pure finder

English

Alternative forms

• pure collector
• pure gatherer

Noun

pure finder (plural pure finders)

1. (obsolete) Someone who collected dog faeces for sale to tanneries (which used it as a siccative for bookbinding leather). Undertaken by poor people in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries.
   • 1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor‎^[1], volume 2, page 14:

     The pure-finders meet with a ready market for all the dogs’-dung they are able to collect, at the numerous tanyards in Bermondsey.

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see pure,‎ finder.
   • 2001 July, Howard S. Meyers, Finder's fee agreements: Potential pitfalls and considerations, The Attorney-CPA, published 2002, page 3:

     As one commentator has noted, although a pure finder may "induce the purchase or sale of" a security within the meaning of Section 15(a)(1), he or she is not normally a "broker" because he or she effects no transactions.