Vol. 1. Chapter 9 - Scavenging

By the late 1800s, London was “drowning in horse manure". In order for the city to function, it was dependent on thousands of horses for the transport of both people and goods.

In 1900, there were over 11,000 hansom cabs on the streets of London alone. There were also several thousand horse-drawn buses, each needing 12 horses per day, making a staggering total of over 50,000 horses transporting people around the city each day. To add to this, there were yet more horse-drawn carts and drays delivering goods around what was then the largest city in the world.

This huge number of horses created major problems. The main concern was the large amount of manure left behind on the streets. On average a horse will produce between 15 and 35 pounds of manure per day, so you can imagine the sheer scale of the problem. The manure on London’s streets also attracted huge numbers of flies which then spread typhoid fever and other diseases.

Each horse also produced around 2 pints of urine per day and to make things worse, the average life expectancy for a working horse was only around 3 years. Horse carcasses therefore also had to be removed from the streets. The bodies were often left to putrefy so the corpses could be more easily sawn into pieces for removal.

The streets of London were beginning to poison its people. This problem came to a head when in 1894, The Times newspaper predicted... “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”  This became known as the ‘Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894’. 

It was into this crisis that my great grandfather came to the rescue. He was one of the army of Road Sweepers, whose job it was to clear the streets of horse manure. At eight o'clock in the evening the night brigade started on the work which couldn’t be done in the daytime; at two o'clock in the morning the advance guard of the day began to sweep and wash the main roads, At five o’clock the regular work started and all roads were swept at least once and often spread gravel and sand on the roads. In winter, the job included clearing the snow away.

The responsibility for keeping London clean was lay with the Honourable the Commissioners of Sewers; and the headquarters we on the southern bank of the Thames at Lett's Wharf, just east of Waterloo Bridge, where my great grandfather lived.

Thomas Ward, the illegitimate son of Fat Granny (Louisa Ward) married my great grandmother, Skinny Granny (Alice Dudman) 23 May 1893 at St, John the Evangelist, Larcom Street Walworth, Newington.Skinny Granny, Alice, was unable to sign her name.

Alice was already pregnant with my grandmother, Eliza Ward.

Before his marriage Thomas had left home and was living an independent life in the Guinness Buildings.  Upon his marriage, he and Alice moved in with Fat Granny in Morpeth place. (Now a Sainsburys’ opposite Waterloo Station). It was here, in Morpeth Place that my grandmother was born 21 August 1893.

Still living with his mother and step-father, Thomas and Skinny Granny moved to 1 Providence, Place. It is then that Thomas had a step up in his career and became a “Scavenger”.

This job title was used to describe someone who cleaned the streets and removed refuse, and also someone who rummaged through refuse looking of anything useful that could be sold on. The scavengers or “dustmen” played an important part in the prevention of disease.

Dustbins are quite a modern invention, many homes and businesses simply left their refuse on the pavements. I.e. “fly tipping”

What could a scavenger collect? This was in the days before plastic containers and tin cans. Food was sold fresh. Newspaper would have been cut into squares and uses as toilet paper. Poverty meant that there was little food waste. String was sent to mat-makers, bones to glue-makers and soap makers, old buckets and rusty saucepans could be melted down for solder. Oyster shells (Oysters was a poor man’s food) could be ground to make fertilizer. In the days before central heating, there was also cinders and ashes from coal fires to collect and be sold on to laundresses to be used as pumice stones, or unburnt bits of coal could sold to night-watchmen for their braziers)  There was also industrial waste to be disposed of from the many workshops and factories. Dead cats could also be recycled according to the colour of their skin. Six pence for a white cat, four pence for a coloured cat and a black cat according to quality. Rags, the woollen rags were bagged and sent off for hop-manure; the white linen rags are washed, and sold to make paper. Glass could also be sold on to old glass shops.

Statistics show waste collection to be one of the most dangerous jobs. On-the-job hazards include broken glass;; caustic chemicals; falling objects from overloaded containers; diseases that may accompany solid waste; asbestos; dog attacks and pests; inhaling dust, smoke, and fumes; inclement weather, traffic accidents, and odours so foul that they can make one physically sick.

In 1895, Thomas and Alice’s second daughter, Louisa, was born.  

When Fat Granny, (Thomas’ mother) moved out to Granger Road in Camberwell, Thomas and Alice (Skinny granny) set up their first home together in, Battersea, and Thomas left behind his scavenging for good.

Coming soon……Chapter 10 Nine Elms

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