Help me, if you can: Horse Dung in the Olden Days

There were services to remove the horse manure from the streets, and street cleaning was a vibrant form of individual private enterprise in London in the 19th century--so much so, that these men were outraged when street-cleaning was organized as a public responsibility.

Something else for you to think about--horse manure in the streets was the major disease vector in 19th century cities, and especially responsible for high infant- and childhood mortality rates. The advent of the automobile and the disappearance of the ubitquitous horse from city streets was one of the most profoundly effective public health measures in the history of cities, even though not so intended. Additionally, horses when kept closely confined become high-risk potential vectors for tuberculosis, and urban stables very likely were just that. For example, John Keats and his sister were raised by an uncle who kept a large, successful city stable, above which the family resided. Both Keats and his sister were dead before age 30, both of "consumption."

Thanks, Setanta! That was both useful and interesting. Do you know whether people worked thus in the countryside?

Very likely not, DetR--there wouldn't really have been a need, given the lower volumn of traffic in country lanes. Most likely, if the manure was dealt with, it would have been by poor folk collecting in order to manure their garden patches.

By the way, there was an interesting illustration in London: the Biography by Peter Ackeroyd, which showed a 19th century political cartoon in which one of these "private enterprise" street cleaners rails about losing his livelihood to the new municipal street cleaners.

Depends, where you lived, I suppose.

Peter Ackroyd descrobed the situation in London (London. The Biography, Chatto & Windus, 2000).

He says that this work was done by mostly jobless people, who were a kind a kind of "traffic warden" as well.

Later in 19th century, road sweepers were doing their job:

Depend on Walter, that's just the illustration to which i was referring.

Thanks, Boss.

Thank you: you have just saved me from wasting another fifty hours trying to find out. I'll try to find that Biography tomorrow... did you find it interesting?

Imagine if waste disposal were still private these days: I would think that, more often than not, desperate immigrants would take up the jobs, and 'natives--' though not wanting the jobs in the first place-- would be angered that all the jobs are going to immigrants!

I think you'll really enjoy the Ackeroyd book, DetR--but it is more likely one which you will sip, rather than guzzle.

When the doctors and nurses start to get the big head about how indispensible they are, recall silently to yourself the extent to which good civil engineers, competent plumbers and the automobile are responsible for giving us a clean environment in which we have a good chance at living our full "three score and ten."

Well, I just wanted to scan the pic from the book .... when I found it searching archivated websites (the pic isn't actually online anymore) :wink: .

The biography is excellent - really interesting reading, even for "non-histoty-freaks" (I admit that I read it in German)

Brilliant! Thanks, Walter!

Setanta: sometimes the best books are ones to which you can return and return, rather than indulge in.

It is quite ironic that the automobile should actually be beneficial for the environment: maybe things do balance each other out in the end..