Of the Sale of Waste Newspapers at Billingsgate.
This trade is so far peculiar that it is confined to Billingsgate, as in that market alone the demand supplies a livelihood to the man who carries it on. His principal sale is of newspapers to the street-fishmongers, as a large surface of paper is required for the purposes of a fish-stall. The “waste” trade—for “waste” and not “waste-paper” is the word always applied—is not carried on with such facility as might be expected, for I was assured that “waste” is so scarce that only a very insufficient supply of paper can at present be obtained. “I hope things will change soon, sir,” said one collector, gravely to me, “or I shall hardly be able to keep myself and my family on my waste.”
This difficulty, however, does not affect such a street-seller as the man at Billingsgate, who buys of the collectors—“collecting,” however, a portion himself at the neighbouring coffee-shops, public houses, &c.; for the wants of a regular customer must, by some means or other, be supplied.
The Billingsgate paper-seller carries his paper round, offering it to his customers, or to those he wishes to make purchasers; some fishmongers, however, obtain their “waste” first-hand from the collectors, or buy it at a news-agent’s.
The retail price varies from 2d. to 3½d. the pound, but 3½d. is only given for “very clean and prime, and perhaps uncut,” newspapers; for when a newsvendor has, as it is called, “over-stocked” himself, he sells the uncut papers at last to the collector, or the “waste” consumer. This happens, I was told, twenty times as often with the “weeklys” as the “dailys;” for, said my informant, “suppose it’s a wet Sunday morning—and all newsvendors as does pray, prays for wet Sundays, because then people stays at home and buys a paper, or some number, to read and pass away the time. Well, sir, suppose it’s a soaker in the morning, the newsman buys a good lot, an extra nine, or two extra nines, or the like of that, and then may be, after all, it comes out a fine day, and so he’s over-stocked; in which case there’s some for the waste.”
When they consider it a favourable opportunity, the workers carry waste to offer to the Billingsgate salesmen; but the chief trade is in the hands of the regular frequenter of the market.
From the best information I could obtain, it appears that from 70 to 100 pounds weight of “waste”—about three-fourths being newspapers, of which some are foreign—is supplied to Billingsgate market and its visitants. Two numbers of the Times, with their supplements, one paper-buyer told me, “when cleverly damped, and they’re never particularly dry,” will weigh about a pound. The average price is not less than 2½d. a pound, or from that to 3d. A single paper is 1d. At 2½d. per pound, and 85 pounds a day, upwards of 275l. is spent yearly in waste paper at Billingsgate, in the street or open-air purchase alone.