- Rag and bone man
"For the White Stripes song, see
Rag and Bone ."Rag-and-bone man is a British phrase for ajunk dealer. Historically the phrase referred to an individual who would travel the streets of a city with ahorse drawncart , and would collect old rags, (for converting into fabric andpaper ),bone s for makingglue ,scrap iron and other items, often trading them for other items of limited value.They would use a distinctive call to alert householders to their presence. The call was something similar to "rag-and-bone", delivered in a sing-song fashion. Long usage tended to simplify the words, for instance down to "raa-boh", even to the point of incomprehensibility, although the locals clearly could identify who could make the call. This was satirised by the comedian
Marty Feldman in his "Ay-oh frye" sketch, where he played a rag-and-bone man who, when asked, had no idea what his call meant.Collectors and recycling
The rag-and-bone men were an important component of society before automotive transport. Householders had limited ability to travel to collection points, so the various customers for rags, bones, and such materials relied on the rag-and-bone men to supply some of their materials. The increasingly widespread use of cars made these dealers unneeded in many areas.
Just as the
costermonger s and other street-vendors formed the distributive part of the market, the rag-and-bone men supportedrecycling orremanufacturing , depending on one's point of view. They outlasted costermongers, who became settled market vendors when transport improved to the point where the householders could come to the market. Boarding a bus carrying rags or bones was not something the average householder wanted to do, so the rag-and-bone man could still provide a valued service.A
BBC documentary, filmed in the 1950s, followed rag-and-bone men operating in London. One surprise revelation was that old clothes found a lucrative market in countries like India where they were re-sold for wearing.Once the world became more mechanised, some rag-and-bone men traded their horses for a
lorry orpickup truck . Other social changes, such as the tendency for all members of a household to work outside the house, not to mention higher levels of traffic, made casual street-by-street pickup unworkable.Today rag and bone men mostly operate only in very poor areasFact|date=September 2007 and in areas largely inhabited by the elderly (both groups of which are less likely to have their own transportation)Fact|date=September 2007. They also often make heavy use of telephones being called on a case-by-case basis to collect an old appliance such as a fridge, sometimes for a small charge.
In the North East of England the rag and bone man's horse often had balloons fastened to it. If a child gave what the rag and bone man considered a reasonable amount of rags for example, then they would be given a balloon as a reward.
Literary References
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