I work at home, and despite being on the ‘do not call’ list, I get a lot of telemarketing calls. I have found myself thinking that it must have been so much easier in the good old days, before telephones—and texts—were a constant source of interruption. But actually, the recent past may have been just as bad, in a different way.
I was reading Judith Flanders’ Inside the Victorian Home recently, and she recounts the testimony in 1872 of a London man (who also worked at home) summoned by the local magistrate for assaulting a peddler woman who had come to his door three times in one day (evidently he physically removed her from his stoop). The man reported that as many as 38 persons in one day habitually came to his door and rang his bell, including (and these are identified by what the peddlers cried out) “’rags and bones,’ ‘Crockery,’ ‘Sixpence a peck, peas,’ ‘Fine young rabbits,’ ‘Roots all a-blowing, all a growing,’ ‘Crochet mats, slippers, writing-paper.’”
The magistrate, who also worked from home it seems, acquitted the man. (398)
