbrellas are also the crockmen who are always glad to obtain them in barter and who merely dispose of them at the old clothes exchange or in petticoat lane
the umbrella menders are known by an appellation of an appropriateness not uncommon in street language they are mushroom fakers the form of the expanded umbrella resembles that of a mushroom and it has the further characteristic of being rapidly or suddenly raised the mushroom itself springing up and attaining its full size in a very brief space of time the term however like all street or popular terms or phrases has become very generally condensed among those who carry on the trade they are now mushfakers a word which to any one who has not heard the term in full is as meaningless as any in the vocabulary of slang the mushroom fakers will repair any umbrella on the owner's premises and their work is often done adroitly i am informed and as often bunglingly or in the trade term botched so far there is no traffic in the business the mushroom seller simply performing a piece of handicraft and being paid for the job but there is another class of street folk who buy the old umbrellas in petticoat lane
or of the street buyer or collector and sometimes as one of these men said to me we are our own buyers on a round they mend the umbrellas some of their wives i am assured being adepts as well as themselves and offer them for sale on the approaches to the bridges and at the corners of streets the street umbrella trade is really curious not so very many years back the use of an umbrella by a man was regarded as partaking of effeminacy but now they are sold in thousands in the streets and in the second-hand shops of monmouth street and such places one of these street traders told me that he had lately sold but not to an extent which might encourage him to proceed old silk umbrellas in the street for gentlemen to protect themselves from the rays of the sun the purchase of umbrellas is in a great degree mixed up with that of old clothes of which i have soon to treat but from what i have stated it is evident that the umbrella trade is most connected with street artisanship and under that head i shall describe it end of section twenty
