) In the UK, 19th-century rag-and-bone men scavenged unwanted rags, bones, metal, and other waste from the towns and cities in which they lived.
Henry Mayhew's 1851 report
London Labour and the London Poor estimates that in
London, between 800 and 1,000 "bone-grubbers and rag-gatherers" lived in
lodging houses,
garrets and "ill-furnished rooms in the lowest neighbourhoods." These bone-grubbers, as they were sometimes known, would typically spend nine or ten hours per day searching the streets of London for anything of value, before returning to their lodgings to sort whatever they had found. but in London they sold rag to the local traders. White rag could fetch two to three
pence per
pound, depending on condition (all rag had to be dry before it could be sold). Coloured rag was worth about two pence per pound. Bones, worth about the same,
Brass,
copper and
pewter were valued at about four to five pence per pound. In a typical day, a rag-and-bone man might expect to earn about sixpence. The ragpickers in the 19th and early 20th century did not
recycle the materials themselves. They would simply collect whatever they could find and turn it over to a "master ragpicker" (usually a former ragpicker) who would, in turn, sell it—generally by weight—to wealthy investors with the means to convert the materials into something more profitable. In the West Riding of Yorkshire, rag and bone men would collect waste woollen and rag products from householders to sell on to the Shoddy factories. '
Shoddy', cloth made from recycled wool, was first manufactured (and probably invented) by Benjamin Law in Batley, West Yorkshire, in 1813. The process involved grinding woollen rags into a fibrous mass and mixing this with some fresh wool. Law's nephews later came up with a similar process involving
felt or hard-spun woollen cloth, the product in this case being called '
mungo'. Samuel Parr was the first producer of mungo in 1834. He used old coats and trousers, tailors clippings, ground up to produce shorter fibres than shoddy. In the shoddy preparation process, the rags were sorted, and any seams, or parts of the rag not suitable, were left to rot and then sold on to farmers to manure crops, or they were used for bedding or
stuffing. The remaining wool rags were then sent to the shoddy mills for processing. For several decades shipments of rags even arrived from continental Europe. Shoddy and mungo manufacture was, by the 1860s, a huge industry in West Yorkshire, particularly in and around the
Batley,
Dewsbury and
Ossett areas. Although it was solely a job for the lowest of the
working classes, ragpicking was considered an honest
occupation, more on the level of
street sweeper than of a
beggar. In
Paris, ragpickers were regulated by law and could operate only at night. They were required to return unusually valuable items either to the items' owners or to the authorities. When
Eugène Poubelle introduced the
rubbish bin in 1884, he was criticised by French newspapers for meddling with the ragpickers' livelihood. ==20th century==