Staff Pick: Rag and Bone

We live in a world of “stuff”, lots and lots and lots of it. Modern manufacturing and new technologies, economies of scale and prosperity, means many of us can have, get and want more stuff in our lives. But what happens to it all when we are finished with it, fed up with it, it no longer works or we lose it? This book gives some insight into the ubiquitous nature of discarded stuff and its history….and longevity.

For decades, members of Lisa Woollett’s family, the Tolladays, had been involved in London’s rubbish trade (or waste management business, as we would call it today). Her grandfather was a dustman and her great-granddad was a “scavenger”; earning a living from finding and selling thrown away items. She has an interest in mudlarking and beachcoming – wandering watery shores looking for things – since she was a child. This hobby has brought her all sorts of finds – dead organic matter but also the lost and discarded detritus of life, the non-biodegradable stuff found on beaches, estuaries and river beds.

While the book is about finding what humans have thrown away, it is framed in family history, history of the river Thames and its inhabitants, and a look at the shores of the south coast of England. But the book also takes incredibly interesting tangents into other mini-histories based on the things she finds - product design, raw materials, import and export trade in the British Empire’s biggest city, manufacturing, and marketing/branding (on a beach she finds a plastic toy dog from the children’s TV show “Sooty” and uncovers a history of free giveaways in Kellogg’s cereal boxes in the 1970s). 

This book is a fascinating read and at 208 pages is a quick, nifty read too. If you are interested in the history of London, maps, material culture, sustainability and the climate crises, family history and, of course what we have thrown away over the years – then I recommend this book to you. Go borrow it from the library and then return it – no need to acquire it as another item of stuff in your life!

A selection of things Lisa has found:

Lego pieces, lid of a Roman metal cooking pot, bits of clay pipes ( I dig these up in my garden too), a musket ball, plastic toy soldiers, metals tips of ointment and toothpaste tubes, plastic limbs from toys, bone stays (from corsets), combs (bone and plastic), bottle tops, the round floating widgets used inside Guinness cans, marbles, fishing lines, glass beads, black plastic wheels from toy cars, plastic plant leaves, coral money, trade tokens (used instead of money), money cowrie (shells used as currency in the slave trade), coal, buttons (bone, metal, mother-of-pearl, glass, plastic).

Borrow Rag and Bone.

Tara Doyle, librarian in Dublin City Library and Archive, Pearse Street