“UNCLE OF HUMAN RACE”

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 158, 4 June 1935, Page 2

“UNCLE OF HUMAN RACE”

PAWNBROKER’S PART IN CITY LIFE.

AVith £200,000,000 to pay into the Government Treasury, you and I, who, grasshopper-like, have saved nothing against the demands of the income-tax collectors, will raise £10,000,000, or one-twentieth of that total amount, from our “Uncle Benny,” writes AVilson McCarthy in the Daily Mirror, London. In return, we shall leave with him our family jewels, our fur coats, the paintings from oar walls, the typewriters from our offices, opera glasses and binoculars, surgical instruments and grandfather clocks, fine china plates and silver tea-services—even toupees, false teeth, artificial limbs and the shirts from our backs. TITLED CUSTOMERS.

As about half a million of us will stream into the 250 jiawnshops in London alone, not to mention the 650 pledge offices throughout the rest of the country, just during the incometax season, it is time to give thought to this most curious and human of businesses.

A straight transaction which to-day attracts not only poor, but rich alike, the pawning of one’s personal belongings has lost whatever stigma may have at one time been associated with it. A world of changing economies, in which cash is rajridly being displaced by credit, is now bringing thousands of people to tlie pawnbroker’s door who in former times kept a sufficient supply of cash on hand to meet any emergency.

Prominent business people, men and women of title, famous actresses and academicians can to-day be found in the pawnbroker’s “confessionals.” A sudden depression on the stock market will bring dignified city men scurrying in to raise a couple of thousand tor a few days on their wives’ jewels. An epidemic will bring in friglitened mothers in distressed areas, rushing with treasures long guarded—commemoration spoons, cameras, old family portraits, and even widow’s weeds inherited from two generations and stored in camphor agamst a tragic day —to obtain chlorides and medicines with which to disinfect their houses and to doctor their children. AVar scares bring another class of people, particularly women, to the pawnbroker m ail hysterica! rush to raise funds to get away from what they imagine to be danger zones.

On the other hand, weather forecasts of a fine, dry summer boom the July and August trade of tlie pawnbroker by as much as fifty per cent, in some localities through people whose sudden longing for the seaside or for irresistibly appealing foreign tours gets the better of their holiday budgets. And likewise a State occasion, such as a royal wedding, or a coronation, a great fair or a smash hit in the theatre 1 will cause hundreds ot people to pledge what they had regarded as the necessities of life on the sudden impulse that the festive spirit is an even greater necessity. AVitli 10,000,000 people—or one out of every four persons you know —making a total of 20,000,000 pledges a year, on which over £100,000,000 is raised, the pawnbroker has become a sharp judge of human nature, an infallible appraiser of the true worth of material goods, and at the same time a man who knows more about the tragedies of life, tlie emotions of desperation, fear, dire need, greed and exhilaration than most father confessors.

“Uncle,” as he is fondly called, though in France he changes sex and is known as Ma Tante, or Aunt, is indeed uncle of the human race, Isualty a smallish, sympathetic, self-ef-facing, very polite and rather sad looking man of forty or fifty, he has learned his trade as a child sweeping out the pawnshop, wrapping the pledges for most careful safe-keeping, tearing in half returned tickets and then impaling them in bunches on long spikes for reference until he is quite sure there will be no need to look at them again. A man of sharp eye, lie must try to keep his heart hard, lest his pity lead him to lend more than he has any possibility of regaining should the pledged article never be reclaimed; and it is probably for this reason that so few women are found in the pawnbroking business. And finally, a man who is bound, quite unwittingly, to deal with shady characters, he must remain above the suspicion of the police, whom he can frequently help in tracing stolen goods which from time to time manage to get put over on him. But if the criminal is at one end of the pawnbroker’s line of customers, at the other end is the person who does not .wish to raise money at all, but merely wishes to put furs, overcoats or fine woollen blankets in safe, moth-proof storage for the summer ! A, surprising number of women do this, because they find the interest is less than the rates of many regular storage vaults, and in addition they gain the use of a few extra pounds for holidays ! . Another extraordinary case of pawning without need of money is recorded by an “uncle” near Victoria station.* A man came into the “confessional” box loqking jittery and blearyeyed and placed upon the counter two dozen bottles of whisky. . “These were given me for Christmas,” he said. “I’ve drunk more than is good for me now, but 1 know it I keep this in the house I’ll keep right on drinking. So I want to leave them with you. I’ll redeem one bottle a The most amazing loan an Oxford Street pawnbroker made was £2 iUs on an enormous stuffed turtle 1 He tested the tortoiseshell on its back ana found it worth a loan ! But, generally, the pawnbroker plays kindly old “uncle” to far more desperate borrowers. In a shop in AVhitechapel a young woman stood working the wedding ring from her fincer “I—l have to buy a suit of clothes for my husband,” she mumbled, not realising she was talking. “He—ho was killed yesterday. I can t let him be .buried in that old suit. Tlio pawnbroker weighed the ring; the gold was worth six shillings. This is all 1 can let you have” ho said. Ho handed her a pound note. “UNCLE” IS HUMAN.

Human? Tremendously. Contrary to popular belief, the average pawnbroker will lend every penny he dares on pledges. Every day lie is faced with people like the young husband and Jvife in O. Henry’s story, who pawned, respectively, his gold watch to buy hei some jewelled combs, while she. sold her hair to buy him a watch chain That eighty per cent, or all pledged articles are "redeemed is tlio J e ? s0 B vour “uncle” can help you; and t is likewise the reason that ho will lend you every penny possible, up to seventy-five per cent, of the price you paid 1