bone-grubber

plural bone-grubbers

1. obsoleteA person who scavenges for waste materials such as bones and rags to sell.

   If anyone believes that rats are not used for human food, he must change his opinion. In Paris the chiffoniers or bone-grubbers eat them.

   1875 February, James Mackintosh, “All About Rats”, in Ballou’s Monthly Magazine, volume 41, number 2, page 183

   3 more examples

   More than half of our modern scribes, and particularly the dramatic portion of them, are little better than literary bone-grubbers, pickers and stealers of unconsidered trifles,—men who, having no brains, live by spinning the brains of others, and give themselves credt for originality.

   1842, William Collier, “A Chapter on Beards”, in Bentley’s Miscellany, Volume 11, January-June 1842, p. 575

   The bone-grubber generally seeks out the narrow back streets, where dust and refuse are cast, or where any dust-bins are accessible. The articles for which he chiefly searches are rags and bones—rags he prefers—but waste metal, such as bits of lead, pewter, copper, brass, or old iron, he prizes above all.

   1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, volume 2, page 139

   While you were there father died. As you know, he was a bone-grubber; the only property he left me was a hooked stick, a bag, and a horse’s skeleton.

   1880, W. T. Washburn, chapter 47, in The Unknown City: A Story of New York, New York: Jesse Haney & Co, page 351

   Synonyms: bone-picker, rag-and-bone man