William Hogarth was no fan of pawnbroking. In his 1751 print Gin Lane, he portrayed a Mr Gripe seizing a saw from a carpenter and cooking pots from a housewife in exchange for cash they would fritter on cheap gin. In front of Gripe’s door, a dog and a starving boy gnaw on the same bone. “Of all the numerous receptacles for misery and distress with which the streets of London unhappily abound,” Charles Dickens wrote 84 years later, “there are, perhaps, none which present such striking scenes as the pawnbrokers’ shops.”
When Nathan Finch opened his first pawnbrokers in 2004, he named it after Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers to counter an image that, he insists, no longer haunts his industry. His branch in Dartford, Kent, is on the high street, not in the back alleys. Its red-curtained windows boast a pair of Louboutin stilettos and a Mulberry ostrich-leather handbag. The company – like every other in this industry – is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. And, says Finch, many customers are so grateful for its service in helping to “smooth their cashflow” that they come back with flowers and chocolates for the staff.
But, just as in the 18th century, economic calamity spells boom time for pawnbrokers. Shares in the UK’s largest, H&T, have risen 58% this year. And as inflation hits a 40-year high, the company has reported that “pledge lending” – loans secured against valuables, most commonly jewellery – has reached record levels.
Deidre first visited a pawnbroker four years ago, as all three generations of her family were struggling to make ends meet. She was forced into retirement after breaking her shoulder. Her daughter is a single mother; her son and grandson are both out of work. The 74-year-old bitterly regrets that she had already sold off a necklace — to get £80 to buy her grandson a suit for a job interview — before thinking of pawn. Every piece of jewellery bought by her husband is even more priceless to her since his death last year.
“It’s a bit of a stigma, isn’t it,” she tells me behind bulletproof glass in the Dartford shop’s “privacy booth”. “But when I come in, they really made me feel at ease. They make sure you understand how much, and I always say to them, a couple of times, ‘I want to buy it back! I want to buy it back!’” (At Pickwick, almost 90% of items are redeemed. For men who bring in their own watches, and women their own handbags, it is touching 100%.)
Today, the pensioner has come in to pawn a gold heart necklace and sapphire earrings, given to her by her late husband for Christmas. She received a loan of £60, and will repay £102 if she waits the full seven months before coming to reclaim it. In an effort to attract more customers, Pickwick adds an extra month on to the minimum statutory period a shop must retain items for before selling them. On a loan of up to £500, it charges a monthly interest of 10% (a representative APR of 149.3%).
“It is quite a high rate,” she says, but she is usually back here within a matter of weeks. “On Monday, when I get my little pension, I try to pay £10 or £20 off and then it’s not so bad.” In any case, she has no alternative. “It’s not enough for a bank loan. I wouldn’t be able to get one because it’s only me, and we’ve always had a bit of bad credit.”
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