Can any one tell me how the call rag and bone rags yes but why bones?

Question

Can any one tell me how the call rag and bone rags yes but why bones?

Answer 1

Back until about the 1960s when the rag and bone men finally went out of business, there were no cuts of convenience meat from the supermarket and people would buy a Sunday joint, or shoot a rabbit, and basically use all parts of the animal for food except the bones after they had boiled them for marrow to make soup.  So only the bones would have been left, look at some of the old 1940s public information posters and you will see that they too ask for bones to be used in the war effort.

Answer 2

Rag-and-bone man is a British phrase for a junk dealer. Historically the phrase referred to an individual who would travel the streets of a city with a horsedrawn cart, and would collect old rags, (for converting into fabric and paper), bones for making glue, 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.

Contents [hide]

1 Collectors ad recycling

2 Popular culture

3 See also

4 External links

[edit] Collectors ad 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 costermongers and other street-vendors formed the distributive part of the market, the rag-and-bone men supported recycling or remanufacturing, 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 or pickup 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 areas[citation needed] and in areas largely inhabited by the elderly (both groups of which are less likely to have their own transportation)[citation needed]. 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.

Answer 3

Bones for glue.

Answer 4

for bone china, me ol china.

Answer 5

Most butchers will know of the bone man...usually called once a week and sold them to fertilizer companies, glue factories etc...

Don't know if they still do it but they did right up until the late seventies...

Answer 6

To make bone china you need bones,That is why.

Answer 7

rags to turn into shoddy

bones to boil for glue

Answer 8

Hi GF

Not sure about that - I was supprised when a rag 'n bone van came around recently.

Not seen them since I was very young - a sign of the times perhaps

Answer 9

as  cockney Londoner i have never heard (raa-boh) it must be an Americanism but i did grow up in London and every day you would hear the cry Rag and Bone or the cry any old iron  if a True Londoner shortened anything it would have been in rhyming Slang  Whistle and Flute + suite  trouble and Strife = Wife which would have been shortened to Whistle and Strife the other thing that was common in my London was Backslang where you said the word backward and and added an a on the end

Rags converted to paper or cleaning cloths for industry and bones to be sent to prisons for rendering down to Glue for Government Offices this was in the days where prison was a punishment and you could spend 6 months hand making Mail Bags

we kids used to follow the horse to collect his droppings to use on our gardens  

And we had plenty to choose from Rag and bone Milkman  Coal man  and Breweries all used horses in London until about 1960

Answer 10

Bones were used in the manufacture of glue.

Answer 11

British is a term for a junk dealer who traveled the city that collected rag and bones for making glue, scrap iron and other items for a limited value. The rag and bone men were very important before the inventions of automobiles.

Answer 12

If I understood what you were trying to ask . . .

Answer 13

Cause in old days   bones were used to make  things   ,  like china  and glue  and were reusable and sellable,  as  were  rags ///   These days we would call it recycling,

And in the poorer areas  what else was there to   collect  that had any value to the collector.  In  my   early years  a rag and bone man with his horse and cart  was a common sight in London ... Used to ring a hand bell.     In later years as people got more affluent  they became known as totters,  collecting anything,   old fridges, cookers  etc as well as rags and old clothes and household fabrics,   Don't think they still collected  bones though..