Each chapter opens with a vignette, but the author shores up these anecdotes with extensive analysis of pawnshop records, regulatory debates, and census records.
For example, under new regulations, no pawnshop was allowed to be set up within fifty yards (and later one hundred yards) of a gambling house.
References to daily payments of house rent and daily usage of pawnshops suggest that household management was conducted on a day-to-day basis.
A ship was lying on the stocks red with rust and the shipyard workers' only consolation was to put their tools in a pawnshop.
I have never taken anything to a pawnshop in my life.
If one took a look at the pawnshops one would see that they were unable to do so.
But it is a pledge which would have been better left in the pawnshop.
I do not give it to the pawnshop.
