Pawn-BROKERS, persons who keep shops, and lend money upon pledges to necessitous persons, and most commonly at an exorbitant interest. They are more properly styled pawn-takers, or tallymen; sometimes stripers, or striperers. These are meant in 1 Jac. I. cap.
xxi. sect. 5. where it is declared, that the sale of goods wrongfully taken to any broker, or pawn-broker, in London, Westminster, Southwark, or within two miles of London, does not alter the property. And (sect. 7.) if a broker, having received such goods, shall not, upon request of the owner, discover them, how and when he came by them, and to whom they are conveyed, he shall forfeit the double value thereof, to be recovered by action of debt, &c.
In the cities of Italy, there are companies established by authority for the letting out money on pawns, called mounts of piety; a title little becoming such institutions. In some parts of Italy, they have also mounts of piety of another kind, wherein they only receive ready money, and return it again with interest, at a certain sum per annum. At Bologna, they have several such mounts, which are distinguished into frank and perpetual: the interest of the former is only four per cent.; that of the latter, seven.
BROKERS are also those who sell old household furniture, and wearing apparel, &c.