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A brief history of clothing collections

Headings on this page :

Above: a collection leaflet

Introduction

This page is our attempt at compiling a timeline (history) of key events concerning :

• clothing collections (especially charitable ones), and
• related issues.

We've included :

• relevant changes in the law, its administration, and regulators
• events regarding charities and charity shops
• notable reports in the media
• a few unrelated events to give context [shown in italics] eg WW2, (with '#context' next to them)

Key - colour-coding, searching etc of entries on this page:

• Law - Acts of Parliament and Regulations are shown as follows :
   Act     Regulations 
• References to charity shops are shown as follows :
  charity shops
• References to clothing collections are shown as follows :
  Clothing collections
• References to re-use/recycling :  a recycling symbol is used (see example in the right-hand margin)
• Items beginning with a hash "#" are searching/indexing terms, eg "#parliament".
  So, to search for (or highlight) these, include the hash.  Examples :
  • "#association" - indicates an entry for an association (or similar organisation)
  • "#central-govt" - indicates central government (eg Whitehall)
  • "#charity" - indicates an entry on an individual named charity (eg Oxfam)
  • "#collector" - indicates a named clothing collector (eg Clothes Aid)
  • "#consumers" - indicates consumer law, consumer issues, trading standards
  • "#ireland" - indicates Ireland (N Ireland and/or the Irish Republic)
  • "#law-act" - indicates law: Act(s) of Parliament
  • "#law-regs" - indicates law: Regulations
    Note: a search for "#law" gets both act and regs
  • "#lg" - indicates local government
  • "#media-broadcast" - indicates broadcasts =TV or radio
  • "#media-mag" - indicates an entry relating to a magazine article
  • "#media-newspaper" - indicates an entry relating to a newspaper article
    Note: a search for "#media" gets all media items
  • "#parliament" - indicates a reference to Parliament (eg House of Commons debates, MPs)
  • "#quango" - indicates an entry relating to a QUANGO
  • "#recycling" - indicates re-use or recycling
  • "#report" - indicates a report or similar - used if the word "report" isn't in the entry
  • "#web" - indicates the web/Internet
• Other easily-searchable/highlightable themes below include:
  "BBC", "1939", "council", "licen" (to mark licenc* and licens*), "prosecut", "Exemption Order", "Clothes Aid", "report", "police"

This is a new and evolving page.  We may have made a few factual errors.  If you notice any, please contact us.

Note - Prosecutions

Originally we included prosecutions in the Timeline below.
However, we've now put them on a separate page, as follows :
- List of prosecutions of charitable house-to-house collectors page

Filtering the list below (a 1-column table)   NEW 

You can look at the table below just as it is - browsing up and down the page as usual  
And you can search it as usual - for instance using Ctrl-F (then using the Enter or F3 keys).

However, this table uses table-filter software - so you can filter and/or sort entries.

Filtering:  At any stage, you can select (in other words, filter) the entries below.
This "collapses" the table temporarily - so it only lists the items (rows) which you want.
Do this as follows:

• Type your search text into one or more of the empty form boxes in the top row of the table (where it says "Type your search text here ! ...").
• Then press the Enter key to do the selection.
• To see the full list of entries again :
  • Delete all the text you've added in the form box(es) - and press the Enter key.
  • Or click on the "Clear filters" icon (a filter funnel with a red cross) at the top right.
  • Or press the F5 function key - which refreshes the page.

The heading(s) of the selected column(s) and the selected text are highlighted.
The filter is case-insensitive - so UPPER or lower case makes no difference.
Use two vertical-line characters (by the "Z" key) to indicate "or".  Example:  bloggs||smith
Other codes include:  {x =begins with x    }x =ends with x    !x =not x    [empty] =empty 
See http://tablefilter.free.fr/   for more of these codes (with examples).
At the top of the table, there's a counter that tells you the number of rows shown.

  Sorting:

• With most filter-tables on the website, you can click on column headings to sort them.
• You can tell if it sorts - your mouse pointer changes to a hand when you hover over a column heading.
• You can click on a sequence of columns to get two or more "levels" of sorting.
  Click in the order of increasing importance (eg click the main sort column last).
  There's an arrow shown on the last column you clicked to sort.
• To revert to the original sort order, press the F5 function key to refresh the page.

These filtering and sorting facilities allow you to interact with the table - so you can change it to suit your needs.  They make the table behave like a simple database or spreadsheet.

See our Web design page for more on table filtering facilities (JavaScript).
The software used on the table below is called "HTML Table Filter" (by Max Guglielmi).
For more help on using it (eg search syntax), see http://tablefilter.free.fr/  

    

Browsers:  The software works fine with Internet Explorer 8, Firefox and Safari.  It's fine with Opera too - except it only sorts one column at a time.

By the way, there's another nice JavaScript table utility called "TableTools"   (by Mingyi Liu).  A modified version is available as a free add-on for the Firefox browser.  When you're browsing with Firefox and see any table, you can call up the TableTools utility (with a right-click) and do powerful filtering and sorting (and more).

Examples of selection/search text which you can type in the empty form boxes below
(and see above for more examples) :

• #charity, #collector, #law, #law-act, #media, #parliament, #recycling, #web, BBC, report, Clothes Aid, ambulance, Scotland
   

Clockface - Biberach (Riss), Germany, Ulmer Tor (courtesy of wikimedia.org)
reflecting the "timeline" theme of this page