to five pence per pound. In a typical day, a rag-and-bone man might expect to earn about sixpence. Mayhew's report indicates that many who worked as rag-and-bone men did so after falling on hard times, and generally lived in squalor. Although they usually started work well before dawn, they were not immune to the public's ire; in 1872, several rag-and-bone men in Westminster caused complaint when they emptied the contents of two dust trucks to search for rags, bones and paper, blocking people's path. The ragpickers (rag and bone man) in the 19th and early 20th century did not recycle the materials themselves. They would simply collect whatever they could find and turn it over to a "master ragpicker" (usually a former ragpicker) who would, in turn, sell it—generally by weight—to wealthy investors with the means to convert the materials into something more profitable. In the West Riding of Yorkshire, rag and bone men would collect waste woollen and rag products from householders to sell on to the Shoddy factories. 'Shoddy', cloth made from recycled wool, was first manufactured (and probably invented) by Benjamin Law in Batley, West Yorkshire, in 1813. The process involved grinding woollen rags into a fibrous mass and mixing this with some fresh wool. Law’s nephews later came up with a similar process involving felt or hard-spun woollen cloth, the product in this case being called ‘mungo’. Samuel Parr was the first producer of mungo in 1834. He used old coats and trousers, tailors clippings, ground up to produce shorter fibres than shoddy. In the shoddy preparation process, the rags were sorted, and any seams, or parts of the rag not suitable, were left to rot and then sold onto to farmers to manure crops. Or they were used for bedding or stuffing. The remaining wool rags were then sent to the shoddy mills for processing. For several decades shipments of rags even arrived from continental Europe. Shoddy and mungo manufacture was, by the 1860s, a huge industry in West Yorkshire, particularly in and around the Batley, Dewsbury and Ossett areas. Although it was solely a job for the lowest of the working classes, ragpicking was considered an honest occupation, more on the level of street sweeper than of a beggar. In Paris, ragpickers were regulated by law and could operate only at night. They were required to return unusually valuable items either to the items'