#4 Toshers and Mudlarks
According to Wikipedia, A tosher was someone who scavenged in the sewers, especially in London during the Victorian period. The word tosher was also used to describe the thieves who stripped valuable copper from the hulls of ships moored along the Thames. It was a common sight in 19th Century for whole families to whip off a manhole cover and go down into the sewers, where they would find rich pickings. As most toshers would reek of the sewers, they were not popular with the neighbors. Mudlarks would search the muddy shores of the River Thames at low tide for anything that could be sold; and sometimes, when occasion arose, pilfering from river traffic. They would have to wade through unprocessed sewage and even sometimes dead bodies in order to find little treasures to sell. In a kind of weird twist, this is now the popular hobby of some middle class Londoners who travel the banks to clean up trash.
~Lynn~