The Rag and Bone Man

[Jalaco]

While spending many a night on the computer looking for a 'job,' I came across rag-and-bone men. Having heard of them before, I tried to do a bit more research, which didn't bring up much, considering it isn't a very complex occupation I suppose.

Anywho, nearly every reference or mention of them online seems to place them in England (particularly London) and sometimes France. Plenty of them in the 19th century it seems; I just can't place them in America.

Does anyone have any info on rag-and-bone men in America during the war if there were any? I know it may seem a bit plain, and that there probably were people in large cities who scavanged the streets without any particular title, but this was obviously a real legitimate occupation in 19th century England; so much so that they got the name! It would be a neat bit of first person for living history; great for someone portraying a lower class individual and who doesn't have time in the real world to learn how to be a cobbler! I may not be looking hard enough, but I just can't find any solid references to any sort of ran-and-bone man in America.

[Becky Morgan]

Re: The Rag and Bone Man

I know I've seen references to rag buyers in New York City as late as the 1920s, mingled with references to all the other pushcart and horsecart workers, but let me see if I can turn up an actual reference. So far, there's much about the rag shortage in the 1850s leading to pulpwood mills developing just postwar, people who were rag buyers in their flat-broke youth, and men who were rag and scrap buyers long after the war, but nothing during. It stands to reason--and that's always a dangerous phrase in history, but it does--that wartime paper demands would have meant more work for anyone willing to go out scrounging; a couple of surviving paper mill ads mention that they buy rags. Also, we know that worn linen was in demand for lint, but was there commercial production?

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: The Rag and Bone Man

Hallo!

My wife's family (Blakeley)owned and ran the Arasapha Textile Mill in Chester, PA. Arasapha produced linen, denim, and upholstery fabric. One of the teenagers, writing about threats of war in December 1860, wrote a letter on company letter-head that lists rag buying.

Not that it is relevent, but as late as the 1950's the East and West side of Cleveland, OH was worked by an elderly foreign man with a horse drawn wagon.
He was known mostly as the "Paper Rex Man" because he would call out "Paper! Rags!' for old newspapers and rags in heavily accented English.

It harkens back to the 19th and 18th centuries when prior to the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution cloth was valuable, and clothes recycled down ("slops") through socio-economic classes turned from ragged clothing to no longer wearable scraps. Then the scraps could be sold and reprocessed at the mills.

Curt

[Hank Trent]

Re: The Rag and Bone Man

Rag picker in New York City:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Uik...98&output=html
(starting about two-thirds of the way down the page)

Don't know if there was enough profit for such an activity in rural areas or small towns, or how it worked there.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

[Jalaco]

Re: The Rag and Bone Man

Thanks for the responses folks. It looks like there were some, but perhaps just didn't operate under the name of 'rag-and-bone man.' Which doesn't matter much for living history purposes, I suppose. As you said Mr. Morgan, alothough it is dangerous to assume when it comes to history, I would imagine that especially pre/very early war, north or south, rag collecters would have had a half-way decent go of it in larger cities, especially up north. If you can find that reference you had mentioned, I would love to read it.

I also wonder, what with references to New York City and Pennsylvania, if it would have been more common in the north. I have to imagine that southern cities (particularly New Orleans, Richmond, Atlanta and other larger ones) would have had scavengers as well, trying to eek out a living.

[Becky Morgan]

Re: The Rag and Bone Man

The only local reference I've found so far is in Maywood Gallaher (1854-1942)'s Things I Remember, his recollection of growing up during the war in eastern Ohio. It's not online yet (that I know of) because I haven't been able to figure out which descendant owns the copyright, although they've all agreed that anyone who wants a copy can have it. In one part, he's recalling the various peddlers and buyers who came through and mentions the rag men. The hitch there is that his uncles had a textile mill up the creek here and may have been buying rags themselves to make shoddy or something akin to it, so it's hard to tell whether the local rag men were buying from these couple hundred houses or whether any stops here were incidental to their delivery to the mill. He's also vague about the year in which something happened, which is natural when someone looks back eighty years.

So many things were in short supply in the South by mid-war that you'd think rag and bone gathering would be natural. Women's diaries seem to be better about mentioning shortages than men's, possibly because they were more involved with day to day household items. It's worth a look around the Google and Gutenberg texts.

[Jalaco]

Re: The Rag and Bone Man

Although it would be been silly to assuume (I feel, at least) that nothing of the sort existed in America at the time, the numerous references to England and France scared me that maybe everyone in America was above rag and bone gathering.

Do you have any information in regards to contacting Gallaher's descendants? Beyond the references to rag-and-bone men, it sounds like a good read as well. I'd be interestead in pouring over it. And as a random thought, as you mention scavanging during the mid-war period, me wonders if business would have been that much better for rag-and-bone men due to the demand for any goods, or that much worse due to the possibility of even well off folks stooping a little lower than usual. Although many rag-and-bone men may have joined the army during the war years for increased income, possibly reducing the numbers of 'regulars' on the streets, I'd love to find some (other) print references to them working during the war and just how business was for them, etc.
Although it's entirely possible that every rag-and-bone man in America was drafted by then as well, making the point moot!

[Jimmayo]

Re: The Rag and Bone Man

If memory serves me correct the cast off uniforms and other fabric items from the Gettysburg battlefield cleanup were sold in NY for a nickle a pound. There was also some discussion about farmers selling soldiers bones for fertilizer. This information came from Greg Cocos book on the aftermath of Gettysburg. Using ground up bone for fertilizer is nothing new and is still being done today. With the high use of rag in paper I am not surprised that there would be middle men supplying rag to the paper mills and the same sort of thing with bones from the local butcher shops. It's sort of like the guys that now ride around on trash day looking for metal. If there is a market someone is going to make money selling whatever.

[Hank Trent]

Re: The Rag and Bone Man

I just chose New York because I knew it would be an easy place to find a US example. But if you want New Orleans:

The Rag Pickers.--An industrious and philosophical class are the rag pickers of New Orleans. With early dawn, their dirty bags across their shoulders flung, they emerge from the quarters that had given them shelter, and with eye intent on gutters and streets, commence to glean what others had thrown away as worthless. For dirt they seem to have a liking. Seething pools and fresh piles of offal are as eagerly sought as richer placers by other delvers after wealth, and as much satisfaction is felt by the rag picker, in upturning an unusual store of cast off linen or scraps of cotton, as the gold digger experiences in gaining possession of a rich nugget.

(From the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Nov. 5, 1858)

It's a long article at genealogybank.com, which goes on to talk about a rag picker in Jefferson City who got rich and now "has his agents in New York, and furnishes yearly a large stock for the consumption of the neighboring paper manufactories. Periodically the rag pickers assemble at his residence, and right merry times are seen..."

The rag pickers described in New York and New Orleans aren't quite the same as those who go around giving street cries for what they want to buy, but it's surprising how similar the descriptions of them are in the two disparate cities. The only problem I can see with applying that particular impression at a reenactment is that most reenactments are held in the country. It would be like portraying a homeless person today: great in a city park, not so good in somebody's hayfield today. The same demographic today who would be homeless in the city would get by a different way in the country.

Similarly, a city rag picker at a typical reenactment can't actually seek rags, because there's just not enough junk in the gutters, let alone any gutters, and a big city with lots of gutters isn't being portrayed anyway, in most cases. So there's still the problem of what to do all day, and the additional problem of how or why one got from the city to where one is. Unless you have access to reenactments set in cities--and that actually sounds pretty cool--a variation like Jim Mayo mentioned, battlefield scavenging, might be more logical. But again, it's going to be difficult to figure out what to actually do at an event, with that kind of impression, since our "battlefields" are left pretty clean.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

[Jalaco]

Re: The Rag and Bone Man

Battlefield scavanging is a good idea that I haden't thought of before. As you said, Mr. Trent, it would be difficult to really portray a rag man at the average reenactment due to the location and circumstances in general. Given that I mostly do military, I figured it may serve as a suitable back story for times when first person is appropriate at an event, considering that few soldiers had the opportunity to ply their trade in the field. It seems like a decent background to me; someone who was dirt poor and collected rags and bones, joined the army when the war started as that much better of an alternative. Just the basics, given that I am fairly new to authentic reenacting/LH.

If I ever do develop a solid civilian impression, I most likely will have to look for a different trade, given the points you made above. Given that I can hardly breath and eat, let alone act, I figured this may be a suitable career to 'hold me over' in first person scenarios until I can do more research and learn more about another more complicated profession, like the aspects of farm life back then, etc.

[Pvt. Shattuck]

Re: The Rag and Bone Man


Not a very pleasant impression, however authentic.
My mother told me that when she was a girl in Springfield, MA in the 1930s, the "rag man" would come in his horse and wagon, collecting rags. He had a foreign accent and would shout " regs! regs!" as he drove through the neighborhood. Mother remembered this because she was terrified of him, having been told by her own mother that if she was not good, the rag man would take her away.

[Elaine Kessinger]

Re: The Rag and Bone Man

Any profession can be quite complex until one learns the specifics of it. One must know more than "the basics." One must learn what a person of that profession would know, what scale they use to asses their product, how they interact with customers, competitors, and passing persons.

...and just like your country dwellers would need to know "the basics" of life in the country... a city dweller will need to know about life in a city. (Where do you sleep? Where do you get food, how often, name some vendors? Who are your neighbors and what is their life like? What is transportation like and what do you do when you'd like to go further than you can walk? What are your parties and entertainments like?)

If I may be so bold... if you choose to start with a city-dwelling rag&bone man, stick with city dwellers for the next few impressions too. This will make the transition from city rag&bone to country farmer easier by allowing you to add in slowly the information you are learning. Once you learn about transport animals and carting, you can transition to a city "carter." Once you learn about crop seasons, you can transition to a "street produce seller" or even "grocer". Once you have the "agriculture" part down, you can progressively go more country as you learn more about life in the country. Then, when you get an event that portrays a large town, you can portray a farmer coming to trade.

If you'd like to start and remain a country-dweller, might I suggest a "farm hand" into a "farmer" transition as logical. Farm Hands can also be fairly desperate poor; generally work under direction of someone else, so maybe are just learning the specifics of that particular farming; and can have varied experiences that drew them to the profession. This will also put you in the path of re-enactors who know about period agriculture and can point you in the right resources directions.

Good luck in your research journeys. :-)

[Hank Trent]

Re: The Rag and Bone Man

Any profession can be quite complex until one learns the specifics of it. One must know more than "the basics." One must learn what a person of that profession would know, what scale they use to asses their product, how they interact with customers, competitors, and passing persons.

Just want to endorse everything Elaine said in her post! The problem is that every single person's life in the 19th century was equally complicated, the only variation being how much of that complexity will be required at a reenactment to keep the illusion.

In other words, someone could portray a shoemaker, who had only the vaguest idea how to make a shoe, and if he was at a reenactment where the shoemaker was spending the weekend as a new recruit in the army, he could pass as a shoemaker easily, simply by avoiding talking about his work. On the other hand, if he was at a reenactment where he'd be given a period shoeshop to work in, with all the tools and supplies, and was supposed to be portraying two days at work, the illusion would disappear immediately as soon as he tried to make a shoe.

So choosing an impression in combination with an event is often the best way to give a good illusion with little knowledge, while one is learning something new. If my skills are badly lacking, I've come right out and asked organizers: will I need to know X for this impression? If not, one can then focus on what one will need to know, while gradually learning other things for a more rounded impression in the future.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

[Jalaco]

Re: The Rag and Bone Man

Nothing new to say about rag-and-bone men, but just wanted to say thank you Miss. Kessinger and Mr. Trent for your tips and advice in those last two messages in regards to first person, which I have put on paper and will keep in mind!

If I may ask you two (and any others, of course) another question on the topic of first-person and careers and such, do either of you know anything/have any resources about period prisons, prisoners and their possible use in the army as substitutes or conscripts? While looking for 'a job,' one thing that crossed my mind at one point, along with rag-and-bone man and others, was possibly portraying a former convict who had comitted some crime (wether it be petty thievery or something as bad as murder). He then could have been hired as a substitute by a wealthy individual who paid for his out, or just flat out conscripted and thrown from prison into a regiment.

However, not knowing much about the topic or having many resources handy, I haven't delved much further than the thought itself, and am not sure if it is a realistic scenario or typical case. I have only found a few brief bits on the internet about 19th century prisons. If it differs greatlhy, I generally do confederate more often than union; I haven't found any references of say, a planter dipping into a prison for a substitute, but I wonder if there are records of such an instance.
A convict impression would require me to do little more than be myself, so would be that much easier to portray!

[Spinster]

Re: The Rag and Bone Man

In your search for 'a job', consider an itinerant woodcutter.

The museum in Newfane NY holds the story of a particularly poignant one, as he may have been a bit 'off' before the war, but was certainly 'not quite right' after. He boarded with members of the community for a period of time, felling, cutting, splitting, and stacking their firewood in season, and when the snows set in, wintering with one family in particular in what seemed to be a known charity situation. When he died in his 90's, his broadax was used as his headstone. Years later, the community erected a more formal marker, though still in the shape of a broadax, and consigned the metal head to the museum.

Translate this into a reenactment setting, whether a quality event or a beer, battle, and ball type. A man wandering about with a good axe and chopping skills will be able to spot a woman who is struggling with unsplit wood easily, and work for a bowl of that stew...... And a wood chopper does draw a crowd, especially when working with a mallet and froe.