My neighborhood is full of booksellers: not bookshops, but men selling books on the street. Most of these are men living in near indigence, in shelters or rented rooms. They get their stock from what is thrown out or given to them by their more affluent neighbors. As the area is home to a great university, readers are in great supply.
The men put out their tables in the morning. The least well off never pack up at day's end: they live in shelters and have nowhere to put their inventory. So they put plastic covers over the folding tables, or pack the stock in large plastic tubs they leave by their usual spot. The neighborhood respects the property of the booksellers as far as I can tell. I have walked past two or three tubs left unguarded several days in a row and seen nothing molested; and, while buyers may sometimes take a book left on a table while the bookseller is away, the men tell me people generally return to pay the price marked inside the book.
I bought a Lawyer's Diary for the year 1931 from one of the booksellers. I am fascinated by old books, they speak to me. This one is a lawyer's diary, the way lawyers kept track of hours billed clients in the days before computers. When I practiced law in the 1980s, lawyer's diaries were still around, red volumes given to associates and partners in law firms. Now, or course, the entries are kept on computers.
This diary comes straight the world of Prufrock: published ten years after Eliot's publication of his famous poem, it is a fat book, groaning with information and advertisements, also, requests for legacies:
An appeal is made for the claims of ST. DUNSTAN'S to be borne in mind when charitable bequests are under consideration. St. Dunstan's is solely responsible for the training, settlement and lifelong after-care of over two thousand men who have been blinded as the result of their service for King and Country.
Those blinded men were, like as not, survivors of the First World War, which had ended only thirteen years before the Lawyers' Diary was published. Next year we commemorate its centennial.
Other charities appealing for funds are more ancient:
Dr. Barnardo's Homes (Founded 1866): "No Destitute Child Ever Refused Admission." Motto For God and Country." NO RED TAPE. NO WAITING LIST. NO VOTES REQUIRED. 109,000 Children have been admitted. 17,797 Children and young people dealt with last year. 8,000 Children always being supported. 474 are Crippled, Invalid, Deaf and Dumb, physically afflicted or sick. 30, 257 Young People have been migrated to Canada and the Overseas Dominions. L500 ENDOWS A BED FOR A HEALTHY CHILD. LEGACIES AND ENDOWMENTS WILL BE APPRECIATED.
And my favorite, and the most venerable:
Eight Hundred Years in the Service of Humanity.
St. Bartholomew's Hospital
London, E.C.1.
FOUNDED ON PRESENT SITE A.D. 1123.
Patron - - HIS MAJESTY THE KING.
President - - H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES, K.G.
In-Patients (1929) 10,025
Out-Patients' Attendances (1929) 469,697
Street Accident Cases (1929) 2,941
THE MOTHER HOSPITAL OF THE EMPIRE. . . . requires L89 A DAY
in order to continue its merciful work.
A DAY can be named for a year for a contribution of L50 (Cot L30). This can be renewed from year to year if desired.
A BED can be named in perpetuity by a donation or legacy of L1,000 (Cot L600). In this way permanent and appropriate tribute may be paid to the memory of friends.
Treasurer - - The Right Hon. LORD STANMORE.
Bankers - - THE BANK OF ENGLAND.
Do not accuse me of indulging in "Golden Age Fantasy" by publishing these relics here. We all know the thirties were the decade when the unquenched passions of the First World War came inexorably to a head, bursting into the Second. I offer these quaint examples of charity at work only to demonstrate that the impulse to do good precedes us, and may have been exercised as tenderly as any we now vaunt.
The marginalized men who sell books on my neighborhood's streets, how would they have been treated in London, 1931?
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