Pawnbroker

“ There are grades in pawning as in everything else, and distinctions must be observed even in poverty. The aristocratic Spanish cloak and the plebeian calico shirt, the silver fork and the flat iron, the muslin cravat and the Belcher neckerchief, would but ill assort together; so, the better sort of pawnbroker calls himself a silver-smith, and decorates his shop with handsome trinkets and expensive jewellery, while the more humble money-lender boldly advertises his calling, and invites observation. ”

“ I accept as products of nature and things of course a reduced Bantam family of my acquaintance in the Hackney Road, who are incessantly at the pawnbroker's. I cannot say that they enjoy themselves, for they are of a melancholy temperament; but what enjoyment they are capable of they derive from crowding together in the pawnbroker's side-entry. Here, they are always to be found in a feeble flutter, as if they were newly come down in the world, and were afraid of being identified. ”

“ Be it understood, of course, that the pawnbroker must be himself an appreciator of good things. No reason why he should buy poor stuff, even though the author of it be starving. Richard Le Gallienne has spoken somewhere of the bookstores which sell "books that should never have been written to the customers who should never have been born." Our pawnbroker must guard himself against buying this kind of stuff. ”

“ A pawnbroker is a most villainous employment: they not only exist by griping and grinding the faces of the poor, but are places of refuge for things stolen, few of them ever making enquiry how the party came by what they offer in pledge, and the less sum of money is demanded, the less is their desire to have it redeemed, or take notice of any advertisement ”

“ The shifts being produced, on which the honest pawnbroker had lent five shillings, appeared plainly to be worth above thirty; indeed, when new they had cost much more: so that, by their goodness as well as by their size, it was certain they could not have belonged to the girl. Booth grew very warm against the pawnbroker. “I hope, sir,” said he to the justice, “there is some punishment for this fellow likewise, who so plainly appears to have known that these goods were stolen. The shops of these fellows may indeed be called the fountains of theft ”

“ Their upper and nether garments also play hide-and-seek up the spout. For a day’s pawn they are compelled to pay a month’s interest as the pawnbroker does not recognise a shorter period; and for the use of ten or twenty sen for a day or even half a day, they pay from five to eight per cent. interest. Most pawnbrokers in these quarters are kept hourly busy by the constant pledging and redeeming of these customers, and sometimes they will, when they have confidence in their honesty, take for their loans nominal pledges, such as an old pipe or towel. ”

“ Tim next stealing a good horse, commenced upon the highway, and meeting with a pawnbroker by whom he had lost some articles, he commanded him to stand and deliver. The pawnbroker entreated for favor, saying “that it was a very hard thing that honest people could not go about their lawful business without being robbed.” “You talk of honesty, who live by fraud and oppression!—your shop, like the gates of hell, is always open, in which you sit at the receipt of custom, and having got the spoils of the needy, you hang them up in rank and file, like so many trophies of victory. ”

“ I’ll have nothing to say to her,’ cried the angry pawnbroker. Then working himself into fury, ‘Will you be off? Look what a pond you two have made in my shop. The floor is swimming. A mop won’t take it up in a week; and all the iron-ware, and the forks and knives, will be rusted, and the cloth and leather mildewed.’
‘Well, sir,’ sighed the woman, ‘give me back the money, and I’ll go.’
‘Six-and-six!’ said Mr. Lazarus in a softer tone, ‘six-and-six is six-and-six. Can’t we deal reasonably and quietly? ”

“ Persons who are in the constant habit of pawning are generally known by the Pawnbrokers, in most instances governed by their will, and compelled to take and pay just what they please. Again, much injury arises from the want of care in the Pawnbroker to require a proper account, from the Pledgers, of the manner in which the goods offered have been obtained, as duplicates are commonly given upon fictitious names and residences. Notwithstanding the care and attention usually paid to the examination of the articles received as pledges, these gentlemen are sometimes to be duped by their customers. ”

“ Then he handed the frame, over the case, to the pawnbroker. "What do you think of that, my Christian friend?" he said with a show of jocularity that didn't ring quite true.
The pawnbroker bent his dull face close to the article; it was gold. A pretty trinket, set with a number of brilliants, it might have come from the Rue Royale or the Rue de la Paix.
"Cost about five hundred francs," observed Mr. Heatherbloom, watching the other closely. "One hundred dollars, without the duty." ”

“ The practice of having recourse to the pawnbrokers on such occasions is quite of a different character from the habits of dependence into which many of the working classes suffer themselves to fall, and who, “on being paid their wages on the Saturday, are in the habit of taking their holiday clothes out of the hands of the pawnbroker to enable them to appear respectably on the Sabbath, and on the Monday following they are again pawned and a fresh loan obtained to meet the exigencies of their families for the remainder of the week.” ”

“ The pawnbrokers, though not receivers of stolen goods, are not a whit better. They are the meanest of thieves and swindlers. Section eight of the statute, under which they hold their licences, requires that, “No pawnbroker shall ask, demand, or receive any greater rate of interest than twenty-five per cent. per annum upon any loan not exceeding the sum of twenty-five dollars, or than seven per cent. per annum upon any loan exceeding the sum of twenty-five dollars, under the penalty of one hundred dollars for every such offence.” ”

“ That the sugar-loaf was not always exclusively a grocer’s sign, nor the Three Balls a pawnbroker’s, appears from the following advertisement in the Postman, February 3-6, 1711:—
“THOMAS SETH at the Sugarloaf in Fore Street, Pawnbroker, is going to leave his house, and to leave off the said business: all persons concerned are desired to fetch away their Goods on or before the fourth of March next, else they will be disposed off and sold.” ”

“ The auctioneer is calm, equable, concise, but firm, and the sums realised by the sale of the articles are reasonable—so reasonable, in fact, that they frequently barely cover loan and interest due to the pawnbroker. But that is his risk; and such is the power of competition in trade, that a London pawnbroker will often lend more upon an article than it will sell for. In the provinces the brethren of the three golden balls are more cautious; and in Dublin they are shamefully mean in their advances to their impoverished clients ”

“ Again, during the absence from home of the hard-working mechanic, his intemperate wife has collected together their few necessaries, carried them to the pawnbroker's, and spent the few shillings, thus procured, on gin. The thief, when he has picked a pocket of a watch, finds a ready means of disposing of it at the pawnbroker's. Hundreds of working-men pledge their Sunday garments regularly every Monday morning, and redeem them again on Saturday night. ”

“ While, however, the pawnbroker is licensed and subject to many disabilities in the prosecution of his calling, the keeper of the leaving shop is a mere unlicensed usurer in a small way, generally ready to advance petty sums on all sorts of portable property without asking questions as to its rightful possession.
Even when this sort of person is not a regular “fence” for the lowest class of thieves, he robs the very poor by taking exorbitant interest. ”

“ It was on Chatham street, and was kept by an old man, an Englishman by birth, who, though he lived meanly in a room behind his shop, was popularly supposed to have accumulated a considerable fortune.
CHAPTER XV THE PAWNBROKER'S SHOP
Stuffed behind the counter, and on the shelves of the pawnbroker's shop, were articles in almost endless variety. All was fish that came to his net. He was willing to advance on anything that had a marketable value, and which promised to yield him, I was about to say, a fair profit. But a fair profit was far from satisfying the old man. ”

“ As I approached this point I remembered Brady's words, "Don't let him be too close to you in the needle-bush."
I felt that I had had enough of it all; a three-mile steeplechase is no joke for a youngster, and it was my first race. Lean, I knew, was a very bad man, and would not hesitate to settle me. So, determined to get my ordeal over, I plied my whip, and we literally flew. Pawnbroker, however, being the stronger horse, gained on me every stride in the sand, and it was with a gasp of terror that I presently saw his tan muzzle at my stirrup. ”

“ The post-office inspectors who went to search his room are ready to swear that when they opened his trunk, which was locked, they found the pawn ticket inside.”
“But Owen didn’t pawn the watch,” declared the girl confidently. “Surely the pawnbroker——”
“The pawnbroker’s clerk has identified Sheridan as the letter carrier who came into the pawnshop in full uniform at three-thirty yesterday and pledged a gold watch for forty dollars,” said the lawyer, with a wry smile. “The watch has been identified by its owner as the one which was in the registered package.” ”

“ I was careful, kept clean and sober and away from the hop joints and thieves’ hangouts. For once in my life I managed to get a fair price from pawnshops for [336] some of my junk. Taking one of the reset rings that was perfectly safe and impossible of identification, I would step into the pawnbroker’s at lunch time and always when there were other patrons in his place. The average thief is duck soup for the hockshop man. ”

“ It was well no pawnbroker heard this declaration: she was too warm to consider economy. She sent for a pawnbroker, who lived in the same street, and, after pledging goods to treble the amount of the debt, she obtained ready money for her son’s release.
O’Neill, after being in custody for about an hour and a half, was set at liberty upon the payment of his debt. As he passed by the cathedral in his way home, he heard the clock strike; and he called to a man, who was walking backwards and forwards in the churchyard, to ask whether it was two or three that the clock struck. ”

“ Allowing for the woman spending some money in the forenoon, she might be reasonably expected to have about ten shillings left of the fourteen given by the pawnbroker, but that disposal accounted for only a part of the stolen things. Could she have had any assistant who would share the plunder? ”

“ The secresy with which a Pawnbroker's business is conducted, though very proper for the protection of the honest and well-meaning part of the population, to shield them from an exposure which might perhaps prove fatal to their business or credit, admits of great room for fraud on the part of the Money-lender; more particularly as it respects the interest allowed upon the pawns. Many persons are willing to pay any charge made, rather than expose their necessities by appearing before a Magistrate, and acknowledging they have been concerned in such transactions. ”

“ The two pair of pantaloons, the famous shawl, and the waistcoats were closely examined; even their pockets were searched. 'We cannot lend anything on that,' said the pawnbroker's clerk, disdainfully pushing the things away from him. You had the excellent habit of never despairing. You said, 'We must wait until this evening; at night all clothes are new; and to take every precaution, I shall go to the pawnbroker's shop in the Rue du Fouare, where all the poor go ”

“ The widow, delighted with my frankness, and penetrated by my friendliness, ran home, and returned with a basket of chattels to the value of perhaps three hundred and fifty dollars.
"Very good," said I; "you shall have the money, though I should have to pay for it myself."
"Sure," said she, "but you are a good obliging man, and I shall be much beholden: and sure, but I thought all pawnbrokers had golden balls at their doors."
"Madam," said I, "thank your good fortune that I am not a pawnbroker. ”

“ Anyone offering an article for the first time had to write his name and address on a paper stamped with his seal, and had also to provide a reputable security, on whom devolved the duty of redeeming and restoring to its owner a stolen article which had been received by the pawnbroker in good faith. ”

“ Let us once more review our experience with the usurer. As an outcast he offers his support to other outcasts, and is in turn supported by them. The pawnbroker and the pickpocket are closely allied: without the pawnshop, pocketpicking would offer but a precarious living; without the picking of pockets, many pawnshops would find it impossible to meet expenses. The salary loan shark often works hand in glove with the professional gambler; each procures victims for the other. ”

“ Dunstan, the patron saint of the goldsmiths, under the name of the three golden balls—an emblem which the Lombards have retained.
Are you curious to know how the sign has so degenerated as to be the inseparable companion of the pawnbrokers of the land? Well, listen.
Pawnbrokers’ shops, or loan banks, were established from motives of charity in the fifteenth century. Their object was to lend money to the poor upon pledges and without interest. ”