street-public

Updated: July 23, 2025

Outside the sculleries of the large hotels, or where banquets had been held, barrels of 'feast fragments used to be set. In these barrels the street-public were allowed to "dab" with a fork, at the rate of a penny a time, for discarded fragments of food. Occasionally a rich reward would fall to the enterprising "dabber."

W. C. (William Charles) Scully - Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer