Rag 'n' Bone men

Ha, no, in fact I had an ancestor who ran the Bastille Mill in Coventry which was a fulling mill !

Stale urine (ammonia) is a dye mordant. A substance that fixes the colour to the fibres.

Have you watched the tv comedy series The Plebs set in Roman Times. The laundress buying barrels of the stuff features quite a lot !

Don't remember any tanks being on the R&B'mans cart. Who was it collected from, how was it collected and how was it transported?

I'm not sure how recent it was. There are artificial versions now. Time Team talked about tubs outside pubs.

I do remember something about that. Though the washing was done with lye in medieval reconstructions and I think that was dissolved wood ashes.

On Continental Europe, public urinals were used for collection, many have been preserved / reconstructed. I'd assume that a similar collection system was used here, is there any evidence in Coventry of this?

Reading old topics, there is a cross reference to this on "Old Coventry Firms" post number 9

I have visited Pompeii. The tour guide showed us around some interesting places, including temples, thermopolia (cafes, often with a back room for special services for businessmen), the house of the Vetti, brothels... nuff said. People must have been short in those days, judging by the length of the stone beds (they put straw on top), and the low duck-yer-'ead doorways. Anyway, we went into a laundry. All beautifully made out of stone were the washing vats, in many of which clothes were trampled barefoot for hours in urine. Yes, human urine... mostly. You have to remember, back then, there was none of yer Bold, Daz, Persil that has made your lives easy today. No, good old urine. They couldn't get enough of the stuff, so there was a stone trough and containers outside in the street, into which both men and women would lift their toga and quite unabashedly relieve themselves in full view of the public. (The Romans were obviously not shy.) This was obviously before Robert Peel invented the police force. But human urine was for the general public. Reportedly, the rich people, like the Vetti brothers, paid top dollar for camel's urine. It is apparently much stronger than human stuff, and cleans clothes better. One can imagine the smell! Initially, it would reek, but after a while, a person's olfactory nerves become paralyzed, which is when we cease to notice a smell. In more recent times, in the Netherlands, urine was used in the textile industry in quantity. Workers were paid to bring the stuff to work in bottles that resembled a demijohn. It was said that Monday's urine was no good, since it contained too much alcohol, which is why such workers got the name "Bottle-**ssers".

Back to the subject in hand. When I was a little lad in Coundon, a rag and bone man came along once a week with his horse and cart, a la Steptoe. He would yell, at the top of his strained voice, something incomprehensible to my ears. My mum told me he was shouting "rags and bones".

The rag and bone man who walked along the backs of the houses in Macaulay Rd, Wyken, had quite a musical voice and sang something like "Any old rag-BONES?". The first words sung low, and that last word sung a perfect fifth above, and very loud.

Did he give you a wind mill if you gave him stuff?

Must have been the same one who traversed the entries back of Arch Road, Oldham Avenue and Edith Road, Wyken. You beat me to the comment. I had gone to the piano to confirm my memory of the call but supper intervened before I could reply.

I don't recall so, Philip. I do remember the gypsies (is that OK to say?) who sold us clothes pegs - and were very friendly if you took the time to chat. Maybe that's why I came to love gypsy jazz!

Quite probably his "patch". I think my aunt Pauline also knew of him in Farren Road.