The Marine Store

The marine store dealt in junk. Dickens says it was inconceivable that anyone would want to buy the sort of junk found there. He describes the articles for sale as 'old, worn-out' and 'wretched'. It was the hub of a barter economy for the poor. Child collectors called "bottle boys" brought junk to the store.

A Marine Store Dealer bought and sold used cordage, bunting, rags, timber, metal and other general waste materials. He sorted waste and repaired things. The name came about because, at one time, old ships’ iron and cables could only be disposed of by a registered dealer.

Marine Store Dealers were licensed and governed by an Act of Parliament. They had to have their names painted over their shop doors and keep books with the names of those they bought from. The painted name over the door had to have letters of a certain height. Dickens describes this for us ...

'the squeezed-up inscription ‘Dealer in marine stores,’ in lanky white letters, whose height is strangely out of proportion to their width'

He also tells us the sort of thing which one might find for sale in a marine store, including pickle-jars, fenders and street-door knockers, fire-irons, wearing apparel and bedding, a hall-lamp, and a room-door ... as well as rags and bones.

On display outside the shop were books, wine-glasses, locks, an old earthenware pan full of rusty keys, chimney-ornaments, a pair of curling-irons, a tinder-box, "a half-dozen high-backed chairs, with spinal complaints and wasted legs" and "very dark mahogany tables with flaps like mathematical problems".

In a sea-faring location such as Ramsgate, there would also have been models of ships, prints of naval engagements, compasses and so forth. Dickens explains that ..

"A sailor generally pawns or sells all he has before he has been long ashore, and if he does not, some favoured companion kindly saves him the trouble." 

These possessions included "silver watches in clumsy thick cases" and "tobacco-boxes, the lid of each ornamented with a ship, or an anchor, or some such trophy."

Clearly the term 'marine store dealer' could be synonymous with 'receiver of stolen goods', as in the character Joe in Dicken's "A Christmas Carol". The bundle a woman brings for him contains ..

"Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two old fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few boots."

And he named his marine store dealer in Bleak House Mr. Krook.

There is also a reference from 1844 to a marine store keeper selling "the pilfered orts and ends of literature" which suggests stolen property. It is an interesting choice of expression, 'orts' being an old-fashioned term originally meaning the remains of a meal, leftovers or scraps.

Dealing in scrap materials was the type of work often done by travellers/gypsies and both 'general dealer' and 'marine store dealer' were common occupations for people following this lifestyle. In my own family, the ancestor who became a Marine Store Dealer and China dealer had married a woman with a traveller/gypsy background, a wardrobe dealer. The two of them built up their business as dealers and bought property. They settled and did well for themselves.

They placed advertisements in the Thanet Advertiser which echo the signs in Mr Krook's window for Bones, Kitchen Stuff, Old Iron, Ladies and Gentlemen's Wardrobes etc. For example, buying up old clothes from 66 King Street in 1868 ...

"WANTED TO PURCHASE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN'S WARDROBES and every description of WEARING APPAREL."

These were to be sent to in the post ...

"Parcels being sent, the utmost value in cash immediately remitted."

Read more about Marine Store Dealers and their connections with the Traveller lifestyle...

https://robertfjones.wordpress.com/tag/marine-store-dealers/