Forgotten London - Rag & Bone Shops

 'It's a poor part of our business, but the books and paper takes up little room, and then it's clean and can be stowed anywhere, and is a sure sale. Well, the people as sells waste to me is not such as can read, I think; I don't know what they is; perhaps they're such as obtains possession of the books and whatnot after the death of old folks, and gets them out of the way as quick as they can. I know nothing about what they are. Last week, a man in black - he didn't look rich - came into my shop and looked at some old books, and said 'have you any black lead?' He didn't speak plain, and I could hardly catch him. I said 'no, sir, I don't sell black lead, but you'll get it at No. 27.' 'Not black lead, but black letter,' speaking very pointed. I said 'No,' and I haven't a notion what he meant.  

From Henry Mayhew, Mayhew's London, edited Peter Quennell, originally 1851, reprinted Spring Books, London.

Steptoe and Son theme

A rag & bone man is someone who collects and sells pretty much every kind of waste product. It all has its uses, and thus its buyers and sellers. The smallest fish in the trade have just their cart; larger rag & bone merchants have yards or shops of their own. 

The version Mayhew describes is, at best, appalling. 'The stench in these shops is positively sickening. Here in a small apartment may be a pile of rags, a sackful of bones, the many varieties of grease and kitchen-stuff, corrupting an atmosphere which, even without such accompaniments, would be too close. The windows are often crowded with bottles, which exclude the light; while the floor and shelves are thick with grease and dirt The inmates seem unconscious of this foulness - and one comparatively wealthy man, who showed me his horses, the stable being like a drawing-room compared to his shop, in speaking of the many deaths of his children, could not conjecture as to what cause it could be owing.' 

There might have been fewer of these in the 1930s than the 1850s, but even so the examples that remain can't have been significantly better. Moreover they last for a remarkably long time, all things considered; people recognized the archetype in Steptoe and Son, and that was a 1970s show.

You could find literally anything in a rag-and-bone, and as the anecdote from Mayhew points out, anything includes books. The seller will have no idea what they have, whether it's worth anything, where it came from.

In broadest terms what we now think of as a charity shop is what a rag-and-bone used to be. They sell anything to anyone. They make no enquiry as to how you got the things you're selling and they don't care who buys what they have. They exist to be a mercantile middleman.

Examples of this can fit into any setting. They'd do well in Cyberpunk, for example; one man's trash is another man's treasure in any setting where resources are scarce and you have to make do. However, from a Keeper's perspective they'd do best in Bookhounds, Trail, Night's Black Agents - any early modern or semi-modern setting where the characters are assumed to be working behind the scenes, in the shadows, to get things done. 

A rag-and-bone is exactly the kind of place the Hounds might pick up some unconsidered trifle. Lord knows where it came from; certainly the rag-and-bone man doesn't know. Nor did he enquire. 

As for locations a rag-and-bone might be in any part of London but is most likely to be found in the poorer parts, so the East End, Isle of Dogs and similar.

All that said:

A Drunkard's Memory

One of the shop's less reliable Scouts turns up with an interesting piece: a broadsheet chapbook of ballads, early 19th century. It's not in perfect shape but, nestled between its sheets, there's a translation of a letter about the Würzburg witch trials of the early 1600s, from a burgher of Würzburg to an unnamed cousin. They describe the trials in great detail. 

If there is a translation it follows there must be an original out there somewhere, and anything to do with the witchcraft persecutions in Würzburg will find a buyer. Question is, where did the Scout pick up their chapbook?

All the drunken sot can remember is they got it from a rag-and-bone shop in North London. They can'r remember which rag-and-bone, but they do think there's more stuff to be had. The rag-and-bone man said he'd picked up the chapbook and a number of other oddments from 'a fellow.' Not that the Scout can remember who.

Some 1-point spends realize that the translation is printed on cheap paper sold in job lots to medical men; it was torn from a prescription book. Most likely it came from someone in the Royal Free Hospital, if whoever had it was based in North London.

A 0-point spend eventually finds the rag-and-bone, though a 1-point spend finds it in time to stop some of the best bits being sold to other buyers.

The rag-and-bone is an unprepossessing little corner shop, Berrycloth & Sons, that's been at that location since the 1870s and looks every bit of its age. According to the owner, Balthazar Berrycloth, (B.B. to his friends), he got it all from the landlady of a medical student who was clearing out the flat after the student's unexpected death.

Options:

• The student isn't dead and will never die. Not unless someone cuts off their head and burns the body to ash. However, the landlady didn't realize this and unloaded all their prize possessions while the body was still at the coroner's awaiting dissection. Now that student wants their stuff back, and B.B. is first on their list of 'people to take vengeance on.' Shortly to be followed by the Hounds.
• The student was a junior member of one of London's cults and was in possession of some very incriminating documents when they died. All those ended up at B.B.'s shop and are now scattered across London - though if the Hounds spent a point then they have the most valuable items. The cult wants its papers back and will stop at nothing to get them.
• Old B.B. knows more than he's telling. The whole thing, from the Scout onwards, is a confidence scam designed specifically to take in the Hounds with some glorious fakes. The Scout is in on the deal. Why do this? Because B.B. is about to make a transition from rag-and-bone to antiquarian dealer and he wants a bit of capital. If the Hounds go out of business due to a Reverse and B.B. gets to buy their stock for a song to open his own store, so much the better ...

That's it for this week. Enjoy!