“THE DIRTY DOZEN.”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19996, 13 January 1927, Page 18

“THE DIRTY DOZEN.”

ART OF CHIMNEY SWEEPING. LONDON’S QUEEREST CLUES. London has a club for every type of worker. Tber are clubs for barmaids, auctioneers, taxi-drivers, brewers, widows, flautists, anarchists, misogynists, profiteers, and chimney-sweeps. None have palatial headquarters like the clubs in Piccadilly, but therein lies their interest. Not far from Curzon street, in the heart of Mayfair, the “Yellowplushers” meet. This club takes itself very seriously, and is renowned for its hard-and-fast rules of etiquette. It is patronised by butlers, valets, footmen, and grooms in West End mansions. There is a story that a “Yellowplusher” w T as expelled from his club because he had been observed carrying a parcel along a main thoroughfare. This charge was brought before the committee, which, w-ith solemnity befitting the occasion, reminded him that the correct thing to have done would have been to have hired a taxi and charged it to his employer. The Buttons Club is an institution of a similar character. Membership is restricted to page-boys who work in Northumberland avenue and Picadilly hotels. Their premises are in a basement off Trafalgar Square. The “Dirty Dozen,” with one unfurnished room off the Old Kent road, meets weekly for the purpose of discussin~ the art of chimney sweeping. “Only bona-fide men engaged daily in the dirty work” can become members. The Domestics is composed of “lady cooks” and other domestic workers. Monthly meetings are held in the luxurious drawing room of a baronet who spends most of his time abroad, and vital matters, such as "ways and means for the rectification of injustices perpetrated by masters and mistresses,” are discussed.