Church Street In The Late 1940s

A Memory of Dagenham.

There was a rag and bone man on Church Street whom we knew as Charlie. Every week local housewives would gather in his yard to buy secondhand clothing and toys which he would auction from the back of a cart laden with an assortment of items which he had collected earlier. The women would stand in a group around the cart yelling his name each time he held aloft an item of clothing or a toy they wanted. Charlie I recall was scrupulously fair, always distributing his goods evenly among the women
There was as well a pawn shop in the High Road where many of the same women would hock whatever they could to make ends meet. I remember the strange mechanical pen the pawnbroker would use to duplicate the tickets.