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I am thinking or replacing the copper pipes from Water on on CH with plastic to give shorter runs to avoid water loss in cold water draw off.

Copper removed will probably pay for the plastic pipe?

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  • 2 years later...

Is the smart-looking bloke the rag and bone man? I do remember the cart coming round the Medders. Our coal merchants were also called Tricketts, I wonder if they were connected.

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  • 1 month later...

Our rag & bone man had all his fingers blown off in WW1 or so it said on the slip of paper he shoved through the letter box.

Got a goldfish once, had it for years. I was living on Cockington Rd at the time.

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We had a new central heating system a couple of years ago and the old copper cylinder and pipes were left on the drive for the plumber (our son) to sort out. They`d only been there a couple of hours when a kind chap knocked on the door and offered to 'clear all that old rubbish from yer drive, darlin', no charge!'

He was so disappointed when I declined.

(Guess I should have been pleased he didn`t just take it without asking.)

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I once left some stuff out for charity and caught a bloke going through the bags,I asked him what he was doing,he said I sort rubbish ,I told him it was not for him but for charity,luckily the charity people then turned up in a van and the bloke quickly walked off.

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That worries me sometimes. I`ve several times seen unmarked vans zooming round scooping up charity bags left at the end of drives. Guess they`re sometimes the authorised collectors but it`s hard to tell.

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We say rag and bone man but where does the bone come into it? I suppose I should know at my age, no doubt someone will enlighten me.

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Wikipedias' explanation of the Rag and Bone Man origin:-

In the UK, 19th-century rag-and-bone men scavenged unwanted rags, bones, metal and other waste, from the towns and cities where they lived.[2] Henry Mayhew's 1851 report, London Labour and the London Poor, estimates that in London, between 800 and 1,000 "bone-grubbers and rag-gatherers" lived in lodging houses, garrets and "ill-furnished rooms in the lowest neighbourhoods."[3]

The bone-picker and rag-gatherer may be known at once by the greasy bag which he carries on his back. Usually he has a stick in his hand, and this is armed with a spike or hook, for the purpose of more easily turning over the heaps of ashes or dirt that are thrown out of the houses, and discovering whether they contain anything that is saleable at the rag-and-bottle or marine-store shop.

—Henry Mayhew[4]

These bone-grubbers, as they were sometimes known, would typically spend nine or ten hours searching the streets of London for anything of value, before returning to their lodgings to sort whatever they had found.[4] In rural areas where no rag merchants were present, rag-and-bone men often dealt directly with rag paper makers,[5] but in London they sold rag to the local trader. White rag could fetch 2–3 pence per pound, depending on condition (all rag had to be dry before it could be sold). Coloured rag was worth about two pence per pound. Bones, worth about the same,[4] could be used as knife handles, toys and ornaments, and when treated, for chemistry. The grease extracted from them was also useful for soap-making. Metal was more valuable; an 1836 edition of Chambers's Edinburgh Journal describes how "street-grubber" could be seen scraping away the dirt between the paving stones of non-macadamised roads, searching for horseshoe nails.[6] Brass, copper and pewter was valued at about 4–5 pence per pound. In a typical day, a rag-and-bone man might expect to earn about six pence.[4]

Mayhew's report indicates that many who worked as rag-and-bone men did so after falling on hard times, and generally lived in squalor.[4] Although they usually started work well before dawn, they were not immune to the public's ire; in 1872 several rag-and-bone men in Westminster caused complaint when they emptied the contents of two dust trucks to search for rags, bones and paper, blocking people's path.[7]

And, the top ten uses for bone...

http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-creative-uses-bones.php

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The TV programme "24 hours in the past" showed Ann Widdecombe and 5 other celebrities doing 19th centrary work, sorting dust, bones, rags and horse muck. This was an interesting reconstruction done at the Black Country Museum showing a form of recycling. Having gone through years of throw away attitudes where land fill sites were extensively used for dumping our rubbish we are now seeing recycling businesses growing. Locally we have social enterprise businesses that collect scrap and recycle it, employing trainees and people in need of work.

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  • 2 years later...

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