STRANGE LONDON CLUBS

Evening Star, Issue 22805, 13 November 1937, Page 19

STRANGE LONDON CLUBS

ALL SORTS Of PEOPLE London has a club for every type of worker. There are chibs for barmaids, auctioneers, taxi-drivers, brewers, widows, flautists, anarchists, misogy* nists, profiteers, and chimney sweeps. None have palatial quarters like the clubs in Piccadilly, but therein lies their interest. Not far from Curzon street, in tha heart of Mayfair, the Yellow,pushers meet. This club takes itself very seriously, and is renowned for hard-arid* fast rules of etiquette. It is patronised l by butlers, ■valets, footmen, and grooms in West End mansions. There is a story that a Yellowpusher was expelled from his club because he had been observed carrying a parcel along a main thoroughfare. The charge was brought before the committee, who, with solemnity befitting the occasion, reminded him that the correct thing to have done would have been to have hired a taxi and charged it to his employer.

The Buttons Club is an institution of a similar character. Membership is restricted to page boys -who work in Northumberland Avenue and Piccadilly hotels. Their premises are in a base* meet off Trafalgar. Square. ’The Dirty Dozen, with one unfurnished room off the Old Kent road,meets weekly for the purpose of discussing the art of chimney sweeping* Only bona fide men engaged daily m such dirty work can become members. The domestics is composed of “ lady cooks ” and other domestic workers* Monthly meetings are held in the luxurious drawing room of a baronet who spends most of his time abroad, and vital matters, such as “ ways and means for the rectification of injustices perpetrated by masters and mistresses, ’1 are discussed. Clubs for gloomy people, called sick' and sorry clubs, have been started in many of the larger city offices, the qualification for membership being the ownership of a despondent air and a really big grievance. Many men have put their marriage forward as their qualifying grievance, but they find! among their fellow-members both men and women whose worry is that they have been jilted One girl who pleaded that her parents would, not allow her to wear silk stockings was admitted. A MORBID AFFAIR. The activities of these clubs are suitably doleful. The club of one of the biggest offices recently convened on tw.o Saturday afternoons in graveyards. This club offers a prize to the member who can prove that he belongs to the most unfortunate family; and the an--1 nual club sweepstake deals with the Registrar-General's return, of the death: rate.

An insurance scheme whereby fruit dealers are to he’ insured up to £IO,OOO against claims by customers for shopping accidents has been inaugurated by the London and Counties Retail Fruit* erera’ and Florists’ Association. The* most common of such, accidents are. slipping on. banana skins, orange pips, cabbage, and spinach leaves, and th* tearing, of clothes against boxes of fruit. “There is an astonishing number of accidents in the fruit business,” says the vice-president of the association,. “ and just as many spurious claims. I know of one man in London who makes his living by pretending to slip ori! banana skins outside fruit stores and" then demanding compensation from the dealer.” Th© insurance of this society, also covers cases of ptomaine poisoning.. The ugliest people in London hav© banded themselves together for protec* tion against th© curiosity and derision of others, under the name of th© Society of Nature’s Misfits. L. X. Packer is the president, and claims to be the ugliest diamond broker in Europe. H© organised the society for “ social protection,” and has among his members six or the most homely members of the stock exchange, an ugly comedian, and a soap- manufacturer. “Wa spend every week-end he says. “ Any member attempting to beautify himself is promptly expeEed. We are searching London to find th* ugliest bus drivers to take us away to the country over week-ends.” The latest society organised in Loa* don carries the imposing name of Society for the Protection of Attractive Men. All efforts to learn the mission of the society hav© proved futile, hut hints let out by a number of young men who sup© members reveal that th© society will try to protect them on buses, trains, or public streets from th* malign influence of the weaker sex.