Part 119

During the year 1851, I am credibly informed that as many as 3000 sewers were emptied by the hydraulic process; and calculating each to have contained the average quantity of refuse, viz. five tons or loads, or about 180 cubic feet, we have an aggregate of 540,000 cubic feet of cesspoolage ultimately carried off by the sewers. This, however, is only a twenty-seventh of the entire quantity.

The sum paid in wages to the men engaged in emptying these 3000 cesspools by the hydraulic process would, at the rate of 2_s._ per man to the four members of the gang, and 3_s._ to the ganger, or 11_s._ in all for each cesspool, amount to 1650_l._, which is 139_l._ and 250 cesspools less than the amount above given.

STATEMENT OF A CESSPOOL-SEWERMAN.

I give the following brief and characteristic statement, which is peculiar in showing the habitual _restlessness_ of the mere labourer. My informant was a stout, hale-looking man, who had rarely known illness. All these sort of labourers (nightmen included) scout the notion of the cholera attacking _them!_

“Work, sir? Well, I think I _do_ know what work is, and has known it since I was a child; and then I was set to help at the weaving. My friends were weavers at Norwich, and 26 years ago, until steam pulled working men down from being well paid and well off, it was a capital trade. Why, my father could sometimes earn 3_l._ at his work as a working weaver; there was money for ever then; now 12_s._ a-week is, I believe, the tip-top earnings of his trade. But _I didn’t like the confinement or the close air in the factories_, and so, when I grew big enough, I went to ground-work in the city (so he frequently called Norwich); I call ground-work such as digging drains and the like. Then I ’listed into the Marines. _Oh, I hardly know what made me_; men does foolish things and don’t know why; it’s human natur. I’m sure it wasn’t the bounty of 3_l._ that tempted me, for I was doing middling, and sometimes had night-work as well as ground-work to do. I was then sent to Sheerness and put on board the _Thunderer_ man-of-war, carrying 84 guns, as a marine. She sailed through the Straits (of Gibraltar), and was three years and three months blockading the Dardanelles, and cruising among the islands. I never saw anything like such fortifications as at the Dardanelles; why, there was mortars there as would throw a ton weight. No, I never heard of their having been fired. Yes, we sometimes got leave for a party to go ashore on one of the islands. They called them Greek islands, but I fancy as how it was Turks near the Dardanelles. O yes, the men on the islands was civil enough to us; they never spoke to us, and we never spoke to them. The sailors sometimes, and indeed the lot of us, would have bits of larks with them, laughing at ’em and taking sights at ’em and such like. Why, I’ve seen a fine-dressed Turk, one of their grand gentlemen there, when a couple of sailors has each been taking a sight at him, and dancing the shuffle along with it, make each on ’em a low bow, as solemn as could be. Perhaps he thought it was a way of being civil in our country! I’ve seen some of the head ones stuck over with so many knives, and cutlasses, and belts, and pistols, and things, that he looked like a cutler’s shop-window. We were ordered home at last, and after being some months in barracks, which I didn’t relish at all, were paid off at Plymouth. Oh, a barrack life’s anything but pleasant, but I’ve done with it. After that I was eight years and a quarter a gentleman’s servant, coachman, or anything (in Norwich), and then got tired of that and came to London, and got to ground and new sewer-work, and have been on the sewers above five years. Yes, I prefer the sewers to the Greek islands. I was one of the first set as worked a pump. There was a great many spectators; I dare say as there was 40 skientific gentlemen. I’ve been on the sewers, flushing and pumping, ever since. The houses we clean out, all says it’s far the best plan, ours is. ‘Never no more nightmen,’ they say. You see, sir, our plan’s far less trouble to the people in the house, and there’s no smell--least I never found no smell, and it’s cheap, too. In time the nightmen’ll disappear; in course they must, there’s so many new dodges comes up, always some one of the working classes is a being ruined. If it ain’t steam, it’s something else as knocks the bread out of their mouths quite as quick.”

OF THE PRESENT DISPOSAL OF THE NIGHT-SOIL.

It would appear, according to the previous calculations, that of the 15,000,000 cubic feet of house-refuse annually deposited in the cesspools of the metropolis, about 500,000 cubic feet are pumped by the French process into the sewers; consequently there still remains about 14,500,000 cubic feet, or about 404,000 loads, to be disposed of by other means. I shall now proceed to explain how the cesspoolage proper, that is to say, that which is removed by cartage rather than by being discharged into the sewers, is ultimately got rid of.

Until about twenty months ago, when the new sanitary regulations concerning the disposal of night-soil came into operation, the cesspool matter was “shot” in a night-yard, generally also a dust-yard. These were the yards of the parish contractors, and were situate in Maiden-lane, Paddington, &c., &c. Any sweeper-nightman, or any nightman, was permitted by the proprietor of one of these places to deposit his night-soil there. For this the depositor received no payment, the privilege of having “a shoot” being accounted sufficient.

There were, till within these six or eight years, I was informed, 60 places where cesspool manure could be shot. These included the nightmen’s yards and the wharves of manure dealers (some of the small coasting vessels taking it as ballast); but as regards the cesspool filth, there are now none of these places of deposit, though some little, I was told, might be done by stealth.

Of one of these night-yard factories Dr. Gavin gave, in 1848, the following account:--

“On the western side of Spitalfields workhouse, and entering from a street called Queen-street, is a nightman’s yard. A heap of dung and refuse of every description, about the size of a tolerably large house, lies piled to the left of the yard; to the right is an artificial pond, into which the contents of cesspools are thrown. The contents are allowed to desiccate in the open air; and they are frequently stirred for that purpose. The odour which was given off when the contents were raked up, to give me an assurance that there was nothing so very bad in the alleged nuisance, drove me from the place with the utmost speed.

“On two sides of this horrid collection of excremental matter was a patent manure manufactory. To the right in this yard was a large accumulation of dung, &c., but to the left there was an extensive layer of a compost of blood, ashes, and nitric acid, which gave out the most horrid, offensive, and disgusting concentration of putrescent odours it has ever been my lot to be the victim of. The whole place presented a most foul and filthy aspect, and an example of the enormous outrages which are perpetrated in London against society.

“It is a curious fact, that the parties who had charge of these two premises were each dead to the foulness of their own most pestilential nuisances. The nightman’s servant accused the premises of the manure manufacturer as the source of perpetual foul smells, but thought his yard free from any particular cause of complaint; while the servant of the patent manure manufacturer diligently and earnestly asserted the perfect freedom of his master’s yard from foul exhalations; but considered that the raking up of the drying night-soil on the other side of the wall was ‘quite awful, and enough to kill anybody.’

“Immediately adjoining the patent manure manufactory is the establishment of a bottle merchant. He complained to me in the strongest terms of the expenses and annoyances he had been put to through the emanations which floated in the atmosphere having caused his bottles to spoil the wine which was placed in such as had not been _very_ recently washed. He was compelled frequently to change his straw, and frequently to wash his bottles, and considered that unless the nuisance could be suppressed, he would be compelled to leave his present premises.”

This and similar places were suppressed soon after the passing of the sanitary measures of September, 1848.

The cesspool refuse, which was disposed of for manure, was at that time first shot into recesses in the night-yard, where it was mixed with exhausted hops procured from the brewhouses, which were said to absorb the liquid portions, when stirred up with the matter, and to add not only to the consistency of the mass, but to its readier portability for land manure or for stowage in a barge. It was also mixed with littered straw from the mews, and with stable manure generally. An old man who had worked many years--he did not know how many--in one of these yards, told me that when this night-soil was “fresh shot and first mixed” (with the hops, &c.), the stench was often dreadful. “How we stood it,” he said, “I don’t know; but we did stand it.”

In one of the night-and-dust-yards, I ascertained that as many as 50 loads, half of them waggon-loads, have been shot from the proprietor’s own carts, and from the carts of the nightmen “using” the yard, in one morning, but the average “shoot” was about ten loads (half a waggon) a-day for six days in the week.

Of the mode of manufacture of this manure, a full account has been given in the details of the cesspool system of Paris, for the process was the same in London, although on a much smaller scale; and indeed the manufacture here was chiefly in the hands of Frenchmen.

The manure was, after it had been deposited for periods varying from one month to five or six, sold to farmers and gardeners at from 4_s._ to 5_s._ the cart-load, although 4_s._, I was informed, might have been the general average. The cesspool matter, considered _per se_, was not worth, of late years, I am told, above 2_s._ a ton (or a load, which is sometimes rather more and sometimes less than a ton). It was when mixed that the price was 4_s._ to 5_s._ a ton. This cesspool filth was shot on the premises of the manufacturer gratuitously, as it was in any of the night-yards. It was not until it had been kept some time, and had been mixed (generally) with other manures, and sometimes with road-sweepings, that this manure was used in gardens; for it was said that if this had not been done, its ammoniacal vapours would have been absorbed and retained by the leaves of the fruit-trees.

This night-soil manure was devoted to two purposes--to the manufacture of deodorized and portable manure for exportation (chiefly to our sugar-growing colonies), and to the fertilization of the land around London.

When manufactured into manure it was shipped--in new casks generally, the manure casks of the outward voyage being transformed into the brown sugar casks of the homeward-bound vessels. I was told by a seaman who some years ago sailed to the West Indies, that these manure casks in damp weather gave out an unpleasant odour.

It was only to the home cultivators who resided at no great distance from a night-yard, from five to six miles or a little more, that this manure was sold to be carted away; their attendance at the markets with carts, waggons, and horses, giving them facilities of conveying the manure at a cheap rate. But upwards of three-fourths of the whole was sent in barges into the more distant country parts, having a ready water communication either by the Thames or by canal.

The purchaser nearer home conveyed it away in his own cart, and with his own horses, which had perhaps come up to town laden with cabbages to Covent Garden, or hay to Cumberland-market, the cart being made water-tight for the purpose. The “legal hours” to be observed in the cleansing of cesspools, and the transport of the contents upon such cleansing, not being required to be observed in this second transport of the cesspool manure, it was carted away at any hour, as stable dung now is.

It is not possible at the present time, when night-yards are no longer permitted to exist in London, and the manufacture of the night-soil manure is consequently suppressed, to ascertain the precise quantities disposed of commercially, in a former state of things.

The money returns to the master-nightman for the manure he now collects need no figures. The law requires him to refrain from shooting this soil in his own yard, or in _any_ inhabited part of the metropolis, and it is shot on the nearest farm to which he has access, merely for the privilege of shooting it, the farmer paying nothing for the deposit, with which he does what he pleases. It is mixed with other refuse, I was told, at present, and kept as compost, or used on the land, but the change is too recent for the establishment of any systematic traffic in the article.

OF THE WORKING NIGHTMEN AND THE MODE OF WORK.

Nightwork, by the provisions of the Police Act, is not to be commenced before twelve at night, nor continued beyond five in the morning, winter and summer alike. This regulation is known among the nightmen as the “legal hours,” and tends, in a measure, to account for the heterogeneous class of labourers who still seek nightwork; for strong men think little of devoting a part of the night, as well as the working hours of the day, to toil. A rubbish-carter, a very powerfully-built man, told me he was partial to nightwork, and always looked out for it, even when in daily employ, as “it was sometimes like found money.” The scavengers, sweeps, dustmen, and labourers known as ground-workers, are anxious to obtain night-work when out of regular employment; and, ten years and more since, it was often an available and remunerative resource.

Night-work is, then, essentially, and perhaps necessarily, extra-work, rather than a distinct calling followed by a separate class of workers. The generality of nightmen are scavengers, or dustmen, or chimney-sweepers, or rubbish-carters, or pipe-layers, or ground-workers, or coal-porters, carmen or stablemen, or men working for the market-gardeners round London--all either in or out of employment. Perhaps there is not at the present time in the whole metropolis a working nightman who is _solely_ a working nightman.

It is almost the same with the master-nightmen. They are generally master-chimney-sweepers, scavengers, rubbish-carters, and builders. Some of the contractors for the public street scavengery, and the house-dust-bin emptying, are (or have been) among the largest employers of nightmen, but only in their individual trading capacity, for they have no contracts with the parishes concerning the emptying of cesspools; indeed the parish or district corporations have nothing to do with the matter. I have already shown, that among the best-patronised master-nightmen are now the Commissioners of the Court of Sewers.

For how long a period the master and working chimney-sweepers and scavengers have been the master and labouring nightmen I am unable to discover, but it may be reasonable to assume that this connexion, as a matter of trade, existed in the metropolis at the commencement of the eighteenth century.

The police of Paris, as I have shown, have full control over cesspool cleansing, but the police of London are instructed merely to prevent night-work being carried on at a later or earlier period than “the legal hours;” still a few minutes either way are not regarded, and the legal hours, I am told, are almost always adhered to.

Nightwork is carried on--and has been so carried on, within the memory of the oldest men in the trade, who had never heard their predecessors speak of any other system--after this method:--A gang of four men (exclusive of those who have the care of the horses, and who drive the night-carts to and from the scenes of the men’s labours at the cesspools) are set to work. The labour of the gang is divided, though not with any individual or especial strictness, as follows:--

1. The _holeman_, who goes into the cesspool and fills the tub.

2. The _ropeman_, who raises the tub when filled.

3. The _tubmen_ (of whom there are two), who carry away the tub when raised, and empty it into the cart.

The mode of work may be thus briefly described:--Within a foot, or even less sometimes, though often as much as three feet, below the surface of the ground (when the cesspool is away from the house) is what is called the “main hole.” This is the opening of the cesspool, and is covered with flag stones, removable, wholly or partially, by means of the pickaxe. If the cesspool be immediately under the privy, the flooring, &c., is displaced. Should the soil be near enough to the surface, the tub is dipped into it, drawn out, the filth scraped from its exterior with a shovel, or swept off with a besom, or washed off by water flung against it with sufficient force. This done, the tubmen insert the pole through the handles of the tub, and bear it on their shoulders to the cart. The mode of carriage and the form of the tub have been already shown in an illustration, which I was assured by a nightman who had seen it in a shopwindow (for he could not read), was “as nat’ral as life, tub and all.”

Thus far, the ropeman and the holeman generally aid in filling the tub, but as the soil becomes lower, the vessel is let down and drawn up full by the ropeman. When the soil becomes lower still, a ladder is usually planted inside the cesspool; the “holeman,” who is generally the strongest person in the gang, descends, shovels the tub full, having stirred up the refuse to loosen it, and the contents, being drawn up by the ropeman, are carried away as before described.

The labour is sometimes severe. The tub when filled, though it is never quite filled, weighs rarely less than eight stone, and sometimes more; “but that, you see, sir,” a nightman said to me, “depends on the nature of the sile.”

Beer, and bread and cheese, are given to the nightmen, and frequently gin, while at their work; but as the bestowal of the spirit is voluntary, some householders from motives of economy, or from being real or pretended members or admirers of the total-abstinence principles, refuse to give any strong liquor, and in that case--if such a determination to withhold the drink be known beforehand--the employers sometimes supply the men with a glass or two; and the men, when “nothing better can be done,” club their own money, and send to some night-house, often at a distance, to purchase a small quantity on their own account. One master-nightman said, he thought his men worked best, indeed he was sure of it, “with a drop to keep them up;” another thought it did them neither good nor harm, “in a moderate way of taking it.” Both these informants were themselves temperate men, one rarely tasting spirits. It is commonly enough said, that if the nightmen have no “allowance,” they will work neither as quickly nor as carefully as if accorded the customary gin “perquisite.” One man, certainly a very strong active person, whose services where quickness in the work was indispensable might be valuable (and he had work as a rubbish-carter also), told me that he for one would not work for any man at nightwork if there was not a fair allowance of drink, “to keep up his strength,” and he knew others of the same mind. On my asking him what he considered a “fair” allowance, he told me that at least a bottle of gin among the gang of four was “looked for, and mostly had, over a gentleman’s cesspool. And little enough, too,” the man said, “among four of us; what it holds if it’s public-house gin is uncertain: for you must know, sir, that some bottles has great ‘kicks’ at their bottoms. But I should say that there’s been a bottle of gin drunk at the clearing of every two, ay, and more than every two, out of three cesspools emptied in London; and now that I come to think on it, I should say that’s been the case with three out of every four.”

Some master-nightmen, and more especially the sweeper-nightmen, work at the cesspools themselves, although many of them are men “well to do in the world.” One master I met with, who had the reputation of being “warm,” spoke of his own manual labour in shovelling filth in the same self-complacent tone that we may imagine might be used by a grocer, worth his “plum,” who quietly intimates that he will serve a washerwoman with her half ounce of tea, and weigh it for her himself, as politely as he would serve a duchess; for _he_ wasn’t above his business: neither was the nightman.

On one occasion I went to see a gang of nightmen at work. Large horn lanterns (for the night was dark, though at intervals the stars shone brilliantly) were placed at the edges of the cesspool. Two poles also were temporarily fixed in the ground, to which lanterns were hung, but this is not always the case. The work went rapidly on, with little noise and no confusion.

The scene was peculiar enough. The artificial light, shining into the dark filthy-looking cavern or cesspool, threw the adjacent houses into a deep shade. All around was perfectly still, and there was not an incident to interrupt the labour, except that at one time the window of a neighbouring house was thrown up, a night-capped head was protruded, and then down was banged the sash with an impatient curse. It appeared as if a gentleman’s slumbers had been disturbed, though the nightmen laughed and declared it was a lady’s voice! The smell, although the air was frosty, was for some little time, perhaps ten minutes, literally sickening; after that period the chief sensation experienced was a slight headache; the unpleasantness of the odour still continuing, though without any sickening effect. The nightmen, however, pronounced the stench “nothing at all;” and one even declared it was refreshing!

The cesspool in this case was so situated that the cart or rather waggon could be placed about three yards from its edge; sometimes, however, the soil has to be carried through a garden and through the house, to the excessive annoyance of the inmates. The nightmen whom I saw evidently enjoyed a bottle of gin, which had been provided for them by the master of the house, as well as some bread and cheese, and two pots of beer. When the waggon was full, two horses were brought from a stable on the premises (an arrangement which can only be occasionally carried out) and yoked to the vehicle, which was at once driven away; a smaller cart and one horse being used to carry off the residue.