menu_book Chapter 30

section thirty of london labour and the london poor volume two by henry mayhew this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by gillian henry of the london dustmen nightmen sweeps and scavengers these men constitute a large body and are a class who all things considered do their work silently and efficiently almost without the cognizance of the mass of the people the refuse is removed from our streets and houses and london as if in the care of a tidy housewife is always being cleaned great as are the faults and absurdities of many parts of our system of public cleansing nevertheless when compared with the state of things in any continental capital the superiority of the metropolis of great britain is indisputable in all this matter there is little merit to be attributed to the workmen except that they may be well drilled for the majority of them are as much machines apart from their animation as are the cane and wheel bone made to cleanse the chimney

or the clumsy-looking machine, which in its progress is a vehicular scavenger, sweeping as it goes. These public cleansers are to be thus classified. 1. Dustmen, or those who empty and remove the collection of ashes, bones, vegetables and so on, deposited in the dustbins, or other refuse receptacles, throughout the metropolis. 2. Nightmen, or those who remove the contents of the cesspools.

three sweeps or those who remove the soot from the chimneys four scavengers or those who remove the dirt from the streets roads and markets let me however before proceeding further with the subject lay before the reader the following important return as to the extent and contents of this prodigious city for this document i am indebted to the commissioners of police gentlemen from whom i have derived the most valuable information since the commencement of my inquiries, and to whose courtesy and consideration I am anxious to acknowledge my many obligations. Return showing the extent, population and police force in the Metropolitan Police District and the City of London in September 1850. Readers note, there

follows a table giving details of the City of London and the Metropolitan Police District. Note, the Metropolitan Police District comprises a circle, the radius of which is 15 miles from Charing Cross. The extreme boundary on the north includes the parish of Cheshunt and South Mims. On the south, Epsom. On the east, Dagenham and Crayford.

And on the west, Uxbridge and Staines. The inner district includes the parish of St John Hampstead on the north, Tooting and Streatham on the south, Ealing and Brentford on the west, and Greenwich on the east. The Registrar-General's District is equal, or nearly so, to the Inner Metropolitan Police District. The City of London is bounded

on the south by the river, on the east by Whitechapel, on the west by Chancery Lane, and north by Finsbury. Area in square miles. Metropolitan Police District Inner District 91. Outer District 609.5. Total 700.5. City of London 1.75. Grand total 702.25 square miles. Parishes Police District, 3,636. City of London, 50. Grand total, 3,686. Number of houses inhabited. Inner

District 289,912, Outer District 59,995, Total Metropolitan Police District 349,907, City of London 15,613, Grand Total 365,520, Number of Houses Uninhabited, Inner District 11,868. Outer District 1,437. Total Metropolitan Police District 13,305. City of London 387. Grand Total 13,692. Number of houses being built. Inner District 4,634. Outer District 1,097. Total Metropolitan Police District 5,731. City of London 23. Grand total 5,754.

Population Inner District 1,986,629. Outer District 350,331. Total Metropolitan Police District 2,336,960. City of London 125,000. Grand total 2,461,960. Police Force. Inner District 4,844. Outer District 660 Total Metropolitan Police District 5,504 City of London 568

Grand Total 6,072 The total here given can hardly be considered as the dimensions of the metropolis, though where the capital begins and ends, it is difficult to say. If, however, London be regarded as concentring within the inner police district, then adding the extent and contents of that district to those of the city, as above detailed, we have the subjoined statement as to the dimensions and inhabitants of the metropolis proper. Area

92.75 square miles Parishes 179 Length of street, roads and so on 1,750 miles. Number of inhabited houses 305,525. Ditto uninhabited 12,255. Ditto being built 4,657.

Population 2,111,629. Police force 5,412. But if the extent of even this inner district be so vast as almost to overpower the mind with its magnitude, if its population be greater than that of the entire kingdom of Hanover, and almost equal to that of the Republic of Switzerland, if its houses be so numerous that, placed side by side,

they would form one continuous line of dwellings from its centre to Moscow, If its streets and roads be nearly equal in length to one quarter of the diameter of the earth itself, what a task must the cleansing of such a brick-in-wilderness be, and yet assuredly, though it be by far the greatest, it is at the same time by far the cleanest city in the world. The removal of the refuse of a large town is perhaps one of the most important of social operations.

Not only is it necessary for the well-being of a vast aggregation of people that the orduer should be removed from both within and around their dwellings as soon as it is generated, but nature, ever working in a circle and reproducing in the same ratio as she destroys, has made this same orduer not only the cause of present disease

when allowed to remain within the city, but the means of future health and sustenance when removed to the fields. In a leading article in the Morning Chronicle, written about two years since, I said, quote, That man gets his bones from the rocks and his muscles from the atmosphere is beyond all doubt.

The iron in his blood and the lime in his teeth were originally in the soil, but these could not be in his body unless they had previously formed part of his food. and yet we can neither live on air nor on stones. We cannot grow fat upon lime and iron is positively indigestible in our stomachs.

It is by means of the vegetable creation alone that we are enabled to convert the mineral into flesh and blood. The only apparent use of herbs and plants is to change the inorganic earth, air and water into organic substances fitted for the nutrition of animals.

The little lichen, which by means of the oxalic acid that it secretes, decomposes the rocks to which it clings, and fits their line for assimilation with higher organisms, is, as it were, but the primitive bone maker of the world. By what subtle transmutation inorganic nature is changed into organic,

and dead, inert matter, quickened with life, is far beyond us even to conjecture. Suffice it that an express apparatus is required for the process, a special mechanism to convert the crust of the earth, as it is called, into food for man and beast.

Now in nature, everything moves in a circle, perpetually changing and yet ever returning to the point whence it started. Our bodies are continually decomposing and recomposing. Indeed, the very process of breathing is but one of decomposition. As animals live on vegetables, even so is the refuse of the animal, the vegetable's food.

The carbonic acid which comes from our lungs, and which is poison for us to inhale, is not only the vital air of plants, but positively their nutriment. With the same wondrous economy that marks all creation, it has been ordained that what is unfitted for the support of the superior organisms is of all substances the best adapted to give strength and vigour to the inferior.

That which we excrete as pollution to our system, they secrete as nourishment to theirs. Plants are not only nature's scavengers, but nature's purifiers. They remove the filth from the earth, as well as disinfect the atmosphere, and fit it to be breathed by a higher order of beings. Without the vegetable creation, the animal could neither have been nor be.

Plants not only fitted the earth originally for the residence of man and the brute, but to this day they continue to render it habitable to us. For this end, their nature has been made the very antithesis to ours. The process by which we live is the process by which they are destroyed. Hence, in order that the balance of waste and supply should be maintained,

that the principle of universal compensation should be kept up, and that what is rejected by us should go to the sustenance of plants, nature has given us several instinctive motives, to remove our refuse from us. She has not only constituted that which we digest, the most loathsome of all things to our senses and imagination, but she has rendered its effluvium

highly pernicious to our health, sulphuretted hydrogen being at once the most deleterious and offensive of all gases. Consequently, as in all other cases, where the great law of nature has to be enforced by special sanctions, a double motive has been given us to do that which it is necessary for us to do, and thus it has been made not only advantageous to us to remove our refuse to the fields, but positively detrimental to our health and disgusting to our senses, to keep it

in the neighbourhood of our houses. In every well-regulated state, therefore, an effective and rapid means for carrying off the orger of the people to a locality where it may be fruitful instead of destructive, becomes a most important consideration. Both the health and the wealth of the nation depend upon it. If to make two blades of wheat grow where one grew before is to confer a benefit on the world, surely to remove that which will enable us at once to do this, and to

purify the very air which we breathe, as well as the water which we drink, must be a still greater boon to society. It is, in fact, to give the community not only a double amount of food, but a double amount of health to enjoy it. We are now beginning to understand this. Up to the present time, we have only thought of removing our refuse. The idea of using it never entered our minds. It was not until science taught us the dependence of one order of creation

upon another, that we began to see that what appeared worse than worthless to us was nature's capital, wealth set aside for future production. End quote. In connection with this part of the subject, namely the use of human refuse, I would here draw attention to those erroneous notions as to the multiplication of the people, which teach us to look upon the increase of the population beyond certain limits as the greatest possible evil that can befall a community.

Population, it is said, multiplies itself in a geometrical ratio, whereas the produce of the land is increased only in arithmetical proportion. That is to say, while the people are augmented after the rate of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, the quantity of food for them can be extended only in the following degrees. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12. The cause of this is said to be that, after a certain stage in the cultivation

of the soil, the increase of the produce from land is not in proportion to the increase of labour devoted to it. That is to say, doubling the labour does not double the crop. And hence it is asserted that the human race increasing at a quicker rate than the food, insufficient sustenance must be the necessary lot of a portion of the people in every densely populated community. That men of intelligence and education should have been persuaded by so plausible a doctrine

at the time of its first promulgation may be readily conceived, for then the notions concerning organic chemistry were vague in the extreme, and the great universal law of waste and supply remained to be fully developed. But that men pretending to the least scientific knowledge should in these days be found advocating the population theory, is only another of the many proofs of the indisposition of even the strongest minds to abandon their pet prejudices. Assuredly,

Malthus and Liebig are incompatible. If the new notions as to the chemistry of vegetation be true, then must the old notions as to the population be utterly unfounded. If what we excrete plants secret, if what we exhale they inspire. If our refuse is their food, then it follows that to increase the population is to increase the quantity of manure, while to increase the manure is to augment the food of plants, and consequently the plants themselves. If the plants nourish us,

we at least nourish them. It seems never to have occurred to the economists that plants themselves required sustenance, and consequently they never troubled themselves to inquire whence they derived the elements of their growth. Had they done this, they would never have even expected that a double quantity of mere labour upon the soil should have doubled the produce, but they would rather have seen that it was utterly impossible for the produce to be doubled without

the food in the soil being doubled likewise. That is to say, they would have perceived that plants could not, whatever the labour exerted upon their cultivation, extract the elements of their organisation from the earth and air unless those elements previously existed in the land and atmosphere in which they grew, and that such elements, moreover, could not exist there without some organic being to digest them.

This doctrine of the universal compensation, extending throughout the material world, and more especially through the animal and vegetable kingdom, is perhaps one of the grandest and most consoling that science has yet revealed to us, making each mutually dependent on the other and so contributing each to the other's support. Moreover, it is the more comforting as enabling us almost to demonstrate the falsity of a creed which is opposed to every generous impulse of our nature

and which is utterly irreconcilable with the attributes of the creator. Thanks to organic chemistry, I said two years ago in the Morning Chronicle, we are beginning to wake up. Science has taught us that the removal of the order of towns to the fields is a question that concerns not only our health,

but what is a far more important consideration with us, our breeches' pockets. What we in our ignorance had mistaken for refuse of the vilest kind, we have now learned to regard as being, with reference to its fertilising virtues, a precious ore running in rich veins beneath the surface of our streets. Whereas, if allowed to reek and seethe in cesspools within centre of our very hearths,

or to pollute the water that we use to quench our thirst and cook our food, it becomes, like all wealth badly applied, converted into poison. as Romeo says of gold to the apothecary quote doing more murders in this loathsome world

than those poor compounds which thou mayest not sell end quote formerly in our eagerness to get rid of the pollution we had literally not looked beyond our noses hence our only care was to carry off the nuisance

from the immediate vicinity of our own residences it was no matter to us what became of it so long as it did not taint the atmosphere around us. This the very instincts of our nature had made objectionable to us, so we laid down just as many drains and sewers

as would carry our night soil to the nearest stream, and thus, instead of poisoning the air that we breathed, we poisoned the water that we drank. Then, as the town extended, for cities, like mosaic work, are put together piecemeal,

street being dovetailed to street, like county to county in our children's geographical puzzles, each new row of houses tailed on its drains to those of its neighbours, without any inquiry being made as to whether they were on the same level or not. The consequence of this is that the sewers in many parts of our metropolis

are subject to an ebb and flood, like their central stream, so that the pollution which they remove at low water, they regularly bring back, at high water, to the very doors of the houses whence they carried it. According to the average of the returns from 1841 to 1846, we are paying two millions every year for guano, bone dust and other foreign fertilisers of our soil.

In 1845, we employed no fewer than 683 ships to bring home 220,000 tonnes of animal manure from Ichabo alone. And yet we are every day emptying into the Thames 115,000 tonnes of a substance which has been proved to be possessed of even greater fertilising powers. With 200 tonnes of the sewage that we are wont to regard as refuse applied to the irrigation of one acre of meadowland, seven crops, we are told, have been produced in the year, each of them worth

from £6 to £7, so that considering the produce to have been doubled by these means, we have an increase of upwards of £20 per acre per annum, effected by the application of that refuse to the surface of our fields. This return is at the rate of £10 for every 100 tonnes of sewage, and since the total amount of refuse discharged into the Thames from the sewers of the metropolis, is in round numbers 40 million tonnes per annum. It follows that,

according to such estimate, we are positively wasting 4 million pounds of money every year. Or rather, it costs us that amount to poison the waters about us. Or, granting that the fertilising power of the metropolitan refuse is, as it is said to be, as great for arable as for pasture lands, then for every 200 tonnes of manure that we now cast away, we might have an increase of at least 20 bushels of corn per acre. Consequently,

the entire 40 million tonnes of sewage, if applied to fatten the land instead of to poison the water, would, at such a rate of increase, swell our produce to the extent of 4 million bushels of wheat per annum. Calculating then that each of these bushels would yield 16 quarter loaves, it would follow that we fling into the Thames no less than 246 million pounds of bread every year, or still worse, by pouring into the river that which, if spread upon our fields,

would enable thousands to live. We convert the elements of life and health into the germs of disease and death, changing into slow but certain poisons, that which, in the subtle transmutation of organic nature, would become acres of life-sustaining grain. End quote. I shall have more to say subsequently on this waste and its consequences. These considerations show how vastly important it is that, in the best of all possible ways, we should collect, remove and use the

scavengery and excrementitious matter of our streets and houses. Now the removal of the refuse of London is no slight task, consisting as it does of the cleansing of 1,750 miles of streets and roads, of collecting the dust from 300,000 dustbins, of emptying, according to the returns of the Board of health, the same number of cesspools, and sweeping near upon three million chimneys. A task so vast it might naturally be imagined would give employment to a number of hands,

and yet, if we trusted the returns of the Occupation Abstract of 1841, the whole of these stupendous operations are performed by a limited number of individuals. Return of the number of sweeps, dustmen and nightmen in the metropolis according to the census of 1841. Chimney sweepers total 1,033. Males 20 years and upwards 619.

Under 20, 370. Females 20 years and upwards 44. Scavengers and nightmen total 254. Males 20 years and upwards, 227 Under 20, 10

Females 20 years and upwards, 17 I am informed by persons in the trade that the females here mentioned as chimney-sweepers and scavengers and knightmen must be such widows or daughters of sweeps and knightmen as have succeeded to their businesses, for that no women work at such trades, excepting perhaps in the management and care of the suit, in assisting to empty and fill the bags.

Many females, however, are employed in sifting dust, but the calling of the dustmen and dustwomen is not so much as noticed in the population returns. According to the occupation abstract of the previous decennial period, the number of males of twenty years and upwards, for none others were mentioned, Pursuing the same callings in the metropolis in 1831 were as follows.

Soot and chimney sweepers, 421. Nightmen and scavengers, 130. Hence the increase in the adult male operatives belonging to these trades between 1831 and 1841 was for chimney sweeps, 198. And scavengers and nightmen, 97.

But these returns are preposterously incorrect. In the first place, it was not until 1842 that the parliamentary enactment prohibiting the further employment of climbing boys for the purpose of sweeping chimneys came into operation. At that time, the number of inhabited houses in the metropolis was, in round numbers, 250,000, and calculating these to have contained only eight rooms each, there would have been at the least two million chimneys to sweep.

Now, according to the government returns above cited, the London Climbing Boys, for the masters did not and could not climb, in 1841 numbered only 370, at which rate there would have been but one boy to no less than 5,400 chimneys.

Pursuing the same mode of testing the validity of the official statements, we find, as the knightmen generally work in gangs of four, that each of the 63, or say 64, gangs comprised in the census returns would have had 4,000 cesspools to empty of their contents, while working both as scavengers and

nightmen, for according to the census they were the only individuals following those occupations in London. They would, after their nocturnal labours, have had about 27 miles of streets and roads to cleanse, a feat which would certainly have thrown the scavenging prowess of Hercules into the shade. Under the respective heads of the dustmen, nightmen, sweeps, and scavengers, I shall give an account of the numbers and so on employed, and a resume of the whole.

It will be sufficient here to mention that my investigations lead to the conclusion that of men working as dustmen, a portion of whom are employed as nightmen and scavengers, there are at present about 1,800 in the metropolis. The census of 1841, as I have pointed out, mentions no dustman whatever.

But I have so often had instances of the defects of this national numbering of the people that I have long since ceased to place much faith in its returns connected with the humbler grades of labour. The costumongers, for example, I estimate at about 10,000,

whereas the government reports, as has been before mentioned, ignore the very existence of such a class of people, and make the entire hawkers, hucksters and peddlers of the metropolis to amount to no more than 2,045. Again, the London coal labourers, heavers and porters

are said in the census of 1841 to be only 1,700 in number. I find, however, that there are no less than 1,800 registered coal whippers and as many coal porters, so that I am in no way inclined to give great credence to the official enumerations. The difficulties which beset the perfection of such a document are almost insuperable, and I have already heard of returns for the forthcoming document made by ignorant people as to their occupations,

which already go far to nullify the facts in connection with the employment of the ignorant and profligate classes of the metropolis. Before quitting this part of the subject, namely the extent of surface, the length of streets, and the number of houses throughout the metropolis requiring to be continually cleansed of their refuse, as well as the number of people as continually engaged in so cleansing them, let me here append the last returns of the Registrar-General.

copied from the census of 1851, as to the dimensions and contents of the metropolis, according to that functionary, so that they may be compared with those of the Metropolitan Police, before given. In Wales, London exhibited, which is by far the most comprehensive description of the metropolis that I have seen, it is stated that it is, quote, only possible to adopt a general idea of the giant city, end quote.

as its precise boundaries and extent cannot be defined. On the north of the Thames, we are told, London extends to Edmonston and Finchley. On the west, it stretches to Acton and Hammersmith. On the east, it reaches Leighton and Ham. While on the south of the Thames, the metropolis is said to embrace Wandsworth,

Streatham, Lewisham, Woolwich and Plumstead. To each of these points, says Mr. Wheel, but upon what authority he does not inform us. Continuous streets of houses reach, but the solid mass of house lies within narrow bounds, with these several long arms extending from it. The greatest length of street, from east to west, he adds, is about fourteen miles, and from north

to south, about thirteen miles. The solid mass is about seven miles by four miles, so that the ground covered with houses is not less than 20 square miles. Mr. McAllaigh, in his London in 1850 to 1851, has a passage to the same effect. He says, quote, the continued and rapid increase of buildings renders it difficult to ascertain the extent of the metropolis at any particular period. If we include in it those parts only that present a solid mass of houses, its length from east to

may be taken at six miles, and its breadth from north to south at about three miles and a half. There is, however, a nearly continuous line of houses from Blackwall to Chelsea, a distance of about seven miles, and from Walworth to Holloway, of four and a half miles. The extent of surface covered by buildings is estimated at about 16 square miles, or above 10,000 acres, so that M. Say, the celebrated French economist, did not really

indulge in hyperbole when he said, quote, London is no longer a town, it is a province covered with houses, end quote. The government authorities, however, appear to have very different notions from either of the above gentlemen as to the extent of the metropolis. The limits of London, as at present laid down by the Registrar-General, include 176 parishes, besides several precincts, liberties, and

extra-parochial places, comprising altogether about 115 square miles. According to the old bills of mortality, London formerly included only 148 parishes, which were located as follows. Parishes within the walls of the city, 97. Parishes without the walls, 17. Parishes in the city and liberties of Westminster, 10. Out parishes in Middlesex and Surrey, 24. Total 148. The parishes which have been annexed to the above at different periods since the commencement of the present century are

Parishes added by the late Mr Rickman See Population Abstracts 1801-1831 Including Chelsea, Kensington, Paddington, St Mirlibone and St Pancras Parishes added by the Registrar-General 1838 including Hammersmith, Fulham, Stoke Newington, Stratford-Libault, Bromley, Camberwell,

Detford, Greenwich and Woolwich. 10. Parishes added by the Registrar-General in 1844 including Clapham, Battersea, Wandsworth, Putney, Lower Tooting and Streatham. 6. Parishes added by the Registrar-General in 1846 comprising Hampstead, Charlton, Plumstead, Eltham, Leigh, Kidbroke and Lewisham. 7. Total number of parishes in the metropolis, as defined by the Registrar-General, 176. The extent of London, according to the limits assigned

to it at the several periods above mentioned, was London within the old bills of mortality from 1726, statute acres 21,080, square miles 32, London within the limits adopted by the late Mr Rickman, 1801-1831, 29,850 acres, 46 square miles, London within the limits adopted by the Registrar-General 1838-43, 44,850 acres, 70 square miles. London within the limits adopted by the Registrar-General 1844-46, 55,650 acres, 87 square miles. London within the limits adopted by the

Registrar-General in 1847-1851, 74,070 acres, 115 square miles. London, observes Mr. Whale, has now swallowed up many cities, towns, villages, and separate jurisdictions. The four commonwealths, or kingdoms, of the Middle Saxons, East Saxons, the South Rick, and the Kentwarns, once ruled over its surface. It now embraces the Episcopal cities of London and Westminster,

the towns of Woolwich, Detford and Wandsworth, the watering places of Hampstead, Highgate, Islington, Acton and Kilburn, the fishing town of Barking, the once secluded and ancient villages of Ham, Hornsey, Sydenham, leigh kensington fulham lambeth clapham paddington hackney chelsea stoke newington newington bats plumstead and many others end of section 30