krissy wrote:
the worst occupation i came across was my grt grt grandad, hes down as a scavenger?
?
the mind boggles 
When we were kids in the 70s, we used to collect Victorian bottles, and I remember reading about the Victorian scavengers, who were a bit like rag-and-bone men. They would work at the rubbish dumps, especially around big cities, and look for anything useful that had been thrown away (rather like the Wombles
) They sorted rags, bottles, metal and so on and sold them back for recycling. If the old scavengers had been at work, you would find very few interesting bottles left behind today. I think whole families were involved in the sorting process. I'll see if I can find the account of it as it was quite interesting concerning the uses rubbish was put to.
Fred
