Sketch of a 1900s rag and bone man pinned with a note
from my mother saying it reminded her of her childhood.
This page spans a wide range of dates, but is inspired by the sketch on the
right from the early 1900s and the photograph below of a rag
and bone cart from the mid-1930s.
Rag and bone cart, about 1935. Photo courtesy of Deborah Betteridge
The cart is in front of the family's premises in Clyde Road Tottenham.
The boy in the middle was Deborah's father Leon 'Sam' Betteridge,and
the woman is Winifred Saville / Betteridge.
Probably the only difference over the years
would have been the clothes that people were wearing. I am sure that my mother
must have seen something similar along with other
street scenes in the early years
of the 20th century, as the rag and bone man travelled the streets with his horse and cart
ringing a brass hand-bell and shouting out "Bones!" and "Any old iron!".
THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME 'RAG AND BONE MAN'
Rag
Rag was any form of clothing. As this was before the days of synthetic yarn such as
nylon, most cloths were either cotton or wool.
There was a vast market for the rags. Some of
its uses included carpet underlay, mattress stuffing, and seating in
trains and buses.
Bone
Bone was animal bone. As this was before the days of
plastics, buttons on clothes were either bone or rubber. Also before
World War Two most people bought meat on the bone such as a leg or
shoulder of lamb, or a cut of leg of beef. The meat was roasted and fed
the family for two or three days. Then the bones were boiled clean in a
saucepan for soup, and then saved for the rag and bone man.
The market for the bones was for fertilizer. It was burnt into a powder and
sold as bone meal. The origin of the word bonfire is 'bone fire'.
Peter Johnson
HOW THE RAG AND BONE MAN OPERATED BEFORE THE SECOND
WORLD WAR
The rag and bone man would cover a district about once a week.
So anything we thought he would take was put to one side for him. These
were days of extreme hardship for many people. Nothing was wasted or
thrown away.
He took anything that he could sell on: old metal
for scrap; rabbit skins for trimmings on coats and gloves; empty glass
jars for use in jam and pickled onion factories. He played an important role of taking away unwanted material.
We always referred to rag and bone men as Totters. Where this name came from have no idea.
The advantage of rag and bone men over
dustmen was two-fold. They would take away large items and we got paid.
The payment was not necessarily in money and never large. Sometimes it
was sweets. I can even remember being paid with a goldfish and day-old
chicks.
Peter Johnson
When the rag and bone man came to our street, Bulwer Road,
in Edmonton. the horse would stop and wait to see if any house holder appeared. We would take the horse some lumps of sugar.
Over the years we got to know the man and his horse very well, Sometimes if the weather was hot
the man would hand my mother his bucket which she would fill with water.
We would stand and watch as the horse gulped it down. If the man was
thirsty he would dip his mug into the same bucket.
Peter Johnson
THE DEMISE OF RAG AND BONE MEN
At the outbreak of war most of the younger
rag and bone men were called up to serve in the armed forces and
the older men transferred to work elsewhere for the war effort.
There was what was called the National War Effort where everybody was asked to donate glass, iron, aluminium, glass, old clothing and paper,
as resources for fighting the war. We were asked to take whatever we had to a designated area at the end of the road where
great heaps accumulated. This was donated for free and collected by
designated contractors.
After the war rag and bone man did re-appear
briefly, mainly using vans, although some clung to their horses. One only has to watch a box set of DVDs of Steptoe and Son to get a flavour of how they survived. Harold like his father had served in the army, but returned to the streets of London. Their old yards where the horses were stabled and they stockpiled their scrap materials
had been taken over for housing.
Today we have Council rubbish tips and car boot
sales to take all unwanted household articles, a service that rag and
bone men had provided for hundreds of years.
