Growing up in New Cross nu 3 ........... the knife sharpener

The Rag and bone man, 1953

Now I don’t remember his name, or how often he knocked on, or whether we even used him but the man who worked the streets sharpening knives was a familiar sight around Lausanne Road.

He sharpened the knives using a grinding wheel set in a hand cart which was pedal powered.

The sides were painted green and his name was picked out in black and yellow.

At the time he would have been one of many itinerant tradesmen who called offering everything from fresh fish, to brushes, encyclopedias and subscriptions to well known magazines and newspapers.

And of course there was also the  rag and bone man.

I have no idea how much of a living he made but he was popular with our elderly next door neighbour who always had something for him to make sharp.

I rather think Dad did our own.  He was of that generation who pretty much would repair most simple things, from a bit of re pointing around a chimney stack to cutting and sticking rubber soles to the bottom of our shoes.

All of which was fine until he was working away and the sole began to come unstuck.

Mending clothes, 1930

Never underestimate the embarrassment of walking to school with a flapping sole which threatened to part from the shoe and equally worse those round heel additions which screwed into the shoe and again always seemed to come loose when Dad was somewhere else.


Mending the clothes, 1930
And it was long after we left Peckham that I came across the hoard of lost tools which both mum and dad used.  My parents were after all perhaps the last of “make and mend” generation which always resorted to repairing before buying new.

And for years I followed suit, darning socks on the same tool Nana had used and sewing up holes in the children’s jumpers and joggers.

But things had moved on and neither I nor they really liked repaired clothes.

All of which I suppose explains the final disappearance of the knife man.

Either old age and infirmity or just the consumer economy will have done for him, as did for so many of those that came calling.

Of course I doubt that if was that profitable a trade.

Many of these itinerant salesmen were at the bottom of the economic heap working in an uncertain business where competition was fierce

Rags and rubbish 1971

A quick trawl of the census returns for any of our cities during the 19th and early 20th century reveals just how many of these brush makers, umbrella makers and match girls lived in overcrowded cheap lodging houses with little prospect of anything better.

Not that these trades have gone away.  There are still many who make a living on the margin and tramp the streets following those who came before them.

I have yet to come across the knife man, but we get calls from the fresh fish van, the young men with big bags of dusters and other household goods and of course the eager charity workers.

But it is the rag and bone man who has transformed himself.  Now he appears in a lorry and his street cry replaced by a snatch of music from a loud speaker with a prerecorded message.

So perhaps it is only a matter of time before the knife man reappears, after all one already advertises on the net

None of which gets me knowing any more about that man with his green handcart on Lausanne Road.

But perhaps someone will remember him.

Picture; darning tool circa 1930 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and rag and bone man, Wythenshawe, T Baddeley, August 1953,m44840  and similar cart, Denton, 1971, T Brooks, m59864, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass