The skip ……. a man with a van …… and tales of recycling ….. with a nod to the dustman, shore man and sewer hunters

 There is a lot to be said for the recycling man with his van.

I say man, but there is more than one, and as like as not it will be a woman.

Some come quietly in the early morning while others will announce their presence with a loudspeaker alternating between bursts of music and the cry, “fridges, old boilers, pipes and assorted scrap”.

For those like me who were born in the first half of the last century, it brings back memories of the Rag and Bone Man who travelled the streets with a horse and cart and called for “any old iron” or whatever took his fancy.

Then like now it was a one-way trade in which you disposed of the goods, which he accepted and later would sort out and sell on.

As a form of recycling, it worked and does so again.

So early yesterday morning the man with the van stopped outside Sidney the skip, rooted round, picking out a sink and a couple of kitchen cupboards.

Being a discerning sort of chap, there were items he discarded having first pulled them out, inspected them before throwing them back.

Nor will he have been alone.  One skip close to us was visited three times one morning, with a different team calling the following day, when the skip was again almost full.

Now none of this is new, and a quick flick through the past will reveal the extent to which people of the mid-19th century made an even more precarious living from other people’s rubbish.

They were on the margins of poverty and garnered an income from sifting through the left behinds.

So, my Mayhew* written in the first half of the 19th century picked over occupations like the dustman, shore man and sewer hunters, all of whom found value in the valueless.

Shore workers worked the sewers, in “gangs of three and four for the sake of company, and in order to better defend themselves from the rats …… [finding] great quantities of money – of copper money especially; sometimes they dive their arm down to the elbow in the mud and filth and bring up shillings, sixpences, half crowns and sovereigns. **

Even more central to London life were the dustmen who carted away the dust and ash from the capital’s homes.  

Mayhew estimated that the consumption of coal in the metropolis was, 3,500,000 tons per annum which in turn created a vast mountain of ash and cinders, and as ever where there was muck there was money. 

Like everywhere that money was made by a handful of contractors while the dirty work fell to those they employed.

These men carried the ash to the dust yards where an army of labourer’s sifted through the rubbish which threw up oyster shells, old bricks, old boots and shoes, old ten kettles, as well as old rags and bones.  None of which could be recycled into brick making but ended up as hard core for new buildings or new roads.

While old shoes were sold to London shoemakers who used them to stuff between the in-sole and the outer one, leaving the rags and bones to be disposed of at the marine-store shops. ***

It is a story which is worth a deeper study, but for now I think I will just reflect that the passage of 170 or so years has left our man with his van marginally better off.

We shall see.

Location; London 1851, Chorlton, 2021

Pictures; The London Dustman, and View of a Dust Yard, London, 1851, and skips I have known giving up their treasures, Chorlton, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Henry Mayhew, London Labour & the London Poor 1851London Labour & the London Poor 1851

** Mayhew page 330

*** ibid Mayhew page 350

Making litter interesting …… the happy story

Now the idea that discarding rubbish in public places is something new ignores the past.

Making litter fun, 2022

The Keep Britain Tidy Campaign was started in 1955, and pictures of Chorlton including the Rec marred by causally dropped litter are there in the historic record from the 1900s.

So good I took it again, 2022

And I bet there was some one in the Roman city of Pompeii on the eve of its destruction in 79 AD who was motivated to dash off a stern letter to the town council on the growing pile of smelly stuff left by customers of the many street takeaway businesses.

Indeed, if I searched long enough, I could find ordinances from the Egyptian authorities who were constantly clearing up after tourists in the Valley of the Kings.

So, with that in mind here is a bit of happy street furniture seen in the Rec yesterday.

Location; the Rec on Beech Road

 Picture; Making litter fun, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson